I'm going to be a big sister!

Yes, it's true. I've waited and waited and now it has finally happened. There is really a baby in my Mama's tummy and I am going to be a big sister! I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited. I went with Mama to the doctor to see what the baby looked like. It did lots of jumps and the doctor said it was doing gymnastics! I thought that was pretty funny. Mama and Dada say the baby's nose looks just like mine did when I was in Mama's tummy.
It is very good news but the problem is Mama has been very, very sick. She just lies in bed all day and pukes. Not much fun for her and not much fun for me! She got so bad that Noni came over to look after her and me and Dada. And then I had much more fun. I have lots to tell you about everything I have been doing with Noni but Mama has been too sick to put it on the blog. She is maybe getting a bit better now though so I will try to put some photos soon.

Welcome to the world baby Thomas!

Hello everyone, I am in Australia having lots of fun which I will tell you about later because today I have to give you the most exciting news: my new baby cousin Thomas has arrived! He is the cutest bubba ever and has red hair just like me. My Zia Kate had him at 16:28 yesterday. He weighed 3580g (30g more than I did when I was born!) and measured 51cm long (half a cm more than me). I love going to visit him in the hospital and have been making him lots of cards and presents. I will tell you more later but I just wanted to share the good news.

I can ski!

Last week we went to Cervinia in Italy and I LEARNED TO SKI! Here I am having my very first lesson. Mama and I organised it while Dada was snowboarding and boy did he get a surprise when he came to the bottom of the run and found me skiing there as if I'd been doing it all my life!

Here I am on the magic carpet getting ready to ski down the little slope again.


I liked it so much that I had lessons every day. Here you can see me on my second day with my teacher Jennifer.

Before long I was doing real runs and going on the chairlift with the grown ups! Here I am with Dada and Uncle Hammer (who flew all the way from San Francisco to snowboard with us!)

Of course it wasn't all hard work. I found some time to lounge in the sun and soak up the atmosphere.

And do a bit of ice skating.

And go out at night for a little apres ski.

Peter and Becky came too and while I learned to ski, Becky learned to snowboard! Pretty cool hey?

That's all I can tell you for now because I have to go to bed because tomorrow...I am flying to Australia! I'm sure I will have lots more to tell you about my adventures there soon.

A weekend in Germany

Last Friday was my mama's birthday and since it was the holidays we decided to take a trip to visit friends in Germany. We started at Ariane's house in Frankfurt, where Ariane's mummy Amaya spoiled Mama with a special lunch and lots of cakes. Here we are waiting for Mama to blow out the animal candles. Dada drove up to Frankfurt after work (and got stuck in a 2 hour traffic jam!) and then we all stayed with our friends for the night.

In the morning we drove to Bonn. But first we stopped in Koblenz to visit my friend Emilia. You can see her here smiling a lot because guess who is sitting next to her - me! With a funny wig on! We had some yummy spaghetti lunch and played like old friends do.

We arrived in Bonn in the afternoon and met someone very, very special - baby Bengt! He is my friend Carolyn's little brother and he is so cute and smiley. OK, he's not smiling here because I don't think he is so comfortable on my lap, but he smiled a lot while we were there. And slept a lot. In the meantime, Carolyn and I played a lot. And the mamas and dadas talked a lot. We all like getting together.

At night we went back to our favourite pub from where we used to live in the Altsadt in Bonn. Of course we had schnitzel again.

The next morning we visited some other friends, Milan and Emma, at their house. They have a beautiful garden and we kids had fun in the sunshine.

Then it was back to Carolyn's for some lunch, a nice afternoon in the playground and a last play together. I took the chance to "read" her some Pippi Longstocking stories. It was so nice to see all of our friends again and now we are hoping they will come to visit us soon!

Fasnacht 2008

The real Fasnacht came this week! Very early on Monday morning Mama and I got up to go to the Morgenstreich at 4am. This is the beginning of Fasnacht when they turn out all the city lights and parade the lanterns through the street, with everyone dressed up in special costumes and masks and playing the piccolo and the drums. I love it because I love getting up in the middle of the night and I love the music and the lanterns. This year I laughed a lot at the funny ones. Afterwards Mama and I walked home because the trams weren't running and we stopped at the bakery for chocolate bread to keep us going. At 6am we went back to bed!

Tuesday was the children's day and I dressed up as an Arabian princess, as you can see.

I had lots of fun throwing confetti

Throwing it on my friends

And having them throw it back on me

The funny clowns are called Waggis, and they are the best because they give you lollies and toys

The streets are very, very busy

It's a part of living in Switzerland that our family really likes. Here I am on Dada's shoulders for the very best view of all.

Spain and Portugal

Mama and Dada and I have just had the best trip! We went to Spain and Portugal and walked around lots looking at beautiful streets and buildings. We also ate lots and lots of yummy meals. We love tapas! And I love croquettas the best. I ate them nearly every day. Anyway, here you can see me near the cathedral in Sevilla.

And here I am with the cathedral in the background. It is very, very big and we walked all the way to the top. Actually, I ran, because I thought it was fun going up all the ramps. On the way down Mama and I ran and hid from Dada at each level.

The reason we went to Sevilla was to visit a friend of Dada's, called Eva. She is very, very nice and looked after us so well and I had lots of fun with her. I always wanted to show her things. She kept thinking that I was a princess, which was pretty funny. I tried hard to convince her that I am not a real princess, because I wear jeans and my mama isn't a queen, but she didn't believe me. Here is a photo of her in her favourite little corner of Sevilla. I took the photo of course.

Because I am a princess, Eva took me to a palace! It was very, very beautiful and I took lots and lots of photos. Here are some of the ones I took.

