Easter weekend travel

We indeed found some great things on Thursday during the city wide " get rid of things you don't want anymore". I don't have any pictures but we picks up 3 pairs if downhill skis, 4 patio chairs, a shelf for outside the front door to put shoes on, and a clothes drying rack!

Tomorrow we are headed to Stresa, Italy! Everyone pretty much gets a 4 day weekend for eater and all stores are closed except for restaurants around here. We will have pictures to share when we get back, but here is one from the Internet to give you an idea of how pretty it is going to be.

A few apartment pictures

Like I said in my last post, we moved into our new apartment.  We have mostly just the basics now. It will take time to make it home, and we are anxious to cover up some of the white walls with pictures!!  We feel very fortunate to find the the apartment we did that was in our price range. Housing is out of this world expensive here and we are not sure how some people afford it.

Our beloved coffee maker!!

 Anyways we have 3 bedrooms and 1.5 baths- the third room is just for guests with a door going out to the balcony!! (hint hint). The nice thing about apartments here is that they all have bike storage rooms, usually underground as well as each of you getting a cellar. This means we don't have to store any big items in our apartment at the cellar can fit a few bikes, spare refrigerator, camping things, ect.

Tommrow is a special day here as twice a year people can put things out, like old furniture/shelves/lamps ect, that they don't and you can pick them up. This may sound strange, but swiss people like nice things. Sometimes they will replace all their furniture and instead of trying to resell it they just put it out on the street (i guess it's easier). Anyways, I am hoping to find a few treasures!!  Maybe I will make a blog post if I do indeed find some good items!

Happy Friday!

Well we survived our move and our 6 days without Internet! Last Friday was a crazy day. We thought getting our apartment keys would be a quick thing and we'd be off before noon to buy furniture for our apartment. Turns out the swiss are very meticulous in their inspection of an apartment, documenting every scratch and mark- that way they know if they can fine you for making marks when you move out. After 2 hours of this John had the keys. Then we spent over 8 hours buying things for the apartment with Hannah in tow! She did great with e long day which was a huge answer to prayer! This week John had Tuesday off for St. Joseph's day ( we live in a catholic canton and get catholic holidays off) and that was great because it allowed us to do some more shopping and work on getting settled. I will save pictures until we at least have a few decorations as we have the minimum right now.


Hannah seems very happy to be in our apartment and she slept over 12 hours last night! She had been sleeping close to 11 hours in the farmhouse, but they tended to get up for chores around 5:30 and woke up the whole house! 7:15 is a much better wake up time! Hope everyone has a great weekend, we are hoping to enjoy some of the nice weather!

Moving Day

It is with much excitement that I write this post. Tomorrow is our 5 year anniversary which is very exciting, but it is also our moving day. The day can't get much better!  We have spent the last 6 weeks living in a roughly 20x20 space: one bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. I think it has made us closer as a family, but I am ready to get settled in an apartment. Some friends from church have let us borrow their small van tomorrow to move our 4 suitcases and transport things that we buy to furnish our apartment- this is a HUGE blessing, it would be a large task to do this with public transportation. Below is a video displaying how small the apartment really was- please excuse the mess :)

Hiking the weekend away

John, Hannah, and I are enjoying a relaxing evening after a great weekend enjoying creation! We were blessed to be able to borrow some friends baby backpack while we await our things to arrive (yes we are still just living with the things we fit in our suitcases). It was a perfect weekend for hiking so having the backpack for Hannah to ride in was excellent. She loved every minute of it as she chatted away most of the hikes- although it would have been nice for her to get in a little more of a nap :) The place we went hiking is just a 5 minute train/car ride away and is called the Burgenstock. Our first journey was alone and the second was will Al and Diane a couple we have met who are from the UK. It was great fun and I can proudly say that I was the only one who did not fall due to the slippery conditions. Sadly that means John took a fall with Hannah riding on his back :( But she is tough and mostly just cried for a few seconds because she was just drifting off to sleep! Enjoy the pictures below of our wonderful hikes.

 

 

 

Mt Pilatus in the background



Lake Luzern below

Spring?

I am trying not to get my hopes up, but the weather has been so nice this week that it makes me think SPRING!!  The temperature is around 50 today and the snow is dissappearing. It is just so nice to see the green grass down where we live and the snow up on the mountains. Supposedly there is a glacier on one of the mountains nearby that you can go to to snowski year round. So, I guess if I need a winter fix as the weather turns nice we can head of there. But I don't think that will be happening.  We still have not received our stuff from the US (including our backpack for Hannah to ride in) otherwise I am pretty sure we would be heading out on a hike on Saturday!

Schlitten, Sledging, Sledding oh My!!

So for John's birthday we were fortunate to have some friends from church watch Hannah for a few hours, last Saturday, and John got to pick an activity.  These same friends told us about a place to go sledding (the are from the UK so they say sledging, the Swiss say schlitten). This isn't your Iowa sledding hill. This is a 8km sledding trip down the mountain. Our friends let us borrow their car and it was less than a 30 minute drive away- definitely not doable in Iowa. To ensure safety, you must be equipped with a helmet and goggles!  It was great fun, although John was more fond of the high speeds you could reach than I was :)  The coffee at the bottom was also tasty, and a great way to warm up my really cold hands. We also took a train to Engelberg this weekend, but someone forgot the camera card at home so we will have to go again to share some pictures!! Have a great week.


The start of the hill

 

Below is a picture from the web of Engelberg, we will definitely go again and take some of our own photos!

 

Birthday

This week John celebrated his 28th birthday and Hannah hit the 7 month mark. Unfortunately John has been sick with a nasty cold all week. I wanted to give John a few of his favorite things since this was his first birthday in Switzerland. The thing I was most proud of was making a homemade chocolate cake with frosting.
















The picture above isn't the best, but several people confirmed that it tasted good! 
This week also marked Hannah turning 7 months. She still doesn't have any teeth, but I think they might be coming soon. She has started to spin on her belly and sort of scoot backwards (only an inch or so!)  She loves to be on her back so it takes a lot of work to keep her on her stomach to work on new skills. She also loves to stand and has started to pull herself up when hanging onto our hands. Below are some pictures of her from the week.



I still like to put things in my mouth :)

Look at me stand, I think I look pretty cute!