Current state...

... is so full I can hardly move :)

With not only Christmas, but also Eva´s birthday, I´m way past the point I am able to devour any cake or cookies or whatever food. I think I need to abstain any food for some time... and there´s New Year´s Eve just in three days! Puh! 

Our Christmas rocked. We spent Christmas Eve at our home, just the six of us, like we do every year. In Germany, gifts are given at the night of the 24th. It takes some creativity to keep the kids busy all day long, when they are all antsy for Santa, snooping around to get a glimpse. I made a three course dinner, set a nice table and my husband got a car, and then we took them all to Lego Discovery. We spent some nice parent-child quality time, and when we got home, changed into our finest clothes. Which means for Eva that she´s wearing her creepy pink leggins, and for Miro that he´s wearing his Tiger-Halloween costume. 

It was cute how much the boys enjoyed their Christmas, how they freaked at each present they opened, how they instantly started playing. It´s fun playing Dominos on the floor with four children until it´s almost midnight. It´s fun watching my girls fall asleep under the Christmas tree, having their gifts assembled around them. 

By the way, after telling my husband for years that I prefer handmade gifts, I finally, really got one! My husband got crafty and made me this necklace from the shell of a coconut:

 

Cool, huh?

So this was my favourite Christmas present.  My close second favourite Christmas present was one from my gran. On the 25th, I went to visit her, despite it took me three hours in overcrowded, terribly late trains. But my gran is 83, she never leaves her home, and I know noone else came to visit her. Which, actually, made my Christmas nicer, too. My gran is pretty much the only person of my creepy family I really like to meet. Except for maybe my little brother. But that´s a whole ´nother story. However, my gran knows about my love for instruments, and in the depths of her closet, she found this little beauty: 

 

That´s a melodica. The name is not a speaking name, though. This baby is anything but melodic. I think it´s from the 60´s or 70´s. It´s perfectly intact and has a horrible, screachy sound, just as it´s supposed to have. Eva figured pretty quickly how to play her standard violin and recorder tunes, and since we have it, the decibel rate in our house got even higher. As I´m typing this, Ronja´s playing on it, actually, even though I´m trying to listen to Antifogmatic. Sigh. But really, I love it. It´s definetly a cool addition to our collection.

And then we went to Münster, to visit my in laws, where we got more presents, more food, had more conversation, and waited, again, for trains that got stuck in the ever pouring snow. By this time, the fascination had slowly begun to run dry, all kids being overtired and on a constant sugar-high, well, probably not only the kids. And then we got home, just in time to prepare the last presents for Eva´s birthday and set the birthday table and clean the house, to have the next party: 

 

Silly Bandz, an MP3-Player loaded with Taylor Swift, lipgloss and the second volume of Warrior Cats. That´s what makes my nine year old happy. And now she´s waiting for me to play the Hogwarts-Lego game with her and her sister. 

In honor of her birthday, I´m tempted to leave you with a Taylor Swift song, of course. 

But, you know, this is my blog, and right now, I´m more in the mood for these guys: 

Whenever I listen to them (which is quite a lot at the moment), I´m amazed by their musical skills. I mean, just listen. They can make harmonies that aren´t even harmonies. They play at rhythms that take all my concentration to even grasp. They are incredible innovative - it´s impossible to give them a genre stamp.And they always make my feet tap, no matter how full I am :) And if you happen to have 8 minutes, this cover is breathtaking.