April Fool's Day 2010

Yes, that is HAIL that my children are playing in! Come on Spring!

Ferry ride

So yesterday I had an invite to join a friend in taking the kids to one of those indoor playgrounds with jumpy castles and trampolines. Pay a huge sum of money and let your kids bounce for five hours or until they vomit- which ever comes first. Of course I said yes. The place is on the opposite side of the Zurich lake from where we live. The easiest way to get there was to take the ferry across. I think my kids had almost as much fun on the ferry as they did jumping! A few pics of the ferry ride. They were moving too fast to get any at "Trampolino"!


Sophie on deck- it was windy!

Noah and his buddy Sully

Watching the waves

A little calmer hair!

Walk in the woods

When Peabody and I were walking in the woods near our house yesterday there was this incredible machine that cut the tree, stripped it of it's bark and turned it onto it's side and stacked the logs almost in one fluid motion. The resulting wood piles are impressive.


One of these things is not like the other.....

Getting in shape

So when you have views like these at the local track no excuses for not spending some time there. Here are some photos of our latest Flott Family Fitness session.



"We are having fun-right?"


Noah showing dad a thing or two about stretching


Line up at the start line


Not bad to look at while you are running (or walking in Mom's case)

Skiing

So I could create an entire blog dedicated to all the great places we have explored skiing this winter. Last weekend we went to Flims/Laax. Really great. You take a bergbannen (not sure what it is called in English- a large rectangular cable car that you squeeze an impossible number of people into and then hope for the best) up to the base of the ski hills and then either gondolas or chairlifts to the top. The Swiss are big fans of the t-bar or drag lifts. Tough on the older knees. This weekend we saw our first "craplift" Just a chairlift with a name that made the 14 year old really laugh! I think we may have finally tired Sophie out. Now if we can just do the same for Noah I will know we have gotten our money's worth. We dragged him off the hill begging for "just one more run".

The sign for the craplift


A worn out Sophie


The trio

Sophie's first swim meet

So we had a first this weekend. Sophie swam two events in a multi-school swim meet.There were three international schools from Switzerland and one from Luxembourg. It was held at a local pool that had timer pads at the ends of the lanes. The kind where the swimmers swim up to the end and touch the pad and a automatic timer records the time and almost immediately posts the time and place finish for all to see. Very professional and fun. Especially when your daughter finished first! (Come to find out later she was first in her heat-the first of 3! She ended up with an impressive 4th.) I will say that swim meets are longggg! We were there from 8:30am until 3:00pm. Of that 6 1/2 hours she swam for approximately 45 seconds! (See the posted video...think it's long- be glad Jon didn't film the whole swim meet!!) She had fun although she did say that she loves swimming just not racing. I am not sure she has the killer instinct. I just love that she loves to swim.

Life in Switzerland

After a very busy fall, with lots of uncertainity about our futures we were very happy to start a new adventure in Switzerland in late December. Very easy move for everyone, same language (sort of), still in Europe and best of all we could just drive the dog across the border! No kennel/plane trip for Peabody! We are loving Switzerland so far. Kids are very happy at the new school, we love our house and neighborhood and best of all the skiing!