Carnival Parade in Cologne

The biggest carnival parade is on Rose Monday in the center of Cologne with more than 60 groups and it goes on for more that four hours. Mia had seen parts of it two years ago wand she wanted to see it again.
With about a million people watching we took of course the train

Found a good spot with a view of the Dom

An unusual  police car drove ahead of the parade

In between it started to snow for some time

Later the sun came out again

We made it back to Heidelberg in the late evening and had to carry four bags of candy from the three parades

Carnival Parade Höhenhaus

Even smaller than the parade in Wahn is the one in Höhenhaus which passes not far from Stefan's house. With the help of his oldest daughter Malin and her make up skills Stefan had turned into a man with long blond hair, pink hat and some lipstick on his lips:

The weather was not so great and not so many people had turned out

Carnival Parade in Wahn

Mia likes the carnival parades in Cologne and there is a big difference between the ones in the small ones in the neighborhoods and the big ones on Monday with a million spectators which is in national TV. We started with a smaller one in Wahn

The local celebrity TV host Guido Canz has his own float

Baking Cookies

Mia wanted to bake chocolate chip cookies with mamma for a long time. After she had been sick there was finally some time

The turned out really well - just a bit too thin

Sledding

After a surprise snow fall in the morning we wanted to enjoy the snow which had melted in the city but was only a short ride by city bus away in the Königsstuhl. Instead of going up all the way we stopped this time at the Kohlhof where half of the city goes for sledding.

The snow was not great since we just had a few cm but it was still a good place with a long slope that was not too steep - just right

The only thing is that we forgot to bring snow pants since we planned more of a walk and the idea with the sledding hill was a spur of the moment decision. So Mia just went a few tiimes

The Helper

Mia has a bit of a history of helping in the house - not always of course but when she feels like it. It started almost eight years ago when she could barely walk but wanted to take out the trash. A year later she was busy helping with the vacuum cleaner , helping with laundry when she was four, or doing the dishes  when she was four and a half.
Today she wanted to hang the clothes after laundry and insisted in doing all of them

Heidelberg Zoo in Winter

To get some fresh air we took a ten minute bike ride to the Heidelberg zoo and even though we had checked the weather before leaving we were surprised by a sudden heavy icy downpour that was not quite snow.

The donkeys seemed to like it

The kangaroos preferred to stay out of the white stuff
 

 The seals were okay with the cold weather

Different from the regular weekend days where it can be very crowded during the feeding of the seals there was plenty of free space