help !!! (vegetarians please look away)

i read through various leaflets of the compassion in world farming organisation www.ciwf.org whose work i can only support. ironically there is a picture i have wanted to place on my blog that is totally contradicting my mutation into a vegetarian or more much conscious and informed meat-eater.

morning at the crafts market

well, this was the evening before the morning. me, daisy, sitting in our messy but cosy living room with a class of my favourite potion last friday evening. our friend james came over to visit, the 'boys' had a mcdonald dinner, while i tried to keep warm with soups, teas and others to fend off a sore throat and cough.



the



morning after elie, rio and i went into town. the weather once more was lovely warm and sunny, unexpectedly so for this time of the year. we sat on a little bench, had our morning coffe from the coffee mobile http://www.caffe-mobile.co.uk/, and enjoyed crispy croissants and pain au chocolat from a bakery in trinity street (they need to teach their employees simple additions again. . . . ).

i then took rio on a little tour of the crafts market where his vacuum cleaning function took over again, and everything remotely edible disappeared into his digestive system. such as two bars of chocolate this evening were stolen from the living room table (chocolate monster !!). the expression on his face upon seeing himself in the mirror must be due to the shock about his weight gain after that mission . . . . . ;-)))
he rarely reacts to his mirror image, but did this time. i speculate this was because the mirror was placed on the ground. he also made eye contact with me throught the mirror, which was a little weird.

and that was his dazzled little self after recovering from the mirror experience. i must say he does look a little beside his shoes, if that makes any sense.

the trouble is elie is the one taking pictures, so there is rarely a picture of him to show. so this post seems very ego-centric of myself. tomorrow's weather sounds very promising and i will most probably toddle into town again and raid the charity shops. have a nice weekend everyone !!

another great trip to zurich

that was just about three weeks ago that i decided to take a trip to switzerland. the reason really was that both my best and longest friend kathy with her husband andré and daughter tonique, as well as my sister were in zurich simoultaneously. they normally live in argentina and neuchatel (ch) respectively.



at the same time joy and thomas reyes came with their two little daughters lucy and amelie azul. this is a pic of lucy keeping her father busy with all sorts of things.


and to top it off my two cousins bice and carla also joined in, whom i had not seen together for probably a decade or so (no not true, as i hav only been married for five years now . . . ).


it was a lovely evening, much spanish was spoken, as well as baby talk and talk over babies ;-)) and these are the two youngest, amelie azul left and tonique right. yes, tonique is a little mouse, but she is three months younger than amelie and is further back in the picture as well. they were just soo sweet and uncomplicated, so were their parents !!!


i don't have pictures of my parents and sister. thanks a lot to my parents for having me that weekend, i very much enjoyed a break from cambridge and two great days full of sunshine in zurich.

the next day after all that cheese i went on a bike tour up to the 'loorenkopf-turm', the lookout-tower above zurich i have been climbing on since i could walk probably. the weather was fabulous and so many memories came up inside me. i spent many hours in that area as a teenager and the view from the top is fantastic, the lake lies like a band of silver, and the sky is just a second away.

not very well visible on the pics, but the mountains throned behind the gentle hills of the swiss mittelland. this picture shows them a little better and proves that our planet in fact is round.


early monday morning meant boarding a plane to london amongst tired busy business wo-men. i hardly had time to read the inflight magazine because visibility was great. i saw the north-western tip of france where we had spent some time in june, many ships crossing the channel, the tiny cliffs of dover, the rolling hills of kent, suburbs of london with a salad of bubbling highways, and flew straight across the heart of london. the london eye, tower bridge, battersea park, 'gherkin-building', 'bock-im-hemd-palast' and thames were right under my feet, it was breath-taking.



city airport lies in the east of the city along docks and industries. it is in fact just an hour's drive from cambridge and elie came to pick me up. fortunately, this time, i was looking forward to going 'home'.

elie visits the little family in belgium

this post is a supplement to the month of . . . . .well, sometime during the summer. elie went to belgium to visit a good friend of his, ilse, with her two young children. he really went over there to practice his father instincts and spend some time with the humongous mother ilse, whom he has known for ages. daddy was away for some time, wify daisy was busy on the grand green island, so that the four of them had some quality time together. that is the visitees: ilse, cas (just under 2 years) and job (born past march).


mum and daughter.


elie spent a wonderful time with the three of them, going for walks, feeding them, bathing them, comforting them, changing nappies, rocking them into sleep, playing, talking, rolling on the floor, and just relaxing. it was lovely for ilse to have some help around the two toddlers, with whom you certainly don't experience boredom ;-))


while cas was little more distant with unknown male critters . . . . . .


. . . . . . . .
job certainly had no problems to make friends with elie. they just seemed to be on the same wave-length, connect straight away, and learn all sorts of things from eachother.



for a change elie took off on a trip to cologne in germany, where he walked around in the streets of that lovely city. i must say, that picture reminds me of our time living in germany some years ago, germany is just so neat.


they also met someone else there, our friend philou from belgium. he has the privilege of living within a half-an-hour's car ride (probably 10-minutes at his regular cruising speed. . . .) of two other countries (germany and the netherland), and went over to cologne for the afternoon. he seemed to be rather happy about a grand- day- out.








but is it not amazing, that something like this, is going ot gradually morph into something like . . . . . . . . .













. . . . . . . . . . . . that ???