Ashton has been counting down the days since my birthday on the 19th. The anticipation built until Saturday morning when he woke up at 6:30 am and asked if was time to wake up! He couldn't wait to open his presents so we waited until 7 and woke up the rest of the kids.
Ashton got a desk from Troc, which is a used furniture store. He also got a piggy bank to store all of his euros and most importantly Kim made a real book out of his T-turtle's adventure story. This is a story that he wrote and illustrated all by himself. Kim was his scribe, but he came up with all of the words. Kim created the book and sent it via the web to a printer here that does one off books. It is hard bound and everything! When he opened it, he couldn't believe it!!! He kept saying, "You got it published! I'm a real author? Thank you Mom!" Kim couldn't have been more thrilled.
After we opened his presents we went and played soccer at ISL. I was happy to get a goal that won a game and then we played with the kids and a good round of futsal.
After the game we had some eclairs and then headed home for the big party. Kim did a great job, as usual, on the party. It was a "Baaaa-rthday party". We have a barn right in front of our house that has 4 baby lambs. The farmers let Ashton and his 5 friends come over and hand feed the baby lambs. It was very, very cute and everyone had a great time!
His friends included Sophia, Alix, Varun, Felix and Elina. The kids were commenting how international it was. We had Italy, France, England, Poland, India and the U.S.A. all represented! The kids made lambs out of yarn, had lamb cupcakes, made lamb hats and played Black sheep, White Sheep, Wolf!
He was hamming it up and had a GREAT time!
After that we talked to some of Ashton's friends, Will, Cache and Ally Larson, from the states! It was great to talk to them and their families. Unfortunately Ashton's attention span is about 30 seconds! We spoke to the Aagards earlier in the week. It was sure fun talking to everyone!
In true Cahoon fashion, we're running from event to event, so we headed out to get some pizza. This is a rare treat as we hardly go out to eat here because it is so expensive. However, the pizza place was not open until 6:30, so we walked across to the Chinese restaurant.
They only spoke French and Chinese, so we struggled to order what we wanted. The biggest complication is trying to order a gluten free meal for Kim. We'll talk more about that later. It turned out that this little Chinese restaurant, 2 minutes from our house, is an absolute gold mine! It was very, very delicious. I would say it is some of the highest quality Chinese food I've ever had. The kids loved their meals as well. Surprisingly, the most expensive part of the meal was the bottled Vittel water. 12 euros vs. about 8-9 euros for each meal.
From Chinese we ran home to get ready for the twins birthday party. they had about 10 kids from the ward come over for a full evening of games. We played the name game, the number 7, 11 clapping game, Mafia, and the sign game. Their party was VERY international as well. We had people from Spain, Luxembourg, California, and France at the party. It was quite the sight trying to see the kids explain the games in French, Luxembourgish, English and Spanish. The kids that grow up here have no idea how big of an advantage they have to speak all of these languages like natives!
The twins received some very thoughtful gifts from the other kids. Clothes, bath soaps, a Luxembourg flag, chocolates and a traditional french game like bacci balls. We're excited to try it out!
Today at church we got an exciting surprise. The Luxembourg girl that we talked about a few weeks ago went to the states for 3 weeks and while she was there she was baptized on the BYU campus! She received the Holy Ghost today and was confirmed a member of the church. She is very special and looking forward to her boyfriend coming here over the summer. I'm sure she is hoping that they'll get engaged! She is super positive, smart and excited to be a member of the church. She said that one of the most positive things about the gospel is the focus on families. She has a strong family and that was obviously very important to her.
This week was another beautiful week with just a little rain. It was cold at the first of the week, but yesterday was absolutely beautiful. Should be mid 60s and very little rain all this week. The natives can't believe how good the weather is! We're very grateful that this winter/spring was outside the norm. Hopefully the warm weather doesn't continue into summer as nothing, except cars, have air conditioning.
This week we finished off the WWII in HD series on amazon.com. Our kids know much more about the war than I ever did. It was very, very sobering to think that 70 million people were killed during the war. About half of those were civilians. War is so costly in terms of money, stress, human suffering, etc. It is hard to believe that just a few evil men usually get these things started and can do such horrible things to other people. It definitely means more to the kids to be here and see the places that their talking about. The Battle of the Bulge, the Siegfriend line, Paris, London, etc. are all so close and places we've been or plan to go to.
Work continues to get better. I finished setting up the accounting for the company and will spending more and more time on the product. That is definitely the area that I personally enjoy the most. It is fun to see the company take shape with new branding, easier to use features, press, etc. We had our first press this week. We're really hopeful that this will have been a good business decision!
Here's our first article of hopefully many more! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9rbM9RQju9BR0pCeUJUeGxHa2s/edit?usp=sharing
It looks like Kim may have figured out her medical mystery. She's had restless legs and itching for about 15 years. It was mis-diagnosed early on and the medicines sort of worked. Here in Luxembourg it has gotten worse, so she's done a lot of research on the Internet. It turns she may have celiac. It needs to be confirmed, but she's gone off gluten and the symptoms are 60-80% better than they were two weeks ago. That is a huge improvement, but a huge bummer as the the bread and treats here are especially delicious. Kim is excited, but a little depressed that this could end up being the cause of the symptoms. It turns out that celiac gets in the way of the body absorbing minerals, so she's had low iron which makes restless legs worse. Anyway, we're hoping that this is the cause and can significantly improve her quality of life.
Click here for the pics and videos from this week!
Again, we miss everyone and wish my little sister Amy all the best in her recovery. She's only 39, with no family risk factors, not overweight, no high blood pressure, not high cholesterol and still had a heart attack this week. Pretty sobering thought we could have lost her. The rest of us are going to start taking our baby aspirin per day to keep those tickers healthy! She's expected to make a full recovery after 2 stints.
PS. This week I went out to lunch for a business meeting and thought I was ordering something safe - Filet Americain. I was picturing a nice rare piece of beef. When it came out, it was Steak Tartar again! This is now the second time I've had to eat spicy raw meat. This time however, the next two days were not really fun. Let's just say I spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom with my gut rolling! Advice - stay away from the Americain Filet!
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