Your dog doesn't do that?

I had to share this with you.

We have taught Duncan that when we go to bed he has to sleep on his bed on the floor. ..and he does. But, every morning, David sets the alarm to go off around 7am. Does David get up at 7am? No! He reaches for his Bose remote and turns the alarm off so that he can sleep for another hour or two. Why have the alarm set so early? Good question!

Anyway. The alarm doesn't just wake us up, but it wakes up Duncan to. At this point he has gotten into the habit of standing next to the side of the bed whining at us until we give him attention. At first I thought he really needed to go outside to go to the bathroom. But, after several early morning walks I was tired of getting up so early so I tapped on the bed and let him sit next to me. Not only did he just sit next to me, but he curled up and fell back to sleep. AND, he didn't bother me again until I got out of bed. Nice! So now our morning routine involves letting Duncan get on the bed after the alarm goes off. It works well. No complaints.

Well, the other morning it was especially cold in the room. When Duncan jumped up on the bed I covered him with the blanket too. Before I knew it he had shimmied his way up to my pillow too. Before long he looked like this:That's right, sleeping just like a person. It's very cute.

Vampire cookies. I told you I'd make them. It took me a while to get them just right, but they finally turned out the way they were supposed to. Look good huh?I prefer the ones with just the holes...the "dripping blood" just looks messy. I've never been much of a sugar cookie lover, but these turned out OK for my first attempt at them. I don't think I'll do them again though - unless someone begs me for them - because, in the Swafford household, we prefer chocolate chip cookies, hands down!

Indoor Cookout?!

Saturday afternoon we got together with some students who had stayed in Metz for the weekend for an indoor cookout. One of them had wanted to buy a "grill" and decided that this was the perfect opportunity. So, after a trip to Cora the guys arrived with a bunch of food.

I will describe to you some of the pictures in the following collages, but know that you can see full sized pictures on our picasa website.

For our afternoon gathering we played the Wii, made and ate lots of food, played Rock band, and David and Peter played their guitars (top left). Our "main course" was kabas (top middle) consisting of beef, bell peppers, onion, and pineapple. We also had potatoes and hot peppers (I think David was the only one who ate the hot peppers...after he teared up no one else wanted any), french sausages, and lamb prepared Greek-style thanks to our Greek contributing cook, Constantinos, and his homemade olive oil.

While at Cora David bought a pumpkin...because I thought everyone would get one and we'd carve them together after lunch...but no one else was interested so we saved it and carved it Sunday instead. The weather was decent so we ook Duncan and the pumpkin outside to the plan d'eau. We sat next to the water while we designed and then carved our pumpkin. Everyone was stopping and looking at us. Parents were telling there kids: "Look! It's for 'alloween" ("H" omitted on purpose).
Top Right: This is the view from INSIDE the pumpkin while we were carving it. I was really surprised that this picture turned out so good.

We also tried to get Duncan to sit next to the pumpkin, in some fallen leaves, after it was carved so we could take a nice holiday picture of him, but he didn't want to cooperate. I guess the picture before the pumpkin was carved was all he was willing to give us (middle). Cute enough I suppose!

Sunday for dinner we tried a veal parmesan recipe for the second time. Although the pumpkin appears to be saying it wasn't that great, it was actually really great this time. We still have a few things we want to try next time to make it even better, but I would definitely make it this was again. I also want to try it with chicken and egg plant.

I'm going to be making vampire cookies tomorrow to share with the people in our bible study...as long as they turn out ok. I was going to make them today and just bring them tomorrow but the recipe says "best if eaten the day they are made" so I'll wait!

Bonjour!

My apologies. I have not been a diligent updater. Therefore, today's entry will be very random but informative.

We got a microwave! I bought it at Cora and then carried it back via the bus then my feet. The next day I discovered that I had bruises on my hip bones. The box was so heavy that I had to pull it against myself so hard so that I would drop it. I didn't realize, at the time, that it was hitting my hip bones so badly. I also didn't realize how heavy the box was going to be in the first place. The bruises lasted for a while and were quite painful.

We have a friend from Tunisia, Mohamed, who gave us some Tunisian goodies! They were yummy! I really liked the ones with the pistachios (the green triangular one).

Then, one weekend, we went to IKEA. We have been needing more storage space in our kitchen. This was our solution:We bought it, brought it home (this too was very to carry home on the bus, even with the two of us) and assembled it. Once it was together we discovered that it was ONE centimeter to tall! So we had to borrow a hack saw from GTL and we cut a few centimeters off of the legs. Problem solved. It fits very nicely under our stairs. I'm still working on the best way to store things on it.

We went out to dinner last night with some friends from GTL. We went to a fondue restaurant. It was greeeeeeat. We all ordered different kinds of cheese fondue and agreed to share, but David and I were very pleased that the one we chose ended up being our favorite. Since then I have only eatten an apple. It's already 6pm...I guess I'm getting a little hungry for dinner... Sorry, I didn't have my camera at the restaurant...maybe next time.

Tomorrow we are going to go to GTL to get together with a bunch of people who aren't going anywhere for the weekend. I think we will be having a cookout and carving pumpkins and playing video games. Duncan is going to come too. Another dog used to live there (remember Maddie from previous posts?) so I figured it wouldn't be a problem. It'll be fun! I WILL bring my camera for that. :o)

À bientôt.