getting ready to go shopping . . .

state of the art exuberance

video 1: antwerp zoo - kids and the art of instant friendship

video 2: not long before we went away - proving that white girls CAN indeed jump . . . in this case to 'ice ice bubbles', as the song is now known.

randomicityness . . .

jet lag in progress

ditto

frankfurt on our final day in europe - buying a hello kitty balloon

dang balloon came with us all the way to the security area before boarding

naked sudoku - must have been influenced by all that contact with the finns

more hello kitty, boots this time, wouldn't take em off without a fuss, and woke at night demanding them . . . and not much else . . . she is not a fan of clothing!

evillest of them all

we are now home, in the brisbane heat and humidity, after a heavenly trip. good food, plenty of sleep, and constant amusement by the munchkin. we spent a little time at the frankfurt airport - some of it in the JAL business lounge - which was fitted out with some blimmen marvellous toilets. i happened to mention to andrew that there were a few 'surprise' functions on these toilets, described a couple, and said it would be a hoot to try them out on amelia (yes, i know, *sigh*, we are bad evil parents - but she is such a good sport!!!!) . . . next thing you know, she is trotting off to the loo by his side. a few good minutes later, out they come, her looking bemused, him beaming from ear to ear. apparently he had pushed one of the 'wash' buttons, and she jumped about a foot off the toilet when the jet stream hit her rear-end . . . see for yourself - about 12 buttons in all, including A DRIER!

das boot! the fabled rubbish barge of venice!

we FINALLY managed to get this thing posted! one of the highlights of venice for amelia! you will notice that she sits extremely still while watching - the only time she is still is when she is watching something of great interest - diggers, cranes, cherry pickers, leaf-blowers, street sweepers etc. or, when she is deeply asleep (light sleep means flailing limbs and mad rambly mutterings). the rest of the time she is on the MOVE!

s'no business

we did this the wrong way round. we hitched a tram to the shopping centre and had our waffels and hot drinks first. ideally, you should head for your waffels and hot chocolate AFTER you have been out in the snow. this was one of amelia's favorite haunts in ghent. icecream (australian nonetheless, so called because the woman who financed the enterprise LIVED in australia; bizarre sundae names like coupe aboriginal!!!) for amelia, and a waffel for dad (or mum, and/or mum) . the waffels, to give them their full title are 'luikse zuiker waffels' or gauffres chauds de liege' . . . made fresh in huge waffel irons, and have a sugar filling that melts as it heats. bloody sensible food if you ask me, given the weather. and the hot chocolate consists of hot milk, with a huge great lump of REAL CHOCOLATE dropped in the cup to melt.

above is the look she gets when she is up to no good - in this case whipping off the mittens (notice hat is LOONG GONE!)

and below is the smile you get AFTER you take your mittens off!

don't think this needs much explanation! she walked and walked and jumped and rolled and ran and slid and 'built snowmen', and threw snowballs (well, tried to, she would get a snowball together and walk up to andrew to toss it, then lose it and laugh too hard to do it properly) . . .

we coaxed her up this hill thinking that she would sink deeper and deeper into the bank of snow, but to no avail. evil parents that we are. notice the mittens are STILL off. apparently you can't make snowmen and snowballs with those bloody things on!

whether we make it out of germany on thursday or not remains to be seen. planes from all major cities in this longitude are delayed or cancelled. you've probably seen the eurostar debacle - well, we have a thalys train to catch to germany on wednesday. as it was, andrew went to amsterdam for a lecture and on saturday found himself hopping on and off regional trains in an effort to get back over the belgian border, as all international trains were either cancelled or badly delayed. at one stage he pictured himself walking the 20 k's or so to get into belgium - would have been a mission given the blizzard conditions. still, we have travel insurance, and our bond just came back in CASH... so we think we should be FINE . . .

and that would be a BLIZZARD then . . . . . . .

watch this space - photos of the whiteout in process will soon be posted. the enfant terrible and her evil father just brought a friggen SNOWBALL (taken from the stack on our balcony) into the computer room and the E.T. THREW it at me, while the E.F. laughed!!! methinks we will be making snowmen, throwing snowballs, creating snowangels and eating WARM WAFFELS WITH HOT CHOCOLATE very very soon!!!