Week One

Naomi's first week away from work was far from relaxing. On Wednesday, I had a work conference followed up by a dinner that ended up being a 16 hour day, including 4.5 hours of driving. Good thing we have a nice car. Thursday was a recovery day and I worked for my business Friday (when Naomi could barely get out of bed) and Saturday.

Friday I was busy with attaching the legs of the bedside table. I decided to make the switch to torx screws, so now I will need to get some new screwdriver and bit sets. I got tired of stripping out the screws and not having enough torque. On Saturday I installed some shelves to help organize the shed of Naomi's cousin. Finally a bit of warm weather for that project! The pieces have been taking up space in my workshop since before Christmas, so it is nice to have the space back.

This morning the time changed, so I hope I am able to continue waking myself up without an alarm. I really wish they would stop changing the time - I think it is annoying. We also stopped locking the girls room, but it will take a little while before they are used to the extra freedom. Good to get used to it before the big vacations though!

Figuring out how to attach the legs.

Organizing the weights.

Naomi has been busy cleaning up the garden.

Back to Winter

Just as we were getting used to the warm weather - even the frogs and the fish were waking up in the pond - we get hit with another blast of winter. Completely uncalled for. I am really in need of the warm weather!!

It was tricky to stay motivated to work for my business this week. I started making some bedside tables for upstairs and the design is not easy to execute. There were also some distractions. On Monday morning we visited a primary school with the girls. They will start after the summer holiday, so we need to choose one of the two schools that are right around the corner. Our minds were already pretty much made up, but this visit exceeded my expectations. Beautiful building, positive atmosphere, and some room to let the girls do something different from the rest of the group when needed. Afterwards we took them to daycare, but they didn't want to go! They really wanted to stay at school!! Something to look forward to.

The school where I teach is mixing things up. They are transitioning from a traditional way of doing things to something that is more project-based and subject-integrated. I am really interested in moving in this direction, so I have become an overnight expert. Next year I will probably have some kind of coaching/consulting role in the transition. Nice to be in the right place at the right time!

In other news, Naomi has decided to stop working entirely this week. She will go back eventually, but this is a sort of indefinite, paid furlough. The system allows for that here. If you get stressed you can just stop working until you get the rest needed, and you keep your full salary. This is really perfect for Naomi, because she really needs the time, but there are a lot of people who abuse the system.

Our car needed a couple new tires, so I had to drive this oversized go-cart to work!

I figured out how to make finger joints with a regular table saw.

Spring Returns

Hard to imagine that just a week ago we were ice skating. Now things have really warmed up, and we even managed to work in our first ride on the mountain bikes yesterday. Our neighbors are tearing apart the nice front yard they had, replacing the trees and flowers with concrete and a trampoline. They moved here in January from the city, and they don't seem to understand the people who live here. They said they are making things look 'younger' but we think it just looks cheap and ugly. Oh well, at least they gave us a couple nice Japanese maples they dug out...

Last Sunday we took the girls for a walk in the forest. Rain boots, of course. Amélie was walking on some ice, and it broke. The water was shallow of course, but came up over the top of her boots, creating a bit of a shock. Luckily we had two pairs of socks on the girls, so we just stole one of Abigail's to keep her feet warm. Sometimes it is handy to have twins! New shoes get expensive though - yesterday it was time again for the next size up...

I had my performance review at work this week. The management was very positive about me. Plenty of nice things to say. They even gave me a day off since Naomi was having a rough time. I am happy to be at this school, and they are happy to have me!

Ice and Snow

This was our last cold week of the year. It happened to line up with our spring break, so we got a chance for some winter sports. On Wednesday we went to Bottrop in Germany for some indoor skiing. They have the longest run in the Europe. On the way there, we got to test out the new car a bit. Got it up to around 200kph, but didn't have a chance to go any faster. Cut ten minutes off the hour and a half drive. Sure gets some terrible gas milage at that speed!

When we got there, the girls were pretty overwhelmed with all the people and chaos of getting ready. They didn't have much energy left to really try out skiing, but on Amélie's third try, she was going down unassisted by me! We were really impressed. Abigail didn't get that far. We had a nice buffet lunch and skied a bit more after. For the whole experience, including parking, rentals, lift ticket, and lunch, we only spent 52 euros! Quite the deal.

After the skiing we visited our friends who live in that area and had a really nice time. It was another late night for the girls! The next morning we got a chance to rest, and then in the afternoon we went to visit Naomi's grandma who is 97 now. She got moved to a location directly across the street from where we used to live. The timing of that made Naomi really sad! She would have liked to visit her a lot more. Now she is particularly sensitive to it as four years ago today her mom passed away.

I managed to get the table I made delivered on Friday, but the design made for some cracking. The guy wasn't happy about it, but his wife didn't mind. We decided to give it a month to see what happens before doing anything more with it.

Yesterday was the last cold day of the year, so we started out with some grocery shopping and after the nap we all went to a frozen pond in town for some ice skating. Naomi was really happy to do that again as it has been five years since the last time it has really frozen in this country. The girls had fun too!

Amélie gave up before we even started.

Making our way through the crowd.

Flat ground was no problem.

Visiting Mommy's Grandma.

The Santos Mahogany table.

Learning to skate.

Much more fun with Mommy!