Happiness is...

Watching my four-year-old chase my just-turned-one-year old so he can snuggle her, then seeing her turn round and throw her arms round his neck delightedly.

Snow sparkling in the lamplight outside our bathroom window.

Time to do lots of reading (most recently John Ortberg "Everyone's normal till you get to know them")

Nutmeg having her check-up and MMR jab without crying or complaining at all, then waving her cookie happily at the doctor afterwards, as if he hadn't just stuck a needle in her arm.

Froglet finding words for me to help him read wherever we go.

Lying on the floor with a happily-squeaking Nutmeg crawling all over me.

Froglet stroking my arm and saying "I love you Mummy".

Nutmeg wandering about saying "yeah, yeah" and "oo-ah-oo". If she says it fast enough, it sounds like wow.

Getting a little box to store paperclips in, complete with paperclips, as a free gift from the pharmacy. I'm always short of paperclips.

Watching Nutmeg dance to the strains of Cuban music.

Nutmeg following Froglet wherever he goes.

An elder brother's love for his baby sister: "She is my little sister, Mummy. Don't smack her."
(For the record, I had no intention of smacking her. I must have looked like I was gearing up to it though!)

Going to our first German-language parent-teachers' meeting to find out what school will be like for Froglet when he starts in mid-August. Evidently it will be wonderful. The Swiss are remarkably Waldorf in their attitude to education. (In fact the school down in our cantonal capital is named after Pestalozzi, who once worked in the canton).

Birthday cake and jelly

(You probably already know that when Brits say jelly they mean jello. But I thought I'd mention it just in case anyone is reading this hoping for a jam-type jelly recipe.)

So yes, we made birthday jellies and birthday cake. Mainly because I really wanted to try out our new jelly mold/muffin tins. And I also wanted a birthday cake, of course. We made Cranham Honey Cake, which involves glacé cherries. I love glacé cherries.

MTM - I'm 30, and Switzerland is... much older.

Well, this weeks theme - Celebration - was remarkably apt. Monday was my thirtieth birthday. (Although I've been thinking of myself as thirty for a couple of months already. This seems to happen whenever my birthday is approaching).

Moreover, August 1st is Swiss national day. So we combined the two into a Swiss birthday tin. I made Aelplermagronen (Alpine macaroni cheese) and put all the ingredients in the tins separately.

Clockwise from back: pasta x 2, cheese sauce, bacon, fried onion, apple sauce

I had to make it all separately anyway, as The Engineer is not a big fan of onions or applesauce - at least not on his mac-cheese! It is a pretty odd combination, but I rather like it. Some cantons also put potato in, but potato and pasta is too much starch for us. I should also say that the pasta we used is the wrong sort, it ought to be proper macaroni.

Froglet ate the pasta (under duress), the apple sauce and the bacon, rejecting the cheese and onion. He must be the only child in the world not to like macaroni cheese!

We also made cake, and birthday jelly/jello (non-Swiss this time!) in our new muffin tins. These are they, minus the jelly - which you can see by clicking here - I just wanted to show you because I'm really chuffed with them:

As you can see, they have lids at the top and the bottom, because they are actually jelly molds, but I thought they would be so cool for having MTM picnics, like this one we had last week.

Don't forget to check out what everyone else celebrated this week.