Old New Year cake

This is a picture of the New Year's cake that we picked up in Herisau. I thought it would be more of a rolled bouche de noel sort of cake, but it had bananas inside. L was so happy! The main points of the cake, though, are the good luck symbols on it and the number 14. I don't think the 14 was there because it is 2014 for three reasons:

1. It looks like a calendar page

2. There were other cakes with 1s, obviously meant to be January 1st.

3. Herisau celebrates new New Year (January 1st) and old New Year (January 14th)

I love coming across things like that! The canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden is very traditional. They rejected the Gregorian calendar in 1582 because it was introduced by a pope and didn't accept it until 1798. So my cake seems to be a holdover from that. In fact, there is a town that still celebrates Silvester on the 13th, so I could see the silvesterchlausen again if I wanted to. 

Another example of the canton's old-fashionedness - women didn't get the right to vote until 1989! To be fair - I just looked this up to confirm and even the canton of Zurich didn't give women the vote until 1970, so Appenzell wasn't so far behind. 

We haven't been up to much. The kids have been swimming at the town pool. And E tried to bring the girls ice skating at the big outdoor rink in Zurich, but while they were on the tram there it began to pour down raining. They quickly changed direction and headed to what I thought was an indoor rink in Oerlikon. No, it was outdoor, too. I felt awful sending them there. It ended up being a long disappointing trip with nothing to show for it but a jug of laundry detergent bought on the way home. I ran out doing all the ski laundry. Really, I think it's just as well we haven't been busy. I think school in German has been somewhat stressful for the girls and they needed a few days to just relax.

I've already gotten a start on one of my resolutions. E spent a lot of time with me setting up an account on mint.com. We had a finance program that we were using through one of our banks, but it seems to have stopped working, I always disliked it anyway, and I want to close all our accounts there, so it was time for a change. I hope mint.com works out. So far it has been easy to add all our accounts and make a budget and categorize our expenses. It has some nice features, too. For example,  we can keep track of the kids' college savings accounts but we can separate them so they are not included as part of our net worth. I also like the fact that you can track progress toward goals. I am obsessed with retirement lately since I don't trust E's public pension.

Making the budget was interesting. I never feel like we are very extravagant, but somehow our usual expenses would put us slightly over budget and not allow for saving. So no more landscaper. And we will have to put off remodelling the ugly drop ceiling in the kitchen, replacing the almond colored stove fan hood, and about a dozen other home projects I've been dreaming about. On the plus side, we paid off our car loan.


The tree is down. T volunteered for that job since all the ornaments were chocolate. We'll probably finish the Christmas cookies tonight, just in time for the girls to go back to school tomorrow. I'll spend a chunk of time today online trying to find some things to do with the littles in keeping with my resolution to get out more. The girls are at the pool again now. They walked up on their own. T is reading. L is asking for a sink full of bubbles.