Kathy and Chuck visit

My Aunt Kathy and Uncle Chuck came for a 5 day visit last week and they will be back to spend one night before they fly our of Zurich in a week.... They will spend a total of 3 weeks in Europe making many stops in Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, and Belgium!
It was very nice to have visitors since we haven't had visitors since John's sisters visit last July.  And what was even better is the amazing weather Kathy and Chuck brought. I realized we always share pictures of the sunny days in Switzerland, but it does rain, or is foggy A LOT here! Like we just had 3.5 days of constant rain that caused some flooding.... not like thunderstorms, just constant rain. I don't love that, especially when living in an apartment, with a dog, who is also always getting wet. But, that is not the point of this post. The point is that we had a whole week of sunny and nice weather and a very nice visit from family!
We were able to get out and do quite a few activities and eat several ice cream cones... Hannah was in heaven, tired from all the action, but in heaven.

One day we went on the boat to Luzern. It is a beautiful boat ride on Lake Luzern and then a train ride back to the car. The views are beautiful and the kids love the boat. The ice cream in Luzern wasn't bad either!

Another thing that is great to do with visitors is to take a gondola ride up to where you can really see the Alps. One gondola ride that does just that is Titlis. For us this is very convenient as we only have to drive 30 minutes to Engelberg and then hop on the Gondola up to 3,000+ meters. I must say we all felt a bit "funny" from the fast elevation change. But the views were magnificent. It was a bit crazy to go from beautiful spring weather at the bottom to very cold snowy weather at the top. People were still skiing up there! 

Elliott and I on the glacier bridge at the top. 

Hannah, feeling unsure about this glacier bridge

Can I take my coat off, it's warm inside!

"Look another gondola"

Another day we went up onto the local Burgenstock and did about a 2 hour hike. We wanted to do a loop that gives you great views over the lake for half of the hike, but the path was closed due to maintenance. We still had a great hike and Kathy and Chuck can say they hiked in the Alps.

One of our day trips was to go to Meringen in Kanton Bern to see the Aareschlucht. It is a long gorge that you can hike through. It was about 1.5 km through the gorge and then we hiked over the gorge back to our car. It was full of water falls and steep cliff walls. Hannah did great and walked all the way through the gorge and a bit of the way back towards the car... We realized that she can walk quite a ways if it is interesting... I guess our normal hikes can get boring for her. 

At the lake before our picnic

A quick pony ride before our BBQ, our town was having a festival

"I love apples at BBQ's"

Yes, we live in the country

I had an extra day off of work after Kathy and Chuck left, we had fun at a big park.

Mr. Independent

Lake day in the afternoon, Hannah offered to share her ice cream!!

I love our town on sunny days! The kids love to play at the lake.

Bike ride to meet Daddy after work!

Kathy and Chuck return in a week for one night to share all of their traveling stories before they fly back to America.... Then we have a visit from John's Parents (Marmie and Papa) to look forward too... and we get to fly on an airplane together to Greece!! Hannah is SO excited!