20 years

It's been 20 years. As you look through the news sites and newspapers there are many reflections of this 20 year anniversary: 20 years ago the Wall came down in Berlin.

For me, this is a very special anniversary, the Wall plays a role and German history of the 20th century plays a role.

20 years ago I met my friend Marie. This weekend is our 20th anniversary.

20 years ago we moved back to Germany, I was a teenager in a new and relatively foreign country. A country I had spent summers in and my early childhood. A country I was getting to know as it was changing. All throughout the summer we watched the news reports of the Iron Curtain rusting, the famous images of the Hungarian border police taking wire cutters to the fence. East Germans in the West German embassy in Prague. The Foreign Minister on the balcony of the embassy telling them they would be allowed to travel to West Germany that day, the cheers, the tears. It brought shivers down my spine when I traveled to Prague years later and saw the German Embassy...

20 years ago I was the new kid in a new school. The French class was going to Paris on an exchange. I wasn't going to be going, since this had been organized the year before. Then someone got sick and I got a spot on the exchange at the last minute.

This exchange was part of the German-French friendship programme started after World War II. Adenauer and de Gaulle decided to start exchanging young people in a friendship programme so that these two nations who had been at war for too long would finally get to know each other, build friendships and never go to war against each other again.

The beginning of November is a delicate time in German and European history: November 11, 1918 is of course Armistice Day, the day a ceasefire was signed between the Allies and Germany in a railway car in the woods. A day that ended the most horrible bloodshed and war atrocity seen in Europe to that day. Whole stretches of land littered with the corpses of dead soldiers. November 9, 1938 was the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass when Nazi Germany showed its brutal face in a large-scale anti-Jewish pogrom. A year later the beginning of World War II which saw my own grandfather marching into France as a foot soldier in the German army.

So, there I was 20 years ago on my way to France, to make a friend so that none of this would ever happen again.

We all came into the school the exchange was with and the two teachers read names from their lists: one French student and one German student. I was the last one on the list, as was Marie, and we were matched.

I remember coming into Marie's house for the first time: the smell of her father's pipe, the books everywhere, the old furniture, and most of all the people. I immediately felt comfortable and at home. For the first dinner her mother had made a feast of French specialties, some to test the sensitivities of the German exchange student like fresh sea urchin. I loved the sea urchin - I had spent the previous summer in Sardenia and ate them fresh out of the ocean.

They showed me around Paris. We went to Place des Vosges - still one of my favourite places in Paris. We walked all over town, Musee d'Orsay, Marais, Rive Gauche, Notre Dame, Quartier Latin... This set the start of my love for this city, a city I would return to many times to visit my friends. And every visit would bring me back to Place des Vosges...

I have so many wonderful memories of Paris, and they are all linked to Marie: Driving through the city at night with big operatic or orchestral music coming out of the speakers, making Paris the stage of our very own story. Or years earlier, the two of us walking through the city and having hot chocolate in a cafe on the Place St. Michel.

Marie and I got along perfectly right away. We had the same love for novels, for music. and we somehow connected, in a way that is difficult to put into words. It's like we had - and still have - this implicit understanding of each other.

So there I was, 20 years ago in Paris and meanwhile in Berlin, the Wall came down. I remember sitting with Marie and her family in front of the TV and seeing people dancing on the Wall, Trabant cars driving across to West Berlin.

Marie's father opened a bottle of champagne and we toasted to freedom.

Marie and I spent every summer together throughout high school and well into university. We would go to the French Alps with Marie's family. Many beautiful days of hikes and long conversations at night. I remember one night when we brought our down duvets outside onto the Alpine meadow and watched for shooting stars.

We talked about love, a romantic love that sweeps you off your feet. We talked about our futures, our dreams. We did a lot of dreaming together in those summers. We watched each other as we fell in love, had our hearts broken, found love again... We made our career choices, went to university... We danced at each other's weddings, her children were my flower girls. And throughout this time we wrote each other letters and made time to see each other whenever we could.

