February - The time of Pancakes, Cookies & Valentine's Day

A new thing I have learned about Americans is they are CRAZY for Girl Scout Cookies, E sold all her boxes within minutes at my husbands work and I heard numerous people say 'every year they look forward to cookie season'!!

I suddenly realised that coming up was Pancake day also known as Shrove Tuesday on the 9th February, as far as I'm aware America does not acknowledge this day so I made the girls pancakes for breakfast and sent them on their way!

Later that day I met up with some other Brits I've got to know and love who also live in Austin at a local French Bakery and enjoyed crepes with nutella, it was the closest we were going to get to the real thing...plus for the occasion I wore my new jumper which I bought on a whim a few weeks ago whilst searching for something else on the internet and couldn't resist buying...

Valentines Day arrived this month too, like last year the children had Valentine parties at school plus provided a card and gift for every child in class. E chose a template card from the internet, we printed them and stuck them all onto coloured card. E also chose to buy different coloured star pencil rubbers and stick them to the cards, I have learnt through previous miscommunication I should really call them erasers over here...you Americans will all know why ;)

Many of my photos this time have too many children in however this one is my particular favourite...

Finally Dry January is Over!

I think this is my fourth year of dry January (no consuming alcohol for 31 days) never a fun time but gladly needed after the overindulging of Christmas and New Year. This time I had to skip one Saturday night in January as it was a friends birthday but nevertheless I only had a few drinks rather than many, no one is perfect after all ;)

Looking at my archives I realised we have had Winston a year now, http://www.expataustinmum.com/2015/02/new-family-member-and-fry-up.html and I clearly remember that first weekend we bought him home, he cried every few hours all through the night thankfully it lasted only about two nights.

One weekend recently we decided to try San Antonio Zoo it was definitely bigger than Austin zoo and had a wider variety of animals but still I felt the enclosures were small, there were plenty of staff around though and the cages were clean with well fed animals.

Another new place we visited this weekend was the Austin Bouldering Project basically an indoor fake rock climbing place. The husband enjoyed it as there were different difficulty levels including upside down and the children were surprisingly nifty at getting up the 'rocks' too. And me? Not my thing at all! I found it boring and spent most of the time making sure the children didn't climb where someone else was jumping down...

I have not done a Q&A interview for a while, this article was published recently by ExpatWoman.com so if you fancy a read then take a look at this: http://www.expatwoman.com/global/monthly_interviews_expat_interview_austin_mum_15822.aspx