Fishing the Boston Harbor

Thomas and the big one

Thomas headed out into the Boston Harbor yesterday with my dad to try his hand at fly fishing.  They went with Dr. Mel Harris (it is his boat).  Dr. Harris is the oral surgeon who took my wisdom teeth out and made the referal  for Thomas who will have his out on Tuesday!  Fishing was somewhat successful, very windy and rocky.  Apparently not ideal conditions for fly fishing!  Thomas caught the only fish of the day- a 27 inch striped bass.  Thankfully the legal limit is 28 inches so I didn't have to clean a fish last night!  They had a great time!

Kids in trees

My children love to climb on ropes courses.  This I don't understand.  It involves stepping into a harness which grips your thighs like too tight underwear, and goes around your waist creating the largest muffin top you have ever seen (well on me anyway, not so much on Noah....)  Then with a series of metal clips you hook and unhook yourself to a metal rope that has been strung between two trees anywhere from 8 to 16 meters above the ground.  You then step, swing, jump, pull yourself on a variety of wobbly logs, thin wires, swinging objects from one small wooden platform nailed to the trunk of a tree to another small platform. Did I mention that said platforms are on average 10 meters (that is 30 feet!!) in the air.  Occasionally you clip into a zip line which involves one little metal device which goes onto a wire, you then launch yourself off the platform nailed to the tree and hurtle yourself towards the tree the wire is attached to.  Important to keep your legs straight out and one hand on top of metal clip holding you to wire so you don't spin around and hit the tree full force backwards.  This is hard to do if your are trying to cling to the platform gravity is pulling you away from.  A bit like flying for 10-15 seconds.  I will leave the flying to the birds and my children. 

Chased by Cows

A friend and I took our collective 5 children for a hike on Friday to a mountain not far from our house.  We rode the chairlift up which was a new experience as I have a third friend's dog with us.  Lucky did very well and just sat on the chair and watched the cows below us without so much as a yip.  We got off the chair and began our hike along the ridge and a small incline to the peak.  Pretty uneventful hike until we came across the first group (herd? pack?) of cows.   Now I have seen groups of cows before but generally there is a fence of some sort between them and me.  Here we were clearly on their territory.  And they were curious.  Mostly about Lucky.  The kids just sort of wandered through the cows and I prayed no one got stepped on or pooped on.  I walked quickly through the cows hoping Lucky wouldn't start barking at them making them really angry.  She didn't.  I think she was pretty unnerved by them.  Anyhow the cows followed us for a awhile until we started up a rather steep incline.  We continued along at the top of this incline until we came across more cows.  They followed a bit but weren't quite as curious.  More hiking.  A third group of cows.  At this point we started down the mountain and the cows decided we were there to take them home so all 12 (15? 20?  I didn't take the time to count them) followed us down the hill.  For awhile I would stop every so often and turn and say shoo, go home.  Sophie pointed out they probably spoke German so she tried telling them to scram in German.  They ignored both of us.  We eventually came in sight of a barn and we realized they must have thought it was barn time and we were taking them home.  Just in front of the barn there was a cow gate they couldn't get through so we left them and continued our descent.  A little scary but I kept reminding myself that I have never heard of a cow attacking a person so hopefully they were just looking to be milked!

Our group for the day

Our friends

View



Here they come- down stairs even!



Kids on the cow gate

getting closer!

Swim meet Swiss style

Yesterday was Sophie's first swim meet with her Swiss swim team.  She was very nervous, none of her friends from ICS were going to be there, the races for her age group were all 100m (she had previously only raced 50m races) and there had been a problem with the registration for the race and she had been entered into all three of her events as a boy!!  She was very quiet in the car on the way to the meet and I had butterflies in my stomach for her.  We got to the pool, after much discussion got her entered into the girls group and luckily she swam in the 1st heat of the third event so not much time to wait around and get nervous.  She did fantastic!  She had two events before lunch and her last after.  In stereotypical Swiss fashion, meet was very organized and the heats ran smoothly and efficiently.  Good thing too, 18 heats for each event with 5 swimmers in each heat!!  She spent the lunch break with Jon and Noah teaching her teammates the finer points of wiffle ball.  They caught on to hitting quickly, running the bases or when to stop not as quickly but a good time was had by all.  Great day!  We are so proud of you Sophie!!!

Final discussion of her placement regarding the boy vs girl confusion!!

backstroke diva!

Breaststroke

Jon telling Sophie what to translate for her teammates

Noah as catcher

Father's day and Chevrolet

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Chevy brand and since we just happen to be in the country of Louis Chevrolet's birthplace we got to celebrate in style.  The typical Swiss town of La Chaux de Fonds turned itself into Detroit's Woodward Dream Cruise with 100 years of Chevrolet cars.  Jon saw several that he had had growing up.  Great way to celebrate Father's Day!

Thomas leaves for India!!!

His belongings for the month

Some of the group

the packs

flight to Dehli on the board

Thomas and his World Challenge group left on Sat. for their month long trip to India, hiking, community service and a bit of sight seeing!  Trip of a lifetime!

Peabody

It is with great sadness that I write about the passing of our beloved Peabody.  He died last week.  He was quite old  (14) and had renal failure.  We all miss him tremendously and feel his absence daily.  The blog will remain Travels with Peabody as he made so many with us that it is a perfect tribute to him.  We will always love you Peabody and you are very missed!

International Festival

Our school puts on a International Festival with food booths from all the countries represented at the school, games, arts and crafts and music.  Students are invited to play and so of course Thomas and his band did.  They had  blast and there was a group of  6 little girls ages 3 or 4 dances right in front of the stage the whole time! Very cute although I think Thomas was hoping to attract a slightly older fan club!

The mothers of the band members

4th grade circus

Noah's class put on a circus under the instruction of a professional circus company that came in for a week and ran workshops with the kids.  It was wonderful.  Noah was a juggler.  He actually learned to juggle three balls!  Very impressive!  Kids had a ball.