Despite the fact the we are so far apart now, we are still incredibly close. When we see each other, we immediately connect, we are like family. Our families have found friendship as well: Last spring, before Anouk was born, we all got together in Weidingen: Marie and her husband and children, her parents, my parents, my sisters, my family. A beautiful big reunion of our two families. There we were all sharing this wonderful time together, speaking German, French, Italian and English to communicate.

Who would have thought that this would ever happen after World War II when the German-French friendship programme was started and who would have thought that this would happen when in a high school gym our names were called out and we were matched.

As a tribute to our friendship, I made my first big quilt for Marie. The pattern is called "Starry Night" and when I saw it I had to think of the summer night in the Alps when we were huddled in our duvets and watched the shooting stars. The colours remind me of Marie. I hope that it will got well into their new house. Every stitch, it seems, a memory of the last 20 years together.

Thank you Marie, for being my friend.

Autumn beauty

I think fall is one of my favourite seasons. We've had a really nice long and warm early autumn and now the rainy season has begun - and I like it. Last weekend it rained and then the sun came out. I went for a brief walk around the neighbourhood and took some pictures of the wonderful fall colours. Everything was so intense just after the rain. Really wonderful.

Here are some pictures of our neighbourhood trees in the fall:

The wet red leaves on the sidewalk were just wonderful - the pictures does the reality no justice...

Sun peaking through the leaves after the rain:

An our beautiful hortensias all dressed up in autumn purple:

I've been putting off updating this blog for a while. I wanted to write something meaningful and couldn't seem to find the quiet moment I thought I needed for this.

A couple of days after the last post one of the readers of this blog passed away. She was my father's aunt, well into her eighties and it all happened very suddenly and quickly. She didn't have a computer or the internet, so my mom printed the posts out for her and sent them to her by mail. She enjoyed reading the stories about our family. I was looking forward to visiting her with the kids this winter. I wanted her to meet the children she had been reading about.

I feel a sense of loss that we never had that opportunity. She had a picture of Liam on her bedside table. It really touched me to find out how much she cared about us. It's a delicate thing: the bonds of relationships in families and around the world. We feel confident that someone will be there, that we will share time together and then suddenly, a person dies and we are left with the memories of the past and the memories of our plans for the future.

All we have are the relationships with the people we love and we care about. It is the most precious thing - and one of the most fragile.

Fairies in the Garden and Monsters in the Closet

We have a lot of magical creatures living all around us. The fairies in the garden have been with us all summer. Liam and his friend Maddy go in the yard and put out flower petals for the fairies and build little dugout homes for them. Maddy gave Liam a book on Garden Fairies for his birthday. So, when Liam was wondering what to do on Sunday afternoon I suggested he build a fairy house in the garden. We found some rocks, some sticks and a nice spot. Liam piled up the rocks, and tried to build a roof structure with the sticks. I gave him some glitter glue and ribbons and he went on to make a pretty cool structure for his fairies. He then put some glittery jewels in there as well.

So I asked him whether he thought the fairies would like the new home he built for them. He gave me a look that said :"I'm way ahead of you, have been pursuing a different project all along..." He says: "It's not a house for them. It's a fairy trap. They'll come because they like all the jewels in there and then I will have them in my trap and I'll put them in the watering can and pour them out all over the garden!"

It certainly attracted Anouk - so his plan seems to work in theory. We have yet to find fairies in the trap, but that's OK.

When I opened my closet the other day I found a small stack of pictures at the bottom of the closet. All pictures by Liam - all pictures of monsters. He thought that these monsters should live in the closet. I'm unsure whether they were supposed to scare me or whether he wanted to put them away with other monsters that live in the closet...

Late summer birthdays and back to school

You know it's back to school / university time when blogs aren't updated... I actually started back last week with my first tutorials and lectures - so today, one day after labour day I feel like I'm already back into things... :)

But of course, I did stay away from the blog for a few weeks while I was trying to get everything ready for the new term, then Anouk got sick, then the birthdays came - Anouk turned 1!! and Mark had his birthday too.

We start celebrating a birthday in the morning with the presents and cake and we sing happy birthday! I set everything up the night before, bake the cake, put out the presents and the little birthday wreath for the candles, Anouk had her first candle...

And of course I tear up as I set it up, feeling so proud of my growing children, hoping they will be happy and surprised in the morning.

Here she is enjoying her birthday cake:

And then, on the weekend we had her birthday party with family and friends and chocolate cake:

The cake completely fell apart when I tried to get it out of the pan (too soon, I know but I needed the pan...) Thank goodness for icing and smarties and big smarties flowers that can be placed strategically over the cracks. And nobody would have ever guessed.... :)

And here is the birthday girl climbing up the stairs in her birthday dress.

Singing "Happy Birthday"

In the morning of her party I was scrambling to get everything ready, cakes finished, snacks set up, the house cleaned and decorated. There's this old lady down the street with this amazing yard full of flowers behind an ugly chain link fence. She has a little stand in her driveway under a sun umbrella where she sells bouquets of her garden flowers for $1.50 each. She is hunched over and walks very slowly and usually sits further back in the driveway binding the bouquets. Every year I am overjoyed to see that she is still there and that her bouquets are there to brighten up the neighbourhood. I see her bouquets sometimes on my walks: in windows, on little tables on front porches, in people's hands as they are cycling through the streets. So that morning of Anouk's party I went over to her driveway and bought up all the bouquets on her little stand and used them to decorate our back porch and the inside of the house.

I found this idea of hanging flowers in mason jars on a string and thought it would be perfect for this:

Here's a picture of our back porch ready for the party with the beautiful flowers hanging and the garland of little flags. These flags are the reason I started sewing a few months ago. I saw them somewhere and thought I should make some of those. I guess it's like when you start knitting, you start with a scarf. And when you start sewing you start with little flags. And you discover how addictive it can be and move on to new and exciting projects and fabrics...

The Monday after the party was my first day back to class - one week before Labour Day - and I had to start at 7 in the morning... And it was Mark's birthday. No singing, no cake for him in the morning, poor guy. We went out for dinner with the kids, which was fun and we extended the birthday celebrations into the week when things were a bit more quiet...

Last weekend we just relaxed, enjoyed three "home days" together and welcomed fall. It's cooled off and it's been raining. And I actually like it. It's been a wonderful summer...

Crafting Parade

The heat wave has passed, the cooling rain has come and gone, we're back to a more normal Vancouver summer. I'm taking this week off work to relax and get ready for the new school year. It's nice to putter around the house... Remember my post about the flood? - well, I'm finally having that day where I can do things here, no floods, no other catastrophes...

So far anyways, it's only Tuesday after all, still many days in the week for things to happen...

I submitted my chapter this morning, so I am having a well-deserved "home day" before I tackle the next chapters. It's always nice to send everything off, a sense of accomplishment and excitement - will the reviewers like it? How will it all come together?

I've finally taken some pictures of the sewing and knitting I've been doing. So, here is my crafting parade:

drum roll, fanfare

My first quilt:

A small doll-size quilt. It was really fun to make and a prelude to a bigger quilt that I will make this fall - well, actually two quilts: one for Anouk and one for Liam. I guess making a quilt is the natural progression of my love affair with my sewing machine. It is so much fun to think about colour combinations and geometrical designs for the quilt cover. And after making those nesting blocks, I have lost my fear of piecing things together and blind-stitching.

This is the best and easiest sun dress in the world. It literally took me about 20 minutes to make. Elastic thread in the bobbin, sew a few rows, iron to shrink the elastic, sew together edges, add straps and voila:

This summer / fall dress was made using an Oliver & S pattern. I love these patterns, they are really easy to use and I have learned to trust them and follow them even if I don't really understand what I'm doing (being a beginner at this and all...). It all comes together.

