Primary Program

William, Nathan and Elise all participated in the primary program at church on Sept. 25th, and did an amazing job!  William and Nathan were both very impressive by standing up at the microphone and saying their parts clearly in German.  Nathan was the only one in his class with his part memorized!  William had two speaking parts and looked so proud and confident when he stood up there (he is a real charmer).  And for Elise's part, she accompanied one of the songs on the piano - it happened to be a song that had many, many verses ("Folgt den Propheten") so she was playing for a long time.  People said they were surprised to look over and see that it was a young girl, not an adult playing!  We received so many compliments for all three of them.  Good job, kids!

ICS Jubilee

The kids' school, ICS, Inter-Community School, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this school year.  There are lots of fun events planned, and there was a big birthday party on September 20th!  All the kids got to choose a t-shirt (white, orange, or black, the colors of the school) and there were lots of games and activities for the kids (including face painting), and cupcakes for the whole school out on the field.  I helped out with some games for the little kids, all the kids had a great time.  There continue to be special activities throughout the year.

William's 4th Birthday Party

William turned 4 years old on August 15, 2010, but he celebrated his birthday for an entire month!  His first celebration was in Utah in early August when we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa Francis, and Kate was having a birthday.  Since his big day was coming up, he got to share in the cake festivities.

Kate shared her pink cake with Will! 

Then in LA at Grandma and Grandpa Michels' house, we had a birthday celebration for him.

He scored some fruit snacks as a birthday present - not available in Switzerland!

Of course when we returned home to Switzerland we celebrated at home as a family on the actual day.

Not sure why William decided to go shirtless!

And, finally, he had an Astronaut birthday party with all the friends from his new EY1 class on Saturday, Aug. 28th. We invited all of the kids in the grade - 24 of them- over to our house.  It was a lot of fun, even though it started raining and we had to move the party inside to the playroom.  It was a great way to get to know all of these new friends!

I'd say so many celebrations is a pretty good deal for a 4-year-old birthday!

Weggis and Mount Rigi

The first weekend after school started, Dave's company Bain had an outing for partners on Lake Lucern in Weggis.  We stayed overnight in Weggis and went on a "Swiss Olympics - Chilbi" outing.  We took the train half-way up Mount Rigi to the Chilbi spot, were divided into teams, and participated in several different traditional Swiss activities - including playing the Swiss Alphorn and several other musical instruments including a broom, doing a rock hoist, cleaning clothes on a washboard, milking a cow, and making cheese!  Nathan, Mer and I were together on a team with several other people, and Dave, William and Elise were together.  We had a great time.  We then went the rest of the way up Mount Rigi and took the cable car down.  What an amazing view. The sky and the lake were so blue, and the grass so green.  It was a beautiful day!  That evening Elise and Dave even tried some waterskiing before dinner, while the boys and I went swimming in the hotel pool.  And all this was less than 2 hours away from home!

Back to School!

The kids went back to school on August 18, 2010.  William officially started his first full year at ICS, riding the bus from the main campus to the new EY1 campus in Pfaffhausen every morning.

Our Summer Trip to America!

We spent 3 weeks in the US this summer and had a wonderful time visiting family and friends.

The plane for the new direct flight from Zurich to San Francisco is appropriately painted with "groovy" 60's icons!

We started in San Francisco, staying in our friends, the Thatcher's, house (while they were staying at our house in Switzerland!).  It was so fun to see friends - it really felt like we had never left!  Elise got to see a lot of her friends as well, thanks to May Lo who so generously hosted a get-together for the girls, and it was amazing how these girls are still such good friends.  We also saw our old house on Hardie that we had sold in the spring.  The worst part of leaving that neighborhood is leaving our wonderful neighbors - we had dinner with the Geoghegans while we were in town!

Amazing photo collage courtesy of May Lo!

From San Francisco we went to Utah, where we stayed with my parents.  It was so nice and relaxing there, with time to see my parents and Steve and Jen and their family, Aunt Helen, as well as our friends the Reids who moved to Utah from California, and of course my good friend Heidi Nelson and her family.  Dave, Elise and I took the opportunity to go see the groundbreaking ceremony for the Brigham City temple.  We saw Elder Nelson and Elder Packer and heard them speak.  It was a great opportunity for Elise to see some of the general authorities in person!  Dave and I went to a temple session in the Salt Lake Temple, which was really fun (we hadn't been to that particular temple since we were married there 14 years ago!).  We "lost" William at the outlet malls in Park City, but otherwise everything was great (and the county Sheriff's department was very helpful).

After a week in Utah, we went to Los Angeles where we stayed with Dave's parents.  We also saw John and Julie, Steve and Kristi, Rowe and Lisa who now live in Southern California, Catherine and Weston, and all of their kids.  It was fun for the kids to see all of their cousins here too, and Dave and I went to the Getty Museum to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary.   And of course, we managed to squeeze in plenty of US shopping before returning to expensive Switzerland.