What Everyone Moving To A New Country Needs. . .

Sarah and Alma!

These two sisters are fabulous! Look at their beautiful smiles. Totally contagious. Thank you Sarah and Alma for including us in your play. You really have made our transition to Geneva a breeze.
Sarah's children match up perfectly with ours. Even better they play peacefully. It's amazing, and such a blessing. Today we met at the Botanical Garden downtown.
This is a picture of most of the kids (Sarah has four and Alma two).

The theme of the park was myths, so the park was filled with fairies and gnomes. Ansel took a liking to this particular gnome and climbed on its lap. Then he asked me to take a picture. Such a funny little dude. He spends most of his days half dressed, and this smile is his latest in CHEESE!

Tuesday Morning

Tuesday mornings start early at our apartment. Why? It's our laundry day. Everyone in the building can sign up for a five hour time slot for laundry. Located in the basement, along with the nuclear bomb shelter, you will find one washer and one dryer. Besides, the chocolate bars at the COOP it is the best deal in Geneva. I pay 1.20 francs an hour to use the washer and the dryer is free. Free! So my standing laundry reservation is Tuesdays from 7:00 AM-12:00 noon. Perfect. I sneak down there a half an hour early. I managed to finish seven loads this morning! Amazing. By noon I have not only done the entire weeks laundry, but it is also folded and put away. This is a feat I never guessed possible living in the states. The secret, the professional washer and dryer. I can do a load of wash in half an hour (or if it's really dirty stuff 1 hr. 22 minutes) and the dryer doesn't need any more than 40 minutes. This laundry thing has been such a great deal, I don't think we'll buy a washer and dryer. The computer can go ahead and stay in the laundry closet.

I Like My Birthdays Every One. . .

I'm 36.  woo hoo.  Really the birthday has become a thing of the past.  I can remember when I was a child wondering how my parents could let such a special day pass without trumpets and fireworks going off on their behalf.  It has taken 35 years to get there, but I'm there.  I told everyone that I really didn't want anything for my birthday-and I meant it.  Greg still felt stress to make it a special day, but I wasn't worried.  I know he loves me.

So this is how we spent the day:

We visited a picturesque town in France called Annecy.  Everyone talks about it, so of course we needed to check it out.  It was definitely lovely and family friendly.

Henry and Elsa each rented one of their child size charriots.  Henry really felt powerful steering that horse around.  

Of course they had some great parks.  These ones were probably designed by some Dutch dude.  They were pretty mod.  Henry and Elsa really enjoyed the stick that spun around.  It would spin faster if you distributed your weight just right.

Having never been on a paddle boat-and it being my birthday-we decided to view the city from the lake!  It was fun and exciting balancing on the paddle boat, and trying to keep Ansel on board.  We nearly made it back to the shore before the thunderstorm.  Nearly that means we didn't.  We did make it back to shore before the mento sized hail came down!  Yikes.  It was Henry and Elsa's first memorable experience with hail.  I don't think I have ever been outside in a hail storm especially not one with such big hail.  It hurt.

The entire family was drenched.  I was wringing out the kids' clothes when we got to the car.  Nuts.  It's just part of our European assimilation-half naked children(Ansel prefers full nudity) in public. We'll have to finish our trip to Annecy another day.  It is definitely worth a return visit.

Chamonix, France

We thought we'd venture across the border into France this weekend.  It is only a 20 minute drive.  Everyone says that meat is a lot less expensive over there.  I had to check it out for myself, and am still not totally convinced.  I bought a whole chicken (4 lbs.) for about $18. What a deal!  I got some ground beef for about $10/lb.  We've been eating a lot more pasta.

It didn't seem right to just go to France to pick up meat so we thought we'd go to the mountains again.  We've been having so much success with our mountain excursions.  Chamonix was gorgeous that's for sure.  However, it was sooo much more touristy.  The kids didn't have nearly as good of a time.  We ended up going to lunch, walking around the market and enjoying the magnificent Alps.

Henry is proud of his Euro Cup Suisse soccer jersey.  He has worn it every day since he got it. He spends every morning convincing me it isn't dirty.  (I am allotted a five hour time slot once a week to do laundry.  It actually has worked pretty well so far).

Yatouland!

You've never heard of Yatouland?  What!   Yatouland is a blow up jumping park that they put on the terrace of a huge mall.  It is free all summer long.  The Swiss charge a lot for everything except entertaining children.  Great.  I took the kids there this week because it was a bit too cool for the swimming pool-low 70's.

Even Ansel had a great time.
Elsa and Henry are scaling this huge slide.  This "ladder" practically goes straight up.  It's totally safe.
Looks like fun!

Les Diavleres

The weekends have been so fun to take random day trips up to the mountains.  Henry especially begs to go to the mountains.  He wants to be up in the snow!  We haven't hit any snow yet, but next weekend we are planning on returning here and taking a tram to a glacier where they give you rides on a dog sled.  How cool does that sound?  I hope it works out.  To our dismay, we haven't stubbled upon any St. Bernards or Berniese mountain dogs yet.  Elsa wants to run through a mountain meadow.  She cracks me up.  She has talked about running through a meadow in the mountains so much we showed her "The Sound of Music."We were on our way to a city called Gstad-pretty famous ski resort and stumbled upon Les Diavleres.  They had this great little park and we ended up not going any further.  The kids had such a great time on the swing and teeter totter.  The parks in Switzerland have been such a great treat.  They have all of the equipment we use to play on, but was taken away for our children because it was too dangerous.  I'm so glad they are experiencing a real teeter totter!

Take special not of the turquoise purse Elsa has on her shoulder.  She carries it everywhere.  It is full of treasures.  That purse has become her best friend!  Thanks Kendra!
Henry played on this rope swing for probably an hour.  No kidding.  

The spring in this motorcycle moved.  Rad.

A few more pictures...

A few more pictures of our weekend trip to Gruyere. Here are the kids enjoying some ice cream near the city gate...

There's a ski resort a little ways away from Gruyere. Henry, Greg and Elsa got to ride the bob luge. It was our first Alpine Slide ride that was actually in the Alps.

Moving In

We should be online in our apartment by this weekend. In the meantime, let me post a few pictures until Suzy's able to resume her blogging duties.

This is the van we rented from Ikea loaded with the furniture we purchased:

Our luggage with the inflatable mattresses were lost in London. We were afraid we were going to have to sleep on the hardwood floor the first night. Fortunately, the airport delivered them to our door around 10 o'clock that night. Here's our front room BEFORE...

And AFTER...

It took a couple days of allen wrenching the furniture together. We're still waiting for one piece of our couch. In the meantime, if the kids can't sit on a fully-assembled couch, they can sit on the couch box...

We're here!

We've been in Switzerland for a week now. Lots to tell. Lots of pictures to post. But we don't have internet access right now. (This is Greg posting from my office.)

Suzy can fill in the details but here are some highlights:

• British Airways is easily the best airline we have ever flown.
  
• Four trips to Ikea so far including one with a large red rental van that Greg drove.
  
• On Saturday, we took the kids to Gruyere - a castle in the Alps. This country is crazy beautiful.
  
• Church was great. Lots of helpful people there. Henry and Elsa made friends their age easily.
  

More to come...