Above photo from her birthday party. Her cake is leaning as it is very Alice in Wonderland in style, however, she got a pink Swarovski crystal 'E' on top!
Lots of birthdays this week. Mia's 7 today and Ali is 4 on Sunday.
From her birthday party. These are the majority of kids (look inside the alligator's mouth as there are more in there). Mia wasn't particularly thrilled in this photos but it only lasted 1 minute. I think she just had a minute of jealousy as most of her friends were glued to her dear friend, Martha, who is a bit older at 10 years old. They are friends as Curt and I are friends with Martha's parents so we do a lot together during holidays and weekends. Martha came and painted faces but then the girls all fought for her attention which Mia wanted... Girls... What else can you say?
Below I tried to zoom in but it came out a bit blurry.
The Heidi Ovoda nursery has 4 groups from the age of babies until they go to school at 6 or 7 years old. 
Fiona and Jim
Terence with his favorite person, Riley McGann (13), in the whole world. Riley is Keira's big brother and T's known him since he was 1 day old!
While in Austria skiing with our friends, the store Toys R Us came up. Our friends' kids were shocked that our American kids had never been inside of a Toys R Us. We had never thought about it. It's not like we have one anywhere near us and even when we are in the US, we don't visit the Toys R Us stores very often (if ever).
After the concept of a mega toy store was explained to our kids, we saw how their faces lit up at the thought of it. So, on our way home from Schladming we stopped at the SCS Shopping Center outside of Vienna to visit their Toys R Us. Curt offered each kid 50 EUR to spend on something. The key was it had to fit in our already crammed car (our ski stuff takes up a lot of space)! It was a very fun experience for all of us. The girls especially were verbally overwhelmed while T just walked around in a stunned silence. Here are a few videos. I especially love the one of Mia who always wants everything and never thinks about the fact that we have to pay for it somehow. (side note: recently we used the word 'cheap' in a sentence and she actually asked us what the word 'cheap' meant. I asked her if she knew what the word 'expensive' meant and she naturally knew that word's definition. I told her 'cheap' was the exact opposite. What a concept this was for her!!)
To summarize, Mia had the most difficulty finding items within a 50 EUR maximum but managed by just a few cents. Ali was easily guided and was happy with an adorable new baby doll. T left the store with 29 EUR in his pocket as he desperately wanted the new Monopoly City game. He was extremely disappointed that they only offered it in German. We tried to explain that we were in Austria but he was too sad to listen. Looks like we'll be trying to order on Amazon in the near future.
Below is the front of the hotel as we approached on Dec 31st at about 5pm after a long day of skiing.
