The scouts were doing a charity event to raise money & buy gifts for disadvantaged kids.
Tag: The Peanut
What goes around…
So I’ve reached the point where I’m the one cooking stacks of pancakes for Ben and his friends in the morning post-sleepover. No hangovers, yet, though.
The sad thing though is that we’re down to our last tin of proper maple syrup ?. We did however realize that Aldi sells Canadian Grade A (dark), which should be acceptable until we can get some more of the good stuff.
Life goal achieved
The child has learned how to make a negroni and a red snapper (i.e. a bloody mary using gin instead of vodka).
Bring your Bean to work day
The Journée Oser tous les Métiers (JOM) has always been a very special day in the canton of Vaud, all the children of the 7P to the 9S are invited to discover the professional world of their parents. The goal of this day is to break down the barriers that exist between typically male and female trades; and to encourage children to imagine their future professional life outside traditional patterns.
Bean has finally achieved his goal to set food inside the NRC, where the security rules are more stringent than they were at the lakeside offices. As part of the JOM workshops, he’s done cell culture, electrophoresis on extracted milk powder proteins, made slime and had fun making density layers, extracted DNA from bananas and done chromatography. Compared to this, sitting at my computer and looking at the latest and greatest powerpoint slide I was making seems dull (in my eyes, at least! I sometimes miss bench work, even though I sucked at it).
One things Katy and I agree on – we didn’t do this in high school :)
[gallery] Ben’s 11th birthday
Yesterday was the 11th year we haven’t killed the Bean yet, accidentally or otherwise. Bear in mind that Katy’s only been out of the hospital one week to the day, she’s done a superb, masterful, exceptional job of getting all the logistics organized. We invited a bunch of Ben’s friends to an indoor trampoline park where they could jump around for an hour, then have cake and drinks. It was like herding cats at times, but she got there in the end and every one seemed to have a good time.
The actual number of people that showed up was still unclear up to the last possible moment. We’d booked for 10 officially, but Ju,mppark said that it would be ok to get one or two more people in. Ben sent 12 invitations, but some people couldn’t because of prior commitments, so he sent out more invitations. We had 12 kids in total. Then two kids had gym/athletics accidents on the day before and the actual day of the party… so yeah, fun. We swapped cars with Roko to borrow his 7-seater (which was amusing because Katy’d never driven an automatic before) and we had two other moms helping out with the transportation. The cake got lots of praise, with several people asking where we’d bough it (nowhere, it’s homemade, bitches, booyah!).
We were completely frazzled when we got home after dropping off a couple of kids, but the child was happy and had had a good time, so I guess all the effort was worth it – even if he doesn’t realize just how much work was involved in all of it.
Halloween 2019, done!
It involved way too much drama behind the scenes (that fscking Marshmellow mask!!!!) but the building’s annual Halloween party went off without a hitch, thanks to the combined efforts of Katy, Jen and MJ (and Ben will be very vocal in saying that he helped – even though his help was more autocratic micromanagement).
It was the biggest one yet, with a bunch of people coming from other buildings, friends of friends and random people I didn’t know. The kids seemed to get a good haul. The adults were congregating under the gazebo, happily socialising over a drink or keeping warm around the fire in the chimenea.
We ran out of mulled wine (but there were several bottles that were there to take up the slack). There was a ton of food – the guys at work tomorrow will be happy with the leftovers. After the fact, I’m happy we did it. People really seem to appreciate it. I just wish it didn’t involve as much drama as it seems to involve as part of the planning.
Big dogs that love water
Ben had a passeport-vacances activity with the Amicale du Terre-Neuve de Genève et du Bassin Lémanique. They train the dogs in water rescue ctivities every two weeks, year-round. At first, doofus was all “I don’t want to go” and then “I don’t want to get wet”, and then it was impossible to get him out of the lake.
Bobble goes to the comptoir Helvétique
And has pastel de natas, jamon, churros, pataclette, port and indigestion.
Europa Park
Ben and I took advantage of the yearly work outing to europapark. It was a long, but good, day. We had to be at the NRC car park for 6am,so that meant a 4:30 wake up call to pack snacks, passports and other essentials and head out. It was a 4h coach drive up there and a similar journey back.
Once we got there, it was pretty much just the 2 of us because we didn’t see any one from work for the whole time we were there.
I’d definitely go back. Compared to legoland, it’s bigger, generally cheaper once you’re in it (food prices were surprisingly reasonable) but it’s really not well signposted. There were several times where we just couldn’t find the rides we wanted to do. Waiting times were between 5 and 45 minutes, so that was fairly good. In the course of the day, we did:
Da Vinci flyer
Haunted house
Silverstone circuit
Swiss bobsled
Windjammer (3 times – Ben’s favourite ride)
Fjord rafting
Tyrolean log flume
Mountain train ride
Observation tower
Flying Dutchman (Ben only, twice)
As well as fighting off wasps while eating snack foods and Ben trying to win giant cuddly toys in rigged carny games.
Back to school
Dear lawd, Bean is now a high school freshman. How the hell did that happen? First day of new school went well – even if it does start an hour sooner. Hopefully the trend will maintain itself over the year :)