With God

Leelee's swim teacher is going on a mission for 2 years and Leelee had asked me where he was going. I said he's going on a mission. Leelee asked what a mission was and I told him that he tells people about God. Fast forward to today... I reminded Leelee he had a new swim teacher and asked him if he knew where old teacher Jaden was going. He said Yes, "He's going with other people to God". Sure, close enough! I'm surprised he even remembered the conversation.

Today, Dae got home early (4:30) and I had told Leelee that nanny was coming at 5pm because we were going out on a date night. When Dae and I got inside, Leelee immediately told Dae "You have to go back to work right now. Nanny is coming over!"

Dae and I went to Tagaris Winery and got some happy hour drinks and apps, which was really nice. We knew we didn't want to get home until after the kids were asleep (ha!) so we had about an hour to kill after dinner. Dae suggested we go browse Target, so naturally I was thrilled at the prospect!

Photo of the day below. Leelee and Olin were horsing around, not fighting for once, and I came out to this little sight. Leelee was all jazzed up that Olin's pants were falling off...

Lots O' Fighting

Oh boy it's a constant struggle over here and it's reached a frenzied climax. These boys fight a lot. It's kind of constant. Usually Leelee is taking something away from baby, or smothering him (non affectionately), or pushing him, or just antagonizing him. I can't imagine people who say they can leave their kids for more than a couple of minutes to play, because I cannot. Also, Leelee still really needs a daily nap but I would literally rather pull a tooth than force him to go to bed. There is so much resistance! Also, their sleeping patterns are just not aligned. Last night for example, I got home from Kelly's DeMarle party at 10:15, wound down for about 30 minutes and fell asleep around 11. I woke up at 2am to Leelee crying, laid down with him, and fell asleep. I then woke up to baby crying at around 3:30 so I fed him milk and laid down with him. Baby woke up again about 30 minutes later so I took him into the other room which was now empty because Leelee had crawled into the master bed with Dae. Baby refused to go back to sleep and was wide awake until he and I finally fell asleep, only to be awoken by Leelee at 6am, who had walked all the way across the house to cry and tell me "Baba was in the shower" and so he was therefore alone. Why didn't he just walk the 5 steps from bed to shower to be with Baba? When I went with Leelee back to the master bedroom, he cried and said he needed to go to the bathroom. I laid down in bed and said, go into the bathroom. He said he couldn't walk to the bathroom by himself (7 feet, at most, and Dae was showering in there). I was so frustrated I just laid under the covers and tried to tune him out. So I am so tired. Always. Never ending story! By the way, it's usually not me getting up at night to tend to their every whim. Dae is very good about getting up when they cry and usually does it more than I do, even though he's working full time and I am logging  6 hours a week :)

Here's a couple of photos from this week. Trena and her two sons came to visit this past weekend and boy was that nice and eventful! Evan and Leelee are both "spirited children" (haha!) so there was a lot of time-outs happening.

Last thing: Olin has this new funny, funny face. It's kind of a smile, with puckered lips and a furrowed brow. He really likes to do it and we really like to see it! I need to get a photo of it...

Silly faces

Olin munching on a fruit leather at Christian's swim lesson

Christian (almost 4), Evan (5 1/2), Grant (almost 3), Olin (18 months)

February Glory

Hard to believe February is almost over. We've finally gotten over the jetlag and are now just back to our usual exhausted selves, with no time change to blame :)

It's been the usual going-ons here, but with one pleasant surprise happening: Leelee loves swim lessons! He is so cute. He floats on his back, and jumps into the water into the teacher's arms, and kicks. Here is video proof of him floating (with some assistance). Sorry it's so hard to see with the poor resolution on the video.

In other news, I took Olin to Costco to get his passport photo today. Not that we have any international family trips in the foreseeable future, because we don't, but I was feeling bad because Christian got a passport at like 6 months old, and I didn't want to hinder poor Olin's chances of seeing the world! The photo was a mess. I had a ski hat on him the entire morning so his hair stuck straight up, and he only gave little shy half-smiles to the Costco photographer. (She was no professional photographer, that's for sure! She did try though)

And in other happenings, Kelly and I skipped our run today and, instead, got coffee at the Coffee Bean with a $4 coupon, sat in my car and leafed through her coupon binder and went to Albertson's to score some deals on soy sauce, sausages, and Valentine's clearance items..  A very nice morning indeed :)

Switzerland

Matterhorn

Switzerland was amazing! By far one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful country I've ever been to. It had all the things that make travel fun: clean air, clean country, good cheese, good chocolate, cute and quaint little villages and Swiss homes, relatively nice people, efficient trains, and lots of English speakers! For the life of me I could not figure out what language they speak. Sometimes they said Gruezi for hello, sometimes they say Guten Tag, or Morgen. For thank you sometimes they said Merci and sometimes Danke. I was all confused, so we just stuck with good old English. We only came across one city where no one seemed to speak English - a small city called Stechelberg in the mountains.

