Cindy has a birthday in Amsterdam!  I spent my birthday doing what I often do on my birthday--shopping for Joey's birthday, which is the day after mine!  Only, this time it was different--it was snowing out!  The most amazing thing to me about snow, being from California where it only snows for maybe one minute every twenty years, is how silent and wonderful everything seems when it's snowing.  I know it must have been crazily noisy from the cars and bikes and people and everything all around Dam Square that day, but in my memory the day is just heavenly silent and snow is floating down like everything was in one of those holiday snow globes, and I just floated around town picking out cute little things with my feet never touching ground.  Well, maybe that was the flu, I was still sick!

On the night of my birthday we went to Uri's amazing theater show called "Mindblowing!"  Hanna and I had so much fun sitting in the balcony pretending we were royalty and waving at the audience--before they arrived of course!  It was at the National Theater which is decorated all in red and so pretty.  It was fun getting to see all the backstage corridors filled with fancy old-time costumes and wigs for the plays that were running there, I think they were for Les Miserables?  Uri wished me a happy birthday during the show and pointed me out to the whole audience.  I was so surprised and touched and I really did feel like royalty for a minute when everyone turned to look at me!

After the theater show there was a big after-party and somewhere out there is a video of Uri singing Happy Birthday to both of us!  It was such fun!  I'm not sure if all of these famous faces were there but I'm pretty sure I saw Pinocchio and Madonna.

Cindy and Tiki run a tea shop in Amsterdam!  I love tea and aprons and brooms so it's the perfect job for me to do.  That's the real Tiki sitting there supervising me!  She would rather drink water out of her circus tiger bowl that looks like a white tiger and stands on legs, than drink tea, but she does like frozen blended mochas and she likes aprons and brooms too.  Sometimes I wonder if she has flown around on the back of a broom, because she looks just like the witches' cats in my favorite picture book about witches, The Witches' Supermarket, by Susan Meddaugh, right down to her moon-like green eyes and white chin with black freckles!  She also likes supervising me whatever I am doing, mostly so she can undo it a minute later.

Cindy and Norbert having a visit in Dam Square!  This is my favorite picture in this gallery, I always get excited when I see a horse, so I was excited every day to see Norbert and his friends so close by and to have them be a part of my everyday life for a whole winter.  It's amazing to me to think everyone used to get around on horses or pulled in carriages by them and it was just a common everyday experience to see one.  Had Norbert lived back then, maybe he'd have been just another horse in a city of thousands.  Today, he is a big star because there are only a few horses in Dam Square, just Norbert and his friends!  But I think Norbert has star quality and would have been a star among horses even back then.