The fabric for the bodice is from a pair of pants my sister bought when she was here. Unfortunately they pretty much fell apart before her stay here was over. We were ready to stage a sit-in at the fancy boutique to protest their unwillingness to exchange the pants. They actually had the nerve to say that my sister's bum was to big for their pants!!! Geehz, I'm definitely not parading my bum into that store anymore... In the end we were all angry, the pants didn't get exchanged, and after a period of exile in a corner, the pants landed in my sewing stash.

I think this was the best way to deal with the contentious pants. An adorable little dress for Anouk.

Heat wave

Today was the hottest day on record in Vancouver - over 34 C at the airport, by the water!!!

I'm sitting here with sweat running down every part of my body, so I'll keep it short and escape back to my favourite place in the immediate vicinity of our new fan. We were one of the lucky ones - fans, air conditioners and even ceiling fans are sold out throughout Greater Vancouver.

This is how Liam and Anouk are trying to beat the heat:

Anouk sitting in front of the open fridge:

Liam eating ice cream in a tub full of cold water:

OK, now back to my spot in front of the fan.

So, how was your day?

It's been HOT in Vancouver - too hot! Sweltering hot. I was really looking forward to my day in the office with air conditioning... I got to my building and it was shut down due to a complete power failure. After I sorted things out there I headed home, grateful for a day off.

We've all been cranky these days - did I mention it's really

hot? The kids aren't sleeping well, which means we're not sleeping well, we're pretty busy with work and well, it's hot. So I thought: this is great, a whole day to myself. I'll catch up on some housework (bathroom!), throw some laundry in the machine and put together a nice dinner for everyone. So then, when everyone comes home after a hot (!) day, we can all sit down and relax, munch on some yummy bread, eat some delicious salad out of a recipe book, laugh, have lemonade... I had the whole 1950s happy family in the summer thing happening in my head, right down to me wearing a skirt and maybe I'd even sew myself one of those hostess aprons on my glorious day off. Just to make the picture perfect. And I'd have lots of time to read a magazine, sip some iced tea (that I would make from scratch with fresh and organic ingredients), contemplate the hot summer and ....

queue the scary music, scratchy string instruments, dissonances...

I came home to a bit of flooding in the hallway. This did not discourage me in the least. That was quickly mopped up. As was the water in Mark's tool closet. No problem. I still had that vision of me as the perfect Martha Steward housewife who would for once today, get this household together, fix dinner (fix - not make, merely fix something that is already pretty perfect, prepared and organized) - today there would be no cranky, we would beat the heat.

I was doing my cleaning and got to the kitchen, started unpacking the dishwasher and as I was going to put away a knife, it happened: I opened the drawer.

more scary music here

And it was full of water. Yes, water. Our neighbours' water. Our neighbours' gray water coming from their laundry machine. All drawers in our kitchen. Not the floor, not the cabinets, just the drawers. Weird. And pretty disgusting.

So, I've been mopping ever since. In this heat.

So, am I relaxed and sipping iced tea in the shade wondering whether to add a dash of oregano to my wonderful salad creation that I will serve my family in my freshly sewn apron tonight with a big smile on my face?

No.

I am sweaty, dirty, cranky and wishing it was already 7 am, which is when the plumber will come tomorrow morning to fix our plumbing.

Until then, nobody can use the kitchen sink. No cooking, no dishes...

Thanks for listening - any and all comments with encouraging words, plumbing disasters and recipes for lemonade are greatly appreciated.

And for all of you wondering what laundry water looks like in the kitchen drawers I took some pictures:

Nesting blocks

I thought I'd share some of the crafting creations I have made lately. My big project was a set of nesting blocks that I made for Anouk's birthday. I started well in advance, not sure how long this would take me... But it was so much fun, that I was actually very motivated to work through all the blocks very quickly to see the final product together.

