Ryan in Swiss Spital

Ryan landed himself in the hosptial for 4 nights with a bacterial infection in the soft tissue of his elbow after a bike accident. He fell and scraped it, then continued to irritate it without disinfecting it for several days. That is a perfect recipe for a nasty infection. He was in a homeopathic hospital so in addition to the iv antibiotics he had, they administered a 3x a day Quark treatment in his arm. Quark is a type of yogurt (it is very delicious) that you can put on the skin to cool an infection. He had a private room and of course the kids thought it was a good place for a party. Ella met some kitty friends in the garden outside and picked Ryan about 3 bouquets of flowers each time we saw him. He is healed, ffewww, the latest results showed the infection is completely gone. Even though it was scary at times, we were very impressed with the staff and especially the surgeon that oversaw Ryans entire treatment. It feels good to all be home and healthy though!

Back in Time; Tanya from Shanghai!

I admit, I am playing catch up on my blog.

Nov 4th 2008, (election day!) Tanya visited us for a week from Shanghai, China! Her family moved to Shanghai summer of 2008 and it was the first time we had seen eachother since we both moved from Colorado.

She was able to fly Swiss airlines direct from Shanghai to Zurich. The flight attendant must have had a crush on her because she arrived here with a huge bag of free airplane chocolate. Which are SOOO yummy. We decided that a cab was the best way to get here since I still had no idea how to navigate to the airport during rush hour. So, 143 swiss Franks later, she arrived. Crazy prices. The service industry here is insanely expensive! And now we have figured out a way to take the train direct to the airport for much less. I still dont like doing that drive through Zurich.
We had an entire week together catching up and seeing sights. We took the train into Lucerne, which is a beautiful ride through the countryside AND she found some great black boots there! Always a plus when you can actually afford somthing here:) And of course Zurich which is always a tourist favorite and I think one of my personal favorites. We talked alot (can you imagine we talked alot?) about what it is like to be an expat and how in the beginning you get really good at playing "charades" with the locals trying to get across your point. We were both SOOO ready to see eachother and just spend time together.

She brought us all some great stuff from China!! Cute vests, a fabulous wool skirt for me and lots of movies! I was so grateful for movies.

I wish we would have had more time to experience Europe together, it seemed to fly by!! Short but sweet. Her visit will always be such a great memory of our early days in Switzerland.

In Lucerne! How cute are we?!

Tanya fixing' to get her some fresh milk!

I can actually touch both sides of my kitchen at the same time.

BBF's!

Showing off her new black boots!

In zurich! Such a beautiful city. The girl taking this picture went to Univ of Colorado. Small world huh?

Tschuss!

Thanks Tanya for your visit, we loved it!!

Spring has sprung! Hallelujah!

I am sure most everyone has heard us complain over the last 4 months of the winter weather here. It felt like it was never ending! Ok, and I admit, we have had easy winters in California and Colorado the last 12 years, so you tend to forget how cold 1 degree actually is! Yeah, its pretty cold. I tried to will Spring into effect prematurely a couple times by wearing flip flops and that was just a bad idea. First, everyone stared at me like I was crazy, and my feet were just really cold. And I have big feet so when they are cold my entire body is cold.

However, after the long wait we are really enjoying watching everything come to life again. Spring in Switzerland is just breathtaking. We went to dinner near Ryans office on a hillside and were finally able to sit outside again. Ahhh, it felt so good. Next to the restaurant there was a large tent set up for a birthday party themed "flower power". We saw lots of swissies dressed as hippies. The highlight (at least for Charlie) was the helicopter that landed in the field right next to us, bringing the couple throwing the shin dig! It must have been 100 feet from us and Charlie was in awe.

Cool Helicopter! Climbing on the painted cow

Smooching the swiss lady, she looked like she was lonely...

I gave her a smooch too....

Old school VW van pulled up with a truck load of hippies!




Ryan and Ella outside his office Ahhh, ladies night!


Ella climbing the walls while Charlie goes on the potty, its a team effort around here, except that I am usually asked to wait outside the door in the hall until he is done.

Frosty on steroids! Feb 2009

Feb 24th. This quite possibly could have been the largest snowman in Europe! It was supposed to be a fun family event and the kids lost interest after about 10 minutes. So Ryan made "Frosty on steroids" . He was about 8 feet tall and probably weighed 400 pounds since the snow here is so heavy.

Ella made a toga thorn headpiece for Frosty, we put wool gloves on him and pinecones for his jacket. He was very handsome.

We thought for sure he would survive until end of March, and maybe into April. Well after about 2 weeks of rain, Frosty turned into a walnut size blob of snow way sooner than we wanted to see him go. But, I must say, now since there was so much moisture there, there are a TON of flowers around the area we built him.....see you again next year Frosty!