A Productive Day

Poor little Michael is sick. :-( He has had a fever and a cough for two days now. I had a very important appointment with Collin today and couldn't find anyone to sit with Michael. Lauren was a trooper and stayed home from school to be with him. I say Lauren was a trooper because she loves school! I even had to take her over to the school in the afternoon so she could turn in her french homework.

Matthew was a trooper
representing the family in school today.

(this was taken before Michael got sick)

So, Lauren had a VERY productive day working on her science project. She didn't want to do the traditional science project, and chose to do the research paper instead. BUT she still has to do a presentation board. That actually works for her though since she is so talented artistically. She worked on her Pluto board practically all day. It's looking pretty cool!

All work and no play just won't do though, so Lauren and I went to see Confessions of a Shopaholic tonight. Loved it! It was loosely based on the books. Lots was different, but enough was incorporated so that it was basically the same and still tons of fun. It was very distracting though as I was thinking the whole time, "How can Isla Fisher not be Amy Adams?" They had to have been separated at birth.

Living Museum

Matthew had the opportunity to participate in his school's Living Museum last night. In honor of Black History Month, the kids chose an influential African American to represent. Can you guess who Matthew is?? The tennis racket (thanks to Kayla) might give it away . . .

Did you guess right?

He was Arthur Ashe! Don't you see the resemblance? I guess it would have been good if I had looked at the picture before last night to know that he should have dressed all in white. He was a great Arthur Ashe though. Matthew had researched his life, and had a whole long spiel memorized. As people walked through the Living Museum, he told them all about himself.

Matthew knew a lot about Arthur Ashe,
and I was very impressed!

My Dirty Little Secret

Do I dare share my dirty little secret? It's a big risk. It's all behind this closed door:

This room used to function as our office. The downstairs computer was in there for a long time, and people where going in and out all day. A couple of years ago we moved the computer to the kitchen so that we could have a more public place for it. The "office" was always a place where I dumped stuff, but now that no one needs to go in there it has been really bad. Hold your breath . . . I'm letting you in . . .

Those are the Christmas boxes. 

It's bad!

I actually took these pictures a month ago, thinking I would clean the office and do a before and after post. And I did clean out some that day! The Christmas boxes, for example, are now down in the basement where they belong. But there is much more to do. I am hoping that by posting these pictures I will be motivated to really get it done. And then I can go through closets!

Blue and Gold

On Sunday afternoon we went to Michael's Blue and Gold dinner for cub scouts. Michael is a Tiger Cub with the pack at school. He loves it. They have so many fun activities and outings. It's a great program!

So, here we are at the dinner:

The boys were in full uniform,

ready to receive their awards.

Michael earned his Bobcat and Tiger badges.

Way to go, Michael!

- - -

Fast forward to this morning, Michael brought Dandy Jr. home with him from school yesterday! Dandy is the school mascot. Dandy Jr. takes a turn going home with each of the kids. They do something with Dandy and then write about it in a little journal. Michael and Dandy did math homework. I was surprised that Dandy knew so much math!

And now Dandy Jr. is going back to school
in his handy dandy lion backpack. :-)

Good Hair Day

Today I am celebrating a good hair day,

and sharing it with you!

"very hansome and very cute"

This has got to be the cutest thing EVER. Since we were away and Michael missed his class Valentine's Day party, he got his valentines today . . .

Flying Home

***UPDATED BELOW!!!

Before flying home to Connecticut, Mike bought us the world's largest pretzel on the streets of Zurich. Insanity!

Every night we got a piece of chocolate on our pillow.
Love the saying!

The flight home today went smoothly.
Everyone doing their thing.

***UPDATE - I forgot to mention . . . There were tons of empty seats in our little section of the plane, so everyone DID have their own row. It was so nice! Mike and I had business class seats, so we let each of the kids take a turn sitting with a parent. The flight was just barely long enough for everyone to watch a movie. I actually watched two! One was The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (or something like that). Such a good movie, but SO sad.

And then I also forgot to mention that we just barely made it home from the airport alive. UBS paid for a car to pick us up at JFK. The guy that drove us was either totally on drugs or falling asleep. He had sunglasses on, so I couldn't tell. He continuously pumped the gas and the brakes, and was ALL over the road. Halfway through the drive I finally asked him, "Are you having a hard time staying awake?" He said, "Huh?" I said, "You are driving like you can't stay awake!" He improved a little after that, but then right back to it. I was so afraid for our lives that I was seriously shaking when I got out of the car. I will NEVER use a car service again. We will drive ourselves!

Anyway, it is good to be home. ;-)

House Hunting & Driving

Today was our house hunting day. None of the places will be available in the summer, but it was good to see what's out there. The Awareness Tour post shows a few of the places we saw today: the big house (turns out to be not so big, but still ok), the winter garden apartment (my favorite by far for space, storage, bathrooms, l0cation), and the cute house (yes, it is cute. this was a close second.) We also saw a very modern apartment that would have been cool, but not right for us. We also drove up over the mountain to the countryside to see a house belonging to one of the ward members here whose family will be moving in June. It was really good to see the different areas and different places to live. I'm sure we'll be able to find something we will feel comfortable in.

Driving has not been too bad. The kids laugh over the exit signs:

Traffic lights took a little getting used to:

We leave in the morning, so we will have our last expensive dinner tonight and pack our bags. I'm so glad we came!

Nordsee, Museum & Fondue

Yesterday we picked up some lunch
at Nordsee in the train station.

Mike cannot resist the little goodies here.

We then took off to see the Swiss National Museum,
the big beautiful building across the river.


Just a couple of pics inside the museum -

I really wanted to get one good shot of our family here.

I'd say that's a good one!

On our way to dinner, we saw this t-shirt:

Switzerland loves Obama!

Last stop of the day was fondue for dinner.

We are remembering now from our previous experiences in Europe that you have to ration your drink with dinner. No free refills! Not even the water is free. It is incredibly expensive to eat out here. Even McDonald's is a lot. Thank goodness the company paid for the food on this trip because we will not be eating out here on our own dime!

Kirche

We set out in a taxi this morning to attend church. I had called ahead to make sure the chapel was really located at the address the church website listed, but when we pulled up to Hohlstrasse 535 it looked like an empty office building. Absolutely no one was around. But then I read the sign and saw that KIRCHE JESU CHRISTI was listed. Thank goodness! Someone finally walked in the door and told us we were 1/2 hour early.

Church was awesome.
I knew it right away when I saw their newsletter:

How organized is that??
Two months of meetings planned in advance.

Halloween and Thanksgiving activities too!

The meeting was in German, but they had the little headsets with a translator. Singing the songs in German was fun, especially when we sang a really fast one and couldn't keep up with the words. There were actually quite a few native English speakers, and practically everyone else spoke English. They had a big enough Primary and English speaking teachers for the boys. Lauren was also set up very nicely. And they have an English speaking Sunday School class! Everyone was very friendly and welcoming. Overall an awesome experience! More on today's happenings tomorrow. Gotta go to bed . . .

Lucerne

Today we took a train to Lucerne, about 1 hour south.

The Chapel Bridge
The oldest wooden bridge in Europe, built in 1333.

We happened to arrive the first day of the Lucerne Carnival.
There were bands everywhere in costumes and huge masks.

When I saw this place I said, "Scary!" Collin said, "Cool!"

Just before leaving, Mike bought some chestnuts. Yummy!


And, for fun, here is a little bit of The Simpsons in German.