Welcome, Geoff and Brie and Kael, and Juniper, too!

This morning was a carbon copy of yesterday's, except that I spent my free time de-fuzzing the car seats for our upcoming vacation. They once again fell victim to the poor circulation in our storage room. This time I dismantled the seats entirely, hosed them down, and tried not to gag as I watched all fo the moldy bits of pretzel and goldfish wash out of the nooks of Joey's seat, in particular. Lovely, I know.

The kids, however, had a fine time, setting aside soccer, for once, so that they could teach nochElla and Paul how to play four-square. I've never seen the game played here in Switzerland, although, along with a distinct lack of climbing equipment on the school playgrounds, they're also lacking balls and jump ropes and all those other American staples.  Chase and tag and keep-away, it turns out, are very popular Swiss games.

Preparing Kael's bed

Eventually, Alex and Joey took a little break to help me get beds together for our guests, who were arriving this afternoon.  The boys got rid of all of the lumps on Brie and Geoff's mattress by jumping on it enthusiastically. And Alex, with great hope, moved one of our couches into his bedroom for two-year-old Kael to sleep on. Sadly, Kael was ultimately a little too shy and disoriented to join the boys. All the same, I thought it was sweet cute, how much Alex is looking forward to having the little guy stay with us: "Kael's coming? Yay, Kael! Kael thinks I'm cool!" was Alex's response the good news.

And Joey was even happier: "Kael! My friend!"

So Kael was the rockstar visitor as far as the five-and-under set in my house was concerned, but we we were also anticipating four-month-old Juniper as a guest, making her parents, Geoff and Brie, some of the braver, and perhaps crazier, people in our acquaintance.

Kael's pretty cool, too.

Dennis went to the airport to meet their 11:00AM flight, but they were unfortunately delayed because of lost baggage.  By the time they showed up, Joey was fast asleep for his nap, but then, so was poor, jet-lagged Kael. The two toddlers managed to sleep through the noise of two Ellas, an Alex, and a Paul, playing in the living room while I caught up with our friends: eventually, fearing difficulty at bedtime, we finally coaxed them to wakefulness by putting Toy Story, which no little kid would dream of sleeping through.

Once everyone was sufficiently awake and cheerful, the boys got to know one another all over again in our backyard sandbox. It was awfully fun watching the boys pick up right where they left off six months ago.  And, by all appearances, Kael does indeed still seem to think Alex is cool.

Poor Brie and Geoff got about as much sleep as you'd expect parents to get on flight with two tiny ones, but they each only surrendered to the briefest of naps and then heroically stayed up as late as they could, long enough to accept the delivery of just two of their six bags that had gotten lost in transit. And, unfortunately, neither bag held any clothing for Geoff. Instead, ridiculously, much of the room was taken up with books that they had kindly brought for my lucky kids.

In fact, we're all feeling pretty lucky to have such lovely friends.