Google Christmas Party

I didn't get much done yesterday, but I did manage to wrap our few presents for the kids. The pile looks very meager to me, particularly as I remember the enormous heaps that mom and dad piled under the Christmas tree.  We weren't spoiled, we three kids, but my parents understood the fun of opening gifts and anticipation, so they wrapped things with abandon, and gag gifts were welcome. One memorable Christmas, my siblings and I cleaning supplies for the bathrooms: our very own buckets and scrub brushes. It's the gift that keeps on giving!

I've got just four little things for my three champs: two little travel games each, a small box of legos each, and some vinyl stickers for the boys and a friendship bracelet kit for Ella.  I wrapped them all up, and added to the pile the gifts mailed months ago by Auntie Kimmie and Uncle Joe, and placed them all under the poinsettia, since there's a distinct lack of a tree in our house.

And their reaction this morning was priceless: "WHOA! Look at ALL THE PRESENTS!" So I guess I haven't spoiled my kids, yet, either.  They deconstructed my artistic heaps, divided the boxes among them, gave them each a shake and some speculation, and carefully replaced them around our Christmas...flower.  (Don't feel too sorry for those kids. I have faith that Santa will augment their hoard this year by filling their hopeful little stockings. And those kids will be returning to a house full of toys that they haven't seen for a year.  I think they'll be okay.)

Although my shopping for my kids is done, I do have some other little people in my life that I wanted to shop for, and Alex needed to get a birthday gift for a friend, so after a few card games and a cartoon, I took the kids out of the house and downtown, making the critical error of shopping on Bahnhofstrasse three Saturdays before Christmas. With three kids and a cumbersome stroller, no less. I turned them loose in the toy store because there really wasn't any other option: harried shoppers were glaring at each other, cheek-to-jowl, among the board games and stuffed animals. Complicating matters, it's a four-story toy store, but we managed to stick together on the same levels and eventually ticked off everything on our lists, the kids eyes dazzled by helicopters and UFOs that could fly by themselves.

Dennis met up with us in time to help me extract the kids from the glories of Franz Carl Weber, and entered the drizzle, looking for something to eat.  Alex chose to have some fries from one of the Moules-et-Frites stands that have suddenly popped up everywhere, and we supplemented this with sausages from a stand we've been meaning to visit for eleven months, the Sternen Grill.  They're the most famous Wursts in town, and we had some pretty excellent Schnitzel Brot as well: it was good, worth sitting in the light rain, as we did, to eat it.
















There are four or five little Christmas markets sprinkled throughout Zürich, and one is in Bellevue, surrounding the Sternen Grill, so after lunch we let the kids run around and look at the booths and order sugary crépes. They'd set up a little hut with an enormous blank book, in which kids could write their Christmas wishes. Alex had a couple simple desires.

Joey discovers the perils of eating candy canes

We caught one.

From there, we took a tram to Google: some of the parents requested a budget threw together a last-minute holiday party for the company kids, something that had been held in years past but somehow almost got overlooked this year.  We took the kids in early because there's nothing, but nothing, that they enjoy more than hanging out at the playground that Dad calls an office.

We played in the game room for a while; on the way through the office, we had the luck of finding a discarded iMac packing box, set out for trash. Carelessly, when we purchased our computer, we threw away the box, and consequently moving our computer here was a tricky thing.  I searched and searched for a second-hand box, but never could find one. In the end, the movers packed it in so much bubble wrap and crumpled paper that it took up a good quarter of our shipping allowance.  But now we'll be able to check it on the airplane home with us, giving us some much-needed wiggle room in our crate.  Once again, boundless joy, delivered in an empty cardboard box.

The party was in full swing when we left our basketball and Fußball and pinball games and entered the cafeteria.  Those resourceful Googlers did a good job: they'd walled off one end of the cafeteria with couches and filled it with balloons and pillows for the littlest kids, and in the rest of the room, they'd covered tables with play-doh and crayons and origami paper and face-painting and cookie decorating.  Unfortunately, the event was a little too popular, but the kids did a good job of ducking and dodging to the different activities, while Dennis and I retreated to the corners.

The Google gingerbread house

Alex's cookie masterpiece

The kids got to enjoy one of the lifetime of advantages that comes from having a last name early in the alphabet. When Santa arrived (shooting down the cafeteria slide), he continued into the little cafeteria annex, decorated like a little chalet. And, instead of making the kids fidget in a line, he saw every child in alphabetical turn, with the range of last names that were being called upon projected on the cafeteria wall. 

Waiting for the Gs

But perhaps the operation was a little too efficient: Santa called the kids to him in sibling clusters, but there wasn't even time to say "hello," much less pose for the pictures that a photographer was struggling to take.  He tossed them their Sackli (More peanuts! More oranges!) and moved, jolly-like, to the next kids.

A bonus treat...the kids have been oogling these strawberry-shaped
marshmallows at various fairs and festivals all year, and they finally
got to try them when they showed up in their Sackli.  When we left
Google, their trash cans contained three little marshmallow strawberries,
each with a bite taken from it.  What's that adage, about how it's sometimes
nicer to want a thing than have it?

If you've been eating sugar and other assorted junk all day, the best cure in Zürich is Torrey's and Claire's house. Our friends kindly invited us to dinner, and they made us the most perfect Mexican food. The kids were exhausted from the long day: Joey was sound asleep for our entire visit, his not-so-little snores drifting from his stroller, and Ella and Alex curled up with video games, while Dennis and I got to enjoy an evening with good friends and good food.  Thanks, guys!

They even garnished things!

We probably stayed longer than we should have, leaving just a little before 8:00 to get the kids home.  But even though it was past their bedtimes, the kids did well going home, singing Christmas carols in the rain as they walked, chasing down buses, and then playing Alex's favorite game on the ride home, the one where he pretends he and Joey are spies, hiding from the cars that follow behind the buses.

You'll be relieved to hear that we eluded all enemy espionage and made it home safely.