life long friends

Hello, everyone!  Life has been fun lately.  Hope things are going well with you.  Living so far away definitely does not help us keep in touch and lately I have been wishing we would do better.  We don't talk enough to a lot of people and miss you all greatly!

 

Our friends (who we've both known for over 10 years) arrived for their visit safe and tired but surprisingly stayed up for most of the day.  We had an awesome visit!  Our boys became brothers and giggled with each other and seemed to be connecting on a level just between the 2 of them.  It was so adorable.  We toured around Zürich, went to the zoo, Luzern, and Lauterbrunnen and then enjoyed a short stay in Milan.  We took the family car in the trains a lot and the boys enjoyed it tremendously.  We even celebrated mother's day together and Jenny and I got a few hours to ourselves to shop while the husbands babysat.  It felt amazing.  The visit went by so fast and we miss them already!  I love having a reason to get out and visit places and having my best friend here made it SO much more exciting!  And as the post reveals, I take too many pictures (or don't update enough for my amount of pictures ;) ) so I've done a slideshow of their visit.

        This is where Jakob decided to step on a peacock. I can not even express our level of fear...

The day after they left our new couch arrived!  Talk about poor timing on IKEA's part but at least it is finally here and we love it.  The apartment finally feels and looks like home (even more so than our last place!) and I am SO incredibly thankful for the space.   Soon we'll look for a few more pictures or frames of something to hang but for now we're enjoying it!  The one big change has been walking.  I thought we walked a lot before moving but since living here we have a much longer walk to tram stops which means lugging groceries much further.  In the scheme of things though, I would much rather get the exercise than have the highway noise outside my apartment!

                                                           Jakob's desk that he loves!
Our 4 year wedding anniversary was last week!  4 years married but almost 8 total years together.  Holy cow how time flies!  We said Milan was our celebration trip so at home I made us chicken enchiladas for dinner which was a huge feat.  I had to make the sauce from scratch and I've always been afraid to but finally did it and am so glad I did.  I made enough sauce for three 9x13 dishes of enchiladas.  The third batch of sauce is resting in the freezer til we have a want for more enchiladas.  :)  Paul made his awesome guacamole for our side dish with chips and for dessert I made chocolate souffles since I've been craving them and found an easy recipe.  I made a batch of those enough for 16 souffles in my muffin tin.  I was in heaven eating those for days!  Jakob loved our anniversary meal minus the dessert obviously- no need to give a crazy child more sugar.  :)

Jakob is growing like a weed.  He is being stubborn with words so I'm teaching him a little sign language.  We understand all his pleas despite no words (besides 'mama') but I really want him to start learning to ask for things without the whines.  So his first sign is please and after a few days he has finally started trying it.  Now I just have to get him to use it on his own.  We do others but this is the first one to stick.  Kindermusik ended while our friends were here but we signed up for another 5 weeks starting in June.  He loves it and any music a lot and this class will start later (so he'll be more awake) and have older kids to interact with which he really likes.  He's a busy kid and is on the verge of running and right now his favorite food is grilled cheese sandwiches.  He can't seem to get enough of them and eats a bigger one than me!