Child Abuse

Gillian thinks this video borders on child abuse, but I had to still put it up. Eoghan got a dog mask from Santa (I think I already mentioned that when you visit Santa Claus here, he gives you gifts- not fair!) and we took turns wearing it around the house today. Eoghan and I came up with the brilliant idea to play fetch- a colored pencil being the bone. We played this for about half an hour. I showed the video to Gill when she got home and she thinks Eoghan is going to have psychological problems because of our game!!


Last night we had our au pair secret Santa gift exchange. Franziska cooked schnitzel (an Austrian breaded pork dish) and some sort of German style macaroni and cheese. We all had a really good time. It was nice to have the group of us together to celebrate Christmas since only one of us will be celebrating it with our actual family.

The group of us:

JP with his version of au pair ("O Pear"):

Even though Christmas will be hard being away from home, the Fordes have been so great about everything. Gillian even had a stocking made for me (with my name embroidered on it) to match theirs.





In other news, my car is finally ready!! I went for my first test drive to day and had an embarrassing experience- to say the least. Gillian was at work and Kieran was watching the kids, so I decided I'd drive up the road to practice. I only stalled about ten times leaving the driveway. Then when I got to the end of the road and tried to make a U-turn, the car didn't have a good enough rotation to make it on one go, so I needed to put it in reverse. Well, I couldn't get the car in reverse, so I kept drifting closer and closer to the hedge in front of me. Eventually I was about a foot from the hedge and too nervous to go any further. It took a shot to my pride, but I ended up having to call Kieran to drive up the road to back the car up for me. I felt terrible doing it because that meant he had to load the kids in the car just to come rescue me, but I figured that was the better option over crashing the car on my first day! Apparently you have to lift a ring around the gear to move it over into reverse... guess I should have asked about that before I left the driveway. Taylor, Sarah, David, Courtney, and Bethany, be scared for your lives when you come over here!