Big Sister, Little Brother

There are a lot more of these, but I couldn't wait to post one.  I'll sort through the rest of the pictures and pick out some other good ones later.  

Those are my cuties!

Andrew - 1 month

Laura - 26 months

December Doings

 Helping Daddy put his favorite ornaments on the tree.

After asking to "old im, Daddy?" 

At Lac Noir 

She really did love it - she was just cold here. 

 With my babies!

 Another attempt at a family photo on Lake Geneva.

 Picture with Grandma at the Montreux Christmas market.

 We didn't get any pictures of the market, but we did get a picture of Laura playing on the playground!

Christmas Eve Eve - celebrating with Grandma before she left. 

 The stockings were hung by the radiator with care...

Chateau de Chillon

We took my parents to Chateau de Chillon one weekend when then castle was all abustle with roaring fires, medieval crafts and people in period costumes.  We walked around and admired the crafts and enjoyed lentils with ham and a delicious vegetable soup in the enormous dining room.  It was Andrew's first outing and he slept through all of it.

Cutie Pie.

Proof that we got out of the house!

I'll never grow tired of the beautiful vistas here.

The castle is built right on the water.

We could have take the train to the front door of the castle, but drove instead.  It took half the time and was much cheaper.  Swiss trains are nice and timely, mais tres cher!

Family Photos - Kinda

We all got out and dressed one day so that we could take some pictures of all 4 of us.  We managed to get a few, but the morning was wrought with problems.  First, the nice camera was dead (which we discovered once we got to where we were going), fortunately, Grandma had hers in her pocket, so hurray, we could still do it.  Second, it was snowing, snowing (and getting harder by the minute).  Oh well, it will give the picture a distinct wintry-feel.  We'll all get a little wet and cold, but we'll dry!  Third: We're finally all set up and ready to go, but don't have time to really look at the pictures to make sure they're turning out ok.  Result - we are minuscule in the photo.  I zoomed in a little, but we're so small that if we zoom in to a normal size then we're blurry. 

Oh well, someday we'll succeed in getting a good shot of our little family.

Laura Galore!

Only peruse if you want to see lots of Laura :)

Working on her pumpkin.  He had a "happy face" according to Laura .

 What is she thinking?

 Always curious.  Her favorite part about the pumpkin was taking the lid on and off.

 Smile, Laura!

 Hugging her pumpkin.

 Birthday Girl!

Photo shoot of the birthday girls.  It was challenging getting her to cooperate.  I guess that's part of life with toddlers :)

 This smile was achieved by me jumping up and down.

 We took photos at the park behind our house after nap time.  Didn't get the perfect shot, but got lots of good ones of typical Laura expressions.

 Laura: Wound pol, mama?

Mama: Yes, Laura, you can go around the pole.

 We gave her this section to eat.

Somehow my pumpkin cake didn't turn out as well as the ones my mama used to make me.  It tasted great, but the face was kinda scary.

 Show off our presents.  Thanks everyone!

Tom surprised me with a personalized pumpkin for my birthday. 

 Enjoying the English Tea set from April

 My busy little bee.

Macarons!

When we visited Paris 2 years ago, I discovered a new dessert...macarons.  Soft shell on the outside, yummy filling on the inside.  Oh so good.  Ever since then I have been on the lookout for macarons.  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for my budget and waistline), the Swiss macarons have nothing on the French ones.  I have found some good ones here, but for the most part they cannot compete with French ones, especially the Parisian ones.

My Parisian Macarons

Tom has been very patient and indulgent in my macaron obsession.  We buy macarons everywhere we see them.  He even brought me some straight from Paris when he had a day trip there.  However, since they are hard to find and quite pricey (the good ones can be close to $2 apiece), I cannot indulge my taste buds as often as I would like.  To solve this problem, Tom bought me two macaron cookbooks for my birthday complete with the promise to make them with me.  It has been a great present.  Not only is it fun to do together, but the results are quite delicious, even if they aren't as pretty as the store-bought ones.  Here's a documentation of our first attempt.

After ageing our eggwhites for 5 days, sifting our almond flour to remove the big chunks and carefully folding everything together, we piped our batter into the macaron pan Tom included with the cookbooks.  (In the end we found that the macaron pan is great for making universal shapes, but TERRIBLE at making good looking macaron shells.  They were eatable but ugly!)

Piping the batter onto a cookie sheet.  Is Tom doing it like the picture?

Stage 2 - The Filling

We didn't have time the first night to do the vanilla buttercream filling for our vanilla shells, so here's our 2nd night on the job.

Pairing up the random shapes that we had and sandwiching them with the cream.

Our food pictures leave much to be desired.

Hurray, they're done!

After letting them sit for 24 hours in the fridge (supposedly to allow the cream to infuse into the shells) and then letting them sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, Laura got to eat a "ma-ka-kon" as she calls them.

Enjoying macaron success!  Laura is as hooked as her mama :)

All in all, making these little cookies wasn't quite as complicated or challenging as the cookbooks made them out to be.  They were a little bit involved, but they turned out fine.  The certainly weren't beautiful, but they sure did taste good!  Thanks for a fun b-day present, Tom!

P.S. We just finished our 2nd batch last night.  Again, they turned out tasty, but hideous.  We tired to color ours this time and instead of a vibrant bluegreen like we were hoping, they turned out a pastel aquamarine.  Not an appealing color to eat.   If you get past the color though, they're quite good!  Picture to follow.