I have to admit, Seth and I were both shocked to realize that he was turning 32 this year. All year long he thought he was only 30. Oh my. We are getting older faster than we thought. I think we still think of ourselves and post college, newly weds who just happened to have our kids at a young age. Anyhow, back to the birthday.

Last Sunday was Seth’s birthday. We let him sleep in and baked him a chocolate cake while he slept. When we woke him up we served him breakfast in…nope not bed, in a tent. And Ikea igloo tent. Jackson was so excited! He and Seth sat in the tent and ate breakfast sandwiches.

Late morning after Owen had napped we gave him his gift and had some cake (to avoid the boys having their sugar rush before their nap).  We gave him a tent to go camping with the boys! For those of you that don’t know we live just above the river and in particular the campgrounds along the river. I know the boys will enjoy lots of daddy bonding with the new tent!

Here are a few pictures.

being silly

Below my friends is a picture of the first Valentine’s day dinner that Seth cooked for me after we got married. I remember him seeing the recipe in my Southern Living magazine and saying “I’ll make that for Valentine’s day”. I will be honest my concern was more that it seemed like a funny thing to eat for a romantic dinner but had I been a little smarter I would have been more concerned about how he was going to accomplish it. The poor guy had hardly cooked pasta and was quickly spoiled as a married man with a personal chef. He enthusiastically prepared Chicken fried steak and nearly burned the whole apartment complex down.  He literally had to run to the front door with the hot skillet to dump out smoking char, which accidentally landed on and burned small spots in our carpet. All of this was followed by a really good laugh. You would have thought we would have ordered a pizza after the fiasco but if I remember right we were too cheap to do that. So here it is, V-day dinner 2006.

notice I ate everything on the plate but the chicken fried steak

But this, this is what Seth cooked on Saturday night. He planned an early V-day dinner since our friends were coming to town on the actual day.

(sorry my pictures are a little blurry but I do like the coloring better with no flash…still learning with this camera)

He researched and made the menu and whipped up London broil with herb butter, browned butter green beans and garlic bread. It was amazing! I was so impressed and decided that he will be cooking MUCH more often!

And did I mention that he did all of the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen! It was the best gift ever!  thanks, Seth!

During the late summer months when we arrived Bern was hopping with Saturday festivals. It was a great way for us to get down to the city and to get acclimated with the city and it’s culture. The winter months have been grey and cold and it seems the festival folks have been waiting for warmer days to come back.

A couple of weeks ago there was a Winter Grillfest held in downtown Bern.  It was really just an opportunity for the meat farmers of Switzerland to sell us on their amazing local meat. We still can’t afford their meat at the store here (which is why we drive 6 1/2 hours every 3 months to get meat) but it was fun to try some of their goodness.   They had meat plates with all kinds of sausage, beef and pork. A dream come true for Seth. They had cozy benches set up with sheep’s wool blankets and a bonfire where kids could roast free sausages. Much to the kids delight they also had big crates of apples around for people to grab. Jackson chomped one as we found our way around and Owen got to try his first whole apple! He loved getting to hold it all by himself. This was Jackson’s first time to roast anything over a fire and he made sure we knew he had seen George do it on Curious George. He talked about wanting to do it again when he gets to go camping with Daddy when he’s bigger.  We ate, drank some Gluwein, stayed warm around the fires and enjoyed running into friends.

enjoying an apple while watching daddy and Jackson by the fire!

enjoying the fruit of his labor!

Thankful for a festival mid winter! Looking forward to things picking up again in the Spring!

the atrium is now no longer Jackson’s “safe zone”. He got adventurous last week and I looked out to find him climbing the tree