The pattern was posted from Oh Fransson, posted on Sew Mama Sew. I used up some scraps I had from clothes I made for Anouk, so the blocks will always remind me of this summer when I discovered the beauty of fabrics and the joy of sewing clothes.

It's a whole new world out there for me and I am having so much fun with it!! It's so relaxing to be sewing in the evening. I can think about my day, my daytime projects, my worries etc. and at the same time I am creating something beautiful.

I have learned to read patterns and to follow patterns. I have learned to trust whoever made the pattern and follow their instructions - it somehow comes together at the end. :)

So, to start off my crafting parade, here are the blocks. I'll post some more projects over the next few weeks as I have time to photograph them.

91 candles

This is not a birthday blog, but there are a lot of summer birthdays to write about - and in the middle of July it's time to celebrate Hazel's birthday. Hazel is Liam and Anouk's great-grandmother and yesterday she turned 91 years old!

...and boy, does she know how to celebrate 91 years in style:

with a motocycle ride around town

and 91 candles on her cake:

Luckily she had a bunch of eager great-grandchildren around her to help her blow out the candles.

I couldn't help but think that it's a wonderful 91 years when you can celebrate with your family around you: children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Happy birthday, Hazel!! To a wonderful woman!

I can't wait to see what 100 candles will look like on your cake!

Liam is 4!

Happy birthday Liam! It's hard to believe that Liam turned 4 on Friday! Time flies by so quickly. I know it's such a cliche' - but it does seem like yesterday that he was born...

When we came to daycare on Friday morning Dorota summed it up so nicely (and brought tears to my eyes...)

"Happy birthday, Liam! Four years ago you were born and the world became a better place!"

Here are some pictures from his birthday:

Breakfast with cake and presents in the morning:

Anouk enjoying Liam's cake:

Liam in his Raven King costume for his birthday party. He had drawn a picture for me with the exact directions about this costume. The cloak was to be yellow with a purple rim and the crown was to be in this specific shape with 60,000 feathers (OK, I cheated, I didn't use 60,000) and of course there were to be jewels on his crown!

... and here he is only 4 years ago, just an hour or so old:

Salmonberries

Today we started off the berry season. The salmonberries are ripe! We were in Pacific Spirit Park and went for a long walk and collected lots of salmonberries. These were then used to coax Liam into walking some more. They are true energy berries. He would run ahead and then sit on a log and wait for another berry. It was great. Anouk really liked the berries, too. She didn't need to run for them though, she was just fed sitting in her stroller, a big smile on her face the reward for putting a berry into her mouth.

When we cam home Liam took our container of collected berries into the yard and shared them with his friend Maddy. Now we'll have to go again soon to pick some more :)

Oh my God - I am THAT parent!

Do you ever have that feeling you are that parent? You know, that parent - the one on the playground or in daycare. The one from your childhood, your friend's parent. The parent you always admired, the parent you thought was crazy, overprotective, slightly negligent, not attentive enough, talking too much about their children, not mentioning them enough, you know, that parent.

Well, I am now that parent. I am that parent who sends their 4-year old to violin lessons. This summer. Every week. With a 1/10 violin. In my defense: it was his choice. We were in the music store and I told him he could choose whichever instrument he wanted to get lessons for this summer. He chose the violin. 

And I was secretly proud of him and happy to be that parent. 

word cloud 2

...OK, I'm having way too much fun with this! This is the word cloud from all of the entries of this blog. 

If you compare it to the other word cloud from just the more recent entries, you can see a definite shift - towards chocolate....

:)

word cloud

Day in the yard

What a beautiful day in the yard today! The weather was so beautiful not a cloud in the sky. We sat in the shade of our plum tree and played. Liam and Mark even got out the bocce balls and played with those while Anouk and I watched them.

Flowers on the porch: 

A new addition to our yard, it grew from a seed that landed right in the middle of our raspberry patch: 

Wrestling or cuddling with Liam: 

Liam telling stories to Anouk:

Happy family. Happy day.

Hope you had a beautiful, sunny day, too.