That’s right, my little boy; now not so little anymore, turned 12 a week ago!
Usually, i blog about his birthday pretty much on the day itself or a few days after, but this time, the husband was away so i had to wait till he got back before we could do our traditional birthday shot. (See end of blog)
So this year, his birthday fell on a Friday which was when i had to bake his favourite cupcakes (Red Velvet with cream cheese icing) for him to take to school and share with his classmates.
He got to open one of his presents before he left for school and the rest after lunch. His friends loved the cupcakes! This has become a sort of tradition since he decided that Red Velvet was his favourite and only cake to have.
He had already decided that he was just going to have a small celebration with 3 friends. One of them could not make our Saturday outing so i took just him and his 2 best friends to the Schwarzsee on Saturday.
Isn’t this scenery just to die for? LOVE IT! It was such a gorgeous day!
We arrived in time for a nice lunch by the beautiful lakeside. Then it was off to ride the Monster Trotti (Monster Scooter) down Riggisalp. After a bit of a shaky start, the boys were off. But not for me, i had no confidence on the scooter and the gravelly path didn’t help. After a couple of falls, i decided to walk the steep parts and ride the less “scary” parts. So of course, the boys were already at the bottom quite a while before i managed to get there. Well, as long as they had fun.
Then we went off to ride the Rondelbahn (Toboggan Run). There was no space to have our bags with us, so i sent them off to ride it by themselves while i watch the bags. They made 2 runs and then i went with one of the boys for another 2 runs. This was so much more my thing. Heheee 😉
Before each of their fun thrilling rides!
One of the boys had wanted to ride the Monster Scooter again but it was too expensive to go again. So they settled for ice cream and drinks by the lake.
i love this shot of them, trying to skip stones on the lake.
We came home just a little earlier than planned, opened the presents, had some cupcakes and the boys played a little on the computer before they went home.
We have been back at school for 2 weeks now and as usual, only now am i looking back on the recent Spring holidays we have had, in April.
Quite unusually, the Spring holidays for our village did not follow immediately after Easter, instead, the kids go back to school for 2 weeks after Easter Monday and then we had the holidays. Which i think is good, because it makes the last term of school less of a marathon term (usually it lasts 12 