Meredith's First Full Haircut

At 10 1/2 months, it was time for Meredith to have a proper haircut.  On Dec. 1st, she had a nice trim, but still has plenty of locks to show off!

First Snow This Year

Our first snow came this year on November 30th!  It was quite the wait, since last year it snowed in later October.  Since I had been working on booking our ski vacation for early 2010, I was looking forward to it.  It is absolutely beautiful here when it snows - and looking out our window into the garden covered with snow is magical.  Here's William in the garden.

Samichlaus Parade

This year's Samichlaus parade was just as fun as last year's.  We stopped on the bridge to have our picture taken with the Grossmünster church in the background.  And, the kids collected plenty of gingerbread cookies from Samichlaus and Schmützli.

Thanksgiving

Of course, Thanksgiving is not celebrated here in Switzerland.  But, we did end up having a few festivities.

Dave and I went into Elise's classroom during the day on Thursday to talk about Thanksgiving and how we celebrate it in America, and read a story to the kids about the first Thanksgiving.  They then made a craft that showed what they are thankful for.  It was really fun to see the kids and spend time in Nathan's class.

On Saturday, we got together with some American families from our ward and had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  We met at a Waldhütte (Forest House), which was really nice, and had lots of great food, followed by a few rounds of charades.

Here's a photo of Meredith trying to reach the pumpkin cake for dessert!

Brother and Sister

William and Meredith look so much alike - looking at Will's baby pictures is like looking at Meredith!  William loves to help with Meredith.  It's good that she's such a mellow baby...

Bathtime

Meredith is growing so fast - she's already 10 months old!  We didn't have enough good photos of bathtime, so here are a few shots when Elise helped me give Mer a bath.

Ice Skating

We have an ice skating rink (Kunsteisbahn) 5 minutes from our house.  Nathan took lessons for about 4 weeks with a couple of his friends from school - before we all decided that 4 years old is too young for ice skating lessons!  But, we have fun going there as a family!  Nathan is getting more comfortable on the ice all the time.  And Elise also got a pair of skates for her birthday, so she can go anytime!  William really wanted to try it, so we rented skates for him, but he said it was just too slippery!

Hedgehog Hunting

Nathan has been learning about hedgehogs at school, so we went on a family hedgehog hunt in the forest next to our house.  The kids even built a nest for the hedgehogs!

Elise Turns 10

What!  We have a child who is in the double digits!  How did that happen so fast?

Elise turned 10 years old on November 7th, and she celebrated with a party that very day with her friends from school.  They had made headbands, played karaoke, pictionary, and other games, then had lunch.  She has a really nice group of friends!  And, as you can see from the photos, Nathan, Will and Meredith were very involved in the party too!

Halloween 2009!

We had another great Halloween - pretty amazing we can have so much fun on a holiday that isn't even celebrated in Switzerland!  But, with the English-speaking members of our church congregation, as well as Will's bilingual preschool and Nathan and Elise's international school, there is plenty of celebrating going on.

 

Nathan was Anakin Skywalker, Will was a pirate for some parties and a knight for others (but always with a light saber), and Elise and Meredith were both flamenco dancers (with authentic costumes from our recent trip to Spain)!  Mom was a hippy (I've gotten a lot of use out of that costume!) and Dad was a doctor.

 

 

We went to a fun Halloween carnival at church the week before Halloween.  Dave provided his "Stick the Face on the Pumpkin" for our family's game booth once again - even crazier than last year (he likes to blindfold the big kids and spin them around so they walk half way across the gym in the wrong direction...)!  All the kids had fun, but Nathan was the most methodical, visiting every booth in exact order.

 

Will had a dress-up day at preschool, and the whole family went to the big ICS party on Friday night, Oct. 30th.  They had trunk-or-treating with the trunks (or "boots", as they're called in British English) decorated to the hilt. 

 

This year we even carved a pumpkin and put it out in front of our house on top of our mailbox.  It was a nice jack-o-lantern if I do say so myself!  People often walk along our street to get to the forest trails.  One day when I looked out our kitchen window, I saw three older ladies standing near our mailbox studying the jack-o-lantern.  It looked like one of the Swiss ladies was explaining this strange Halloween tradition to the other two Swiss women.  So funny!  But, I think the pumpkin did some good, because we actually had one family of trick-or-treaters this year!

Sevilla, Spain

We spent the second half of our October vacation in Sevilla - what a beautiful Spanish city!  This is how I pictured Spain, so quaint and beautiful.

We stayed in a great apartment across the street from the Cathedral de Sevilla and Giralda Tower and in the center of everything.  We even had our own roofdeck, where we could see the beautiful views of the cathedral.  Every night as we went to bed, we heard the clip clop of the horses taking people on carriage rides.  The night we got back home to Switzerland, I almost expected to hear the clip clop again!

Cathedral de Sevilla is the world's largest Gothic church, and technically the largest church in Europe.  Christopher Columbus' tomb is housed in the cathedral.

We also went up to the top of the Giralda, the minaret which is all that remains of the mosque that used to be where the cathedral is now.  they usually have stairs to get the the top of domes or towers here in Europe, but the route here was a series of ramps (originally designed to allow those who went up to ring the bells access to the top on horseback).  For us, it worked great for Meredith in her stroller!

We toured the Alcazar palace and gardens and were amazed.  The Moorish architecture of this palace, like the Alhambra in Granada, was amazing.  And the gardens here were so beautiful.  We saw people painting the scenery, and found a fun maze that we all got lost in!

We ate a lot of tapas in Spain.  The funny thing is that the Spaniards don't even think about having dinner before 8:00pm.  The restaurants don't open until then.  By the way, all of the shops are closed from 2-5pm for siesta, but that means that most of them open up again from 5-8.  In any case, this made for some late evenings with our 4 kids!  But, we it was fun to try a lot of different types of tapas, and the kids liked some of them.  One thing we learned is that a "tortilla" in Spain is very different from a tortilla in South America.  In Spain, it is basically an omelet with eggs, potatoes and cheese.  Yum!

We went to a flamenco show, which was really fun.  It was complete with dinner (starting at 8pm, of course) and very serious flamenco.  Wow - flamenco dancing surely is a workout!

We did some shopping in Spain, including going to a beautiful ceramic shop and a nice artisan mall where many different local artists displayed their work.

On our last full day in Sevilla, we went to...an amusement park! The kids really do a great job traveling so much, and we always try to plan a mix of activities so we will all enjoy ourselves. And, Isla Magica was great! We had a lot of fun on the rides, and even saw a great flamenco performance with Andalucian horses in the evening.

We took the AVE high speed train from Sevilla to Madrid for our flight home.  We had a wonderful time in Spain (and the flight home was only 2 hours, and no time zone changes!)