Busy Busy

It is incredible how I have really nothing to update when these past few weeks have been absolutely, insanely, incredibly crazy. I'm glad I'm writing kind of in retrospect, for had I updated in the middle of the mayhem, I would not have been able to write peaceably about it. In fact, I probably would have been crying. Today I am in a relatively good mood, so here's the skinny on what's been happening: I have been working almost non stop, getting very little sleep, and hardly any time off. During this, the father was away on a business trip, Tyler was waking up screaming his head off almost every night which made me resort to wearing ear plugs as part of my pajama ensemble, and Anna caught the flu and was up-chucking and complaining non stop (and very loudly) about how her stomach hurt. Before yesterday, I was sleep deprived, over worked, and grumpy. Thankfully I took Monday off and went to Rachel's to unwind and catch up on the ZZZs. For the past 3 Mondays Rachel and I have been attending a beginning vocal class and it has been AMAZING! It is the one thing I look forward to at the beginning of the week. There are all these older British ladies who can't really sing, and they're loud and have no inhibitions. Everyone loves the class, but I think especially me and Rachel. We always leave in such a good mood:) A while ago the kids and I went to a zoo for rescued animals and it was pretty fun. I took some pictures of it, which are posted below:) Still, one of my favorite things about my stay here is being able to take pretty walks. The girls had never heard of a Christmas  countdown chain, so I helped them make one each and on December 1st they can start taking a link off for each day it gets closer to Christmas. Since I am leaving on the 2nd of December and it would have been hard to transport my chain home, I made it a Homecoming countdown, so every day I take off a chain that leads me one day closer to my arrival home. I have loved and am loving being here in Switzerland, but there are so many exciting things happening in the near future that I am very excited to be going home too!

Here is Anna at the Zoo next to the huge lizard.

Some pretty parrots. They reminded me of the really loud flock of wild parrots in Santa Ana where I went to High School, except they are slightly more colorful:)

Hedwig.

Hedwig's sister.

I thought this was funny. It's a whole bunch of wild doves eating breakfast. Cool picture, no?

This was a disaster waiting to happen. So Roberta and I had all the kids with us, and we came to the Vulture cage and there were all these beautiful bunnies running around inside, and after a few minutes of pondering we finally figured out the reason. They were breakfast! Once we surmised this, we decided to hurry quickly on to the next cage so as not to expose the children to the Circle of Life that early in the morning. I don't think I could have taken it, haha. Luckily the birds didn't seem that hungry!

Ah, turtles. The one in the back reminded me of my baby. He had the same red markings on his head as my dear Arnelda.

Halloween! Anna and I decorated this pumpkin, and the rest of the family decorated the one below:)

Mariah practicing being a monster. Or maybe a Jack-O-Lantern:)

Halloween at the Church:) They look really cute!

Here's me with the whole family. I dressed up as a Sunbeam:)

Tyler is way more interested in his candy than strutting his stuff on the catwalk.

This is random, but I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe after I saw it, so I deemed it photo worthy. It reaffirms my aversion to cats.

Kids are the same no matter where you go. This masterpiece was drawn by some boys on my block, and it reminded me of all the Sunday school classes when I was young, and how the deacons would pass the time cultivating their drawing skills.

I love when I can make Natasha laugh!

I took Tyler to the park and we loved playing on the swings and on the merry-go-round. He also loves playing on this springy thing:)

This is a magical, ginormous tree at that same park and it's wonderful for climbing and playing hide-and-go-seek.

Ok, I think that's about it for now, but I'll try to be better about posting if anything exciting occurs:)