I woke up this morning at about 7 (these kids seriously need to learn how to get themselves out of bed in the morning without screaming until someone comes to get them) and I could hear the birds chirping outside. I was kinda bummed about that, simply because I know that when the birds are out and happy that generally means it's sunny and probably warm. So I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I looked out the window everything was covered in snow. That was definitely a surprise.

The weather here has seriously been so fickle lately. On Monday and Tuesday it snowed (kind of a lot, actually), then on Thursday it was 18° (64°F, which was really warm in comparison to the temperature we've been having) and yesterday was all over the place. In the morning it snowed for about an hour or so, then it rained, then the sun came out for a bit, then it was overcast, followed by hail, rain, sunshine, and more rain. It was a little crazy yesterday, but I loved it.

I went painting again yesterday, too. On Friday I had Pauline at home all day, and then I had Jetta from 2 until a little after 5 because Britta had another appointment. Esther feels bad because in the past 3 weeks I've basically had one day where I wasn't stuck at home with the kids, and Britta feels bad because she keeps dumping Jetta on me (even though I really don't mind, and in a lot of ways it's easier to have Jetta here with Pauline) so they invited me to go painting and they were going to pay the studio and canvas fees for me. It ended up that neither Britta nor Esther was able to go because they had too much to do, so instead Britta's friend Tina (who I've met before, the first time I went painting) picked me up along with another friend of hers and the 3 of us went. Anyway, I made the painting that I saw in her studio last time, which is a silhouette of the Köln skyline at night. It looks really cool, and now I have a little piece of Köln that I created that I can take home with me to remember. It's my new favorite of my paintings. And, apparently I can by a card that allows me to go to the studio 4 times within 2 months for only 100 Euro, which would save me 40 Euro. I'm pretty excited about that, because I really enjoy it when we go painting and I want to do it as much as possible.