October in Alberta

We're now one week back after spending two weeks with my family in Alberta. I had hoped to make a blog post while we were there, but didn't get to it, so apologies for the length of this post!

We went to Alberta because of a happy coincidence of my birthday, Canadian Thanksgiving, and Tanja having a conference in Edmonton! Clara was excited to go, but on the way to the airport I realized that we hadn't made it clear to her that her Opa (who was visiting and drove us to the airport) wasn't coming with us. When I explained that Clara, Mommy, and Daddy were going to Canada but Opa was staying to see us when we got back she burst into tears! Oh well, better in the car on the way there than once we were about to go through security!

We left early in the morning, and had a short flight to Frankfurt followed by the long flight to Calgary. Clara really liked that the seats had TVs on the long flights! She doesn't see much TV, so it was a treat to watch nature shows and point out the animals. She really loved the show about elephants, and she "watched" it two and a half times!


She did great on the flight, definitely largely thanks to Lufthansa. They bumped the person next to us into first class to give us an extra seat for Clara to sleep on!



Shortly before we arrived in Calgary, Alberta had been experiencing an incredible Indian Summer. They had had many days with more than 30C (something we rarely had in the middle of summer when I was growing up). The forecast was for it to get colder, however, so we packed our parkas. Good thing, too, as the morning after we landed they had the first snowfall of the year!



And a few days later the daytime high was below zero, the earliest this had happened since 1970! After a bit of brief visiting in Calgary we headed to my parents' place where we had a chance to enjoy the crisp fall weather outside:




And visit with Clara's cousins and Aunty Sue and Uncle Scott:





In the photo above Sam and Tanja are working on a jigsaw puzzle map of Berlin, which Tanja and I unabashedly finished when the kids were in school the next day...


By Thursday (we had arrived on Saturday afternoon) the temperature had really dropped, and Alberta had the first real blizzard of the year. We had planned on going up to Edmonton that day:


But turned around almost as soon as possible because the roads were so bad! I'm pretty sure this was the first time in my life that we had snow on the ground for my birthday!


That weekend Tanja and I went to Edmonton for Tanja's conference (during which I visited friends and my brother Pat and his wife Dana), leaving Clara with her grandparents for several days. This was the longest she'd ever been away from both of us, and she did great! Surely partly because of all of the fun she had in the snow with her grandparents and her cousin Amy! When Tanja and I got back we had another great snowfall (maybe 10cm?) and we got to play outside too!


(crunch, crunch, crunch, her feet sank into the snow...)


(she made a smiling snowman with Grandma and Grandma, and she made angels!)


(she pretended she was a mountain climber and climbed up a great, big, tall, heaping mountain of snow and slid all the way down!)



Clara's cousins had fall break, so she got to spend an exciting day with them building snow forts (complete with couches, and flatscreen TVs, and computers, and...)


We had lots of fun indoors too! Eating lunch at Aunty Sue's new restaurant:


Eating a pre-birthday birthday cake!


And most important spending quality time with Grandma and Grandpa!



Then it was, sadly, already time for us to head back to Germany. The weather forecast for the day we left was originally for +20C (!!) although in the end I think it was only ten or so. In any case, by the time we left all the snow was gone - looks like it was whipped up just for Clara to enjoy!

The flight back was a night flight, and much more difficult than the flight on the way over. Luckily for us the flight wasn't full, and we had four seats to the three of us! Here's Clara on the way back with a new toy and a new shirt:



Look at the tired eyes! Clara only managed a bit of sleep, and Tanja and I none. Worse, it seems like Clara picked up a stomach bug (or food poisoning?) on the flight, as she got sick seconds before we landed. At first we thought it was just from being over-tired, but she was sick for the next 24 hours or so.

Back in Berlin Clara missed the first two days of Kita due to jet lag, went on Wednesday, and then was home sick again on Thursday and Friday! On Wednesday night she suddenly had a high fever (39.8C), and by the next day it was gone and she had a rash. Sounds kind of like Roseola, except that the fever only lasted one day (instead of three), and I thought she had it already this spring?

In any case, I got to spend Thursday and Friday alone at home with Clara, and it made me really notice how much her language skills have changed since before we left! She can really explain a huge amount of what she's thinking now, and loves to give directions ("Daddy sit!" "Daddy come!"). She says a lot of three word sentences now, too ("put it there" "mama sit here"). One funny consequence of the trip is that while Clara used to say "nein" she seems to have switched to "no." She definitely has some understanding of the difference, though, as one morning at breakfast Tanja asked Clara what something was in German, and Clara responded "Käse." The next morning when my Mom asked her the same question in English she said "cheese."

There were also two really cool "concept" moments on Thursday. The first was when she put two fish toys next to each other and said "to-gether." I don't think anyone consciously taught her that, she obviously just knows what the word means. The second was with the same toys - they are a solid color on one side and have a painted pattern on the other. She was playing with them for a bit, and then suddenly she turned them all solid side up, then switched them one by one to all pattern side up! It's really cool to see here make these discoveries all by herself!

I think that there will probably be another round of photo blogging when I get a cd that my Mom has already sent. One highlight will be Clara's meeting with one of her "twins," my cousin's daughter Lyric who was born on the same day. Clara will also get to meet her other twin, Lucia (Tanja's advisor's daughter), next weekend!

Also, I got a job on Wednesday! Yippee!