This is one of the palace gardens. You can't really show how beautiful they were. There were lots and lots of orange trees that looked really colourful.

This is a pretty photo of a very big, very old magnolia tree that was in the park nearby.

We went out in little paddle boats on the river in Sevilla too. Mama and Dada didn't like it so much but I LOVED it so I swapped over to Eva and her friends' boat and went for a good, long ride.

After Sevilla we went to Madrid, where we stayed in a cool hotel. Of course we couldn't leave Spain without having churros dipped in chocolate and the friendly man at our hotel told us the best place to go. Here I am enjoying them. They weren't all for me - I did share them with Mama and Dada, even though they were so good.

We flew from Madrid to Lisbon for a little look around. We didn't stay long, but long enough to have the best custard tarts we have ever tasted! Mama ordered some for us all to share but I quickly put a whole one away by myself so it became clear that we needed more. You put your own cinnamon and sugar on top and they were just...amazing. Me and Mama and Dada like eating yummy food on holidays, don't we?!?

Finally, here is a view of Lisbon at night. It is very hilly there and very pretty too.

It's almost Fasnacht!

Well, it's one of my favourite times of year again, Fasnacht in Basel. The real parades aren't for another week or so, but today we celebrated our last day at the Kinderhaus before the holidays with a Fasnacht parade. We dressed up as mice and we had a little parade with the kids from another kindergarten who were dressed up as cheese. That was fun, but the best bit was coming back to our Kinderhaus and throwing confetti! We had so much fun and of course we have confetti in everything now.

Other than that I have been enjoying the Winter in Basel. We are still waiting to get some good snow here so I can use my sled, but in the meantime we have been going ice skating every week and I am getting quite good on my own now. You can see me here looking very cool on the ice on a sunny day.

Tomorrow we leave for a week's holiday in Spain. When we get back it is the real Fasnacht so by then I should have LOTS of photos to show you. Bye for now!

Happy New Year!

Well, it has been the New Year for a little while now but anyway... I had the best time celebrating the end of the old year and the start of the new one. Especially because my friend Ariane and her family came from Frankfurt to stay with us. Ariane and I had so much fun playing together for three whole days. Here we are making pictures with the Blo plens I got from St Nik.
Ariane's little sister Zoe was not quite so much fun to play with...yet...but I liked holding her and looking at her and saying how cute she is.

We had sparklers and a special kids' firework to celebrate. That was fun, but even better was staying up and watching the adults party for New Year's. They played a kind of charades guessing game together and then when it was almost midnight they all stood on the couch, eating 12 grapes for the last 12 seconds of the year (a tradition from Ariane's Mama who is Spanish) and then jumping off the couch to jump into the New Year (another tradition from Ariane's father who is Danish). It was very funny to watch. I stayed up so late and even watched the fireworks at 12:30 from our roof. When I went to bed I told Mama that I wanted to party like that on the anniversary of that day every year. She said we could.

I almost forgot. This year I wrote some New Year resolutions! My Dada helped me with some words by telling me how to spell them, but the others I made up the spelling myself. When I finally went to sleep on New Year's morning I told Mama that I hadn't done my resolutions yet. But she said I had all year to do them. I smiled and said "Cool" and drifted off to sleep.

But I haven't even told you about Christmas yet, have I?!? That was lots of fun too. Uncle Anthony came from Edinburgh to stay and we had a nice Christmas dinner together. Mama was pretty sick with the flu so it was lucky Uncle Anthony was there to help her cook. She made yummy food for us and then went back to lie on the couch! I had the best time though and got so many cool presents. Here you can see me leaving out a note and some beer and biscuits for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer.

It paid off because in the morning there were HEAPS of cool things for me near the tree.

I even got my own Yassie-size guitar.

And I got straight down to business, doing my first performance for Mama and Dada and Uncle Anthony.

So that is an update from me. Mama and Dada and me wish all our friends and family a happy, peaceful and healthy 2008. With lots of love from us. xxx

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Boy, do I love December in Switzerland. Because the whole month is Advent, and that means every single day I get a little present. This year Mama and I found this calendar at the Christmas markets, and Mama filled it up for me with cool presents. So far I've got hair clips and headbands and bracelets and cookie cutters and a little book about a girl called Yasmin. The first of advent was very special because my friend Nepheli's mum Effy put a fairy snow dome in there for me. It is so sparkly and pretty and now I keep it by my bed.

We love checking out Christmas markets. A couple of weeks ago we went to Freiburg in Germany to see what they were like there. I went for a fun ride in this Kombi!

On the night of the 5th of December I left my boots out for St Niklaus to fill. In the morning I found toys and chocolate and biscuits there. St Nik must have known that I love the website http://www.uptoten.com/, because he gave me Boowa and Kwala, the two characters from there. Now I love doing shows with them, especially when Dada does Boowa's voice and Mama does Kwala's. Niklaus also came to my Kinderhaus and left a big bag of nuts and oranges and lollies and chocolate. I told Mama that I recognised that it wasn't really Niklaus, that to me he looked like Caroline (who runs the kinderhaus)'s husband.

Mama let me decorate our Christmas tree all by myself. There are ornaments that we bought at different markets, plus ones I have made and even some that you can eat, because when my friends Sophie and Nicole and Isabelle came over the other day we all made spicy biscuits together.

Dada's work had their kids' Christmas party last Sunday at the zoo. I liked seeing the animals but I did NOT like seeing St Niklaus. As you can see, I was not sure about him at all, and when he tried to talk to me I didn't say anything back.

I didn't mind taking a present from him though.