Our Big Eater

Meredith takes the cake (literally) for the biggest eater in our family.  She loves to eat!  And now that she talks more, she can demand more food!  ...sorry for the interruption, Meredith just came in to ask me to get her some food from the fridge (no kidding)!  Oh, and I forgot to mention, her favorite food is CHEESE (we are in Switzerland, you know)!

Braces for Elise!

Yes, just before we left for our ski week, Elise got braces.  I say she looks pretty cute :)

Ski Week in Serfaus, Austria

We just got back from an amazing week in Serfaus, Austria.  The kids had a week off of school for "ski week", so we went to the kinderhotel "Löwen" for the week.  It was outstanding.  We've stayed at kinderhotels before for Easter break, and this one was as great as ever.  Serfaus is only about 2 hours 45 minutes away from our house.  It's a very cute little village, with a great ski area connecting 3 resorts, Serfaus, Fiss and Ladis.  So the skiing opportunities are huge, and we were lucky to have excellent, sunny weather every day we were there!  It also turned out that there were 4 other families from the kids' school, ICS, also staying at the Löwen, including the Pfaff family with 4 kids similar to our kids' ages.  So they were able to play together.  There were also 5 or so other ICS families staying at other hotels in Serfaus, so we saw them on the slopes.  That was a lot of fun!

We had excellent breakfasts and dinners every day at the hotel (a different children's buffet every night and a 6-course dinner served every night for the adults!).  It was incredible food!  The hotel had a great waterpark with a pirate fun area and giant indoor slide.  We played there a few times and all had a lot of fun.  We were so tired every day!  There was a kids club with a giant ball play area and many different activities during the day and after dinner for the kids.  Meredith went there during the days while William, Nathan and Elise all went to ski lessons.

We can't decide who was most improved in skiing, because all 3 of the kids made so much progress this week!

William can ski now.  He started at the Kinderschneealm with his teacher Saaida, and ended the week taking the lift up and skiing down the blue hill with his class.  He finished first in his class in the race on Friday morning!

Nathan was already a good skier and now he is great!  He loved his teacher Danielle and got much faster over the course of the week, while still being very well controlled.  He finished 2nd in his class ski race (although we're not sure he wasn't first, since he actually went so fast that he passed the person in front of him, so the timing may have gotten mixed up!).  He was very focused on the race and said he wanted to get first or second.  He did a great job!

Elise was in a really fun group with a teacher named Peter, who always had a smile on his face and took the class on a big adventure to the very top of the mountain on Tuesday.  Elise is a great skier and even got to try riding a "Snow Fox" (a short ski with a seat and handle bars) which she said was very scary.  I saw kids from the more advanced classes riding these, and it looked pretty crazy!  All the kids really enjoyed their lessons.

I also took a private lesson one day and had a major breakthrough.  My teacher Andi said there were just 2 movements important in skiing.  Then we practiced those 2 moves and it was so easy!  We went down the red hills with no problem.  Why didn't anyone tell me that before...I feel so much more confident skiing now.  Dave snowboarded and had a good time - but Elise and Nathan are quickly passing even Dave by in terms of their skiing skills.

Saturday we celebrated my birthday and I couldn't imagine a more fun way to do it than with my family.  We went down to breakfast and I opened my present which Dave had organized - a beautiful collection of memories and pictures from family and friends.  I was crying as I read it!  It was so nice of everyone to send these notes (they definitely make me sound better than I am!).  Dave, Elise, Nathan and I skied together, and Meredith and Will went to a kids club.  Afterwards we had crepes all together in Serfaus, then went to the waterpark in the hotel.  The birthday celebration ended with another wonderful dinner at the hotel.  Thanks for a very happy 40th (yikes!) birthday!

At the top of the mountain on my 40th birthday!

Elise's Piano Recital

Elise is a wonderful pianist.  She has been working hard on both theory and her playing!  On Feb. 10th she was in a recital where she played, "Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum" by Debussy (Dave was out of town, so this is the next best thing to being there).

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!