Dae and I had a fun time sleeping on planes & trains, eating leisurely meals with no kids, and skiing together. As per usual, we had to make a couple of stops to the Coop grocery store for various sundries that he needed: band aids for a boot rubbing his skin, toothpaste since he forgot his and apparently cannot use mine... I told him he is the most high maintenance traveler I've ever had the pleasure of traveling with.

Our trip started with a 2-connection flight to Zurich followed by a train ride to Lucerne. (Unfortunately the local Pasco airport does not offer a direct Pasco--->Zurich route, surprising as that may be! So we stopped in Denver and Newark).


Lucerne:
We spent our first night here.

Very cute city. Small, walkable, with a pretty river and lots of bridges, some dating back to the 1400's. The biggest celebration of the year there, "Fasnacht", kicked off the day after we arrived. It is the beginning of the Carnival weeklong celebration and kicks off at 5am where they 'ward off winter and welcome spring'. Everybody wears a costume and fills the streets. Our hotel had warned us it was going to get loud, and they were right. We happened to wake up around 4am jetlagged so we pulled on our coats and joined the celebration outside. It was crazy! Streets were jam packed at 5am, about 80% of the people in full costume, marching type bands everywhere, kids in strollers in costumes everywhere. We had a couple of cups of this warm tea with Schnapps, and all day people were strolling around the city in full costume. So interesting and so much fun.

Our hotel in Lucerne

All these balls of confetti explode at one time at 5am into this main square. 

Crowds!

These little marshmallow filled chocolate balls on the right side were my favorite treat in Copenhagen. They had them here too!

The day of. People in costume all over the streets.

Our lunch on the train: bread and cheese, muesli and yogurt. Yummy!

I told Dae to smile and this is what he gave me...

This is more like it. I showed him the last picture and told him his 'smile' was ridiculous!

Snow in Lucerne

Train ride up the mountains.

Murren:

We spent two nights here.

Murren is up in the Berner Oberland mountains. Absolutely gorgeous. To get here we had to take a train to Interlaken, a train to Lauterbrunnen, a cable car to Grindschalp and another train to Murren. Some of the cable cars were serious feats of engineering. Some of them were almost straight up a sheer mountainside. The three main mountain peaks that are visible here are Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau. Our hotel was a small little 12 bedroom that had gorgeous views from our window.

We loved it up here. The city of Murren was so cute. No cars, and lots of people pull these little wooden sleds with kids on them. End to end, it was about 10 minutes walking, so it was definitely small but had some surprisingly good restaurants! We had cheese fondue the first night and while I love cheese fondue, I have to say we were surprised that cheese and bread were really the entire meal. Since cheese fondue needed a minimum of 2 people to order, I had strong-armed Dae into sharing with me, and for every day after that he took every opportunity to tell me how he "can't believe cheese and bread could be considered a meal! Where is the meat?"

The big attractions up here are the mountains, especially Jungfrau (I can't remember the elevation) and the top of Schilthorn (10,000 feet). We didn't make it to Jungfrau since Rick Steves said not to bother unless it was a really clear day. We had some relatively clear days but nothing consistent so we opted for Schilthorn which was really nice. I guess they filmed a James Bond movie up there in the late 60's.

Be warned: There are a ton of mountain pictures with me and Dae wearing the exact same outfits that we pretty much wore the entire trip. 

Jungfrau behind us.

Top of Schilthorn.

Multiple avalanche shelters in the town of Stechelberg (in the valley)

Interlaken - photo taken from the top of the Metropole Hotel

Interlaken

Cable car craziness.

Eiger mountain in the background.

 Murren - taken from the cable car.

Top of Schilthorn.

Eiger, Monch, and Jungfrau

Zermatt:
We spent 4 nights here, met up with Dae's friends from college and skied 3 days. This city lies at the base of the Mattherhorn and was a very cute, very touristy city. Overall, the Bernese Oberland area was prettier as far as the mountain scenery, but there is truly something about the Matterhorn that is breathtaking. We could not get enough, as proven by the amount of photos we took! The skiing was really interesting. It was the prettiest place I've ever skied since we were basically looking at the Matterhorn, but the runs were all kind of flat (no moguls that I could find). I am sure there are moguls but we didn't really find any. The first day we skied on the Italian side and it was very sunny and very icy. Icy conditions are the hardest for me to ski. The second day was cloudy, so visibility was slightly worse but I would take that over icy any day. The third day was perfect - new snow and sunny. We stopped at a couple of lounges mid-mountain, including the Igloo bar, which was really fun. Unfortunately, Dae twisted his other knee (his good knee!) on the first run of the last day! He was out for the count and had to be tobagganed down the slopes by two ski patrol skiers.  Poor Dae! Real injury-prone these days. Thank goodness it was the last day and he was still able to walk, just not ski.

Another warning: A million Matterhorn photos follow...

A church in Zermatt

At a bar down the street from our hotel. All Asians in this group :)

The Matterhorn on a cloudy day.

Blue Lounge in the middle of the slopes.

Menu on the Italian side of the Alps. We skied this side the first day.

A beer at the Igloo Bar on the slopes.

Once the other people in the groups send their photos I'll post more...