Peter is one of the few people in the State Dept to ever qualify for the wardrobe allowance, you have to change weather zones radically. Niger to Russia somehow qualifies, can you believe it? Would you be running around in a panic? I'm just blocking it out. I figure we're okay, as long as kids don't have to go to school the first day on ice skates.
I picked up a scarf, Peter bought himself some boots. None of us have worn socks in a year and have a hard time wrapping our minds around the idea. And then I got semi-panicky for a minute and bought a coat, mostly because I liked the idea that it had a special pocket for my iPhone. (I'm joking!)
Then once we were in Land's End mode I bought kids some fleece, and we bought Stefan a coat. I read somewhere that in Moscow they think people who wear light blue are gay and beat them up. Of course, of the ten color choices he wanted the light blue coat. His second choice was orange. I'm sure people who wear orange get beat up for being...loud or for having bad taste.
Camille wanted a new backpack so we got her one. I brainwashed/bribed Stefan to reuse his backpack from last year. Target is full of backpacks with green themes; I'd like to write "I'm reusing my backpack from last year," with a Sharpie pen, rather than buy a new backpack that says "Recycling's cool."
Having gone to French schools forever, Camille thinks when we refer to the Revolutionary War we are talking about the French Revolution and refers to herself as "we, the French." Stefan asks if he was born in the state or the country of San Francisco, and tells people he was born in the city of Disneyland. So I bought a nice jigsaw puzzle of the US, although once we get west of Idaho, don't ask me which state is which until we get to Vermont.
Peter says he has no idea what I'm buying this other crap for, what we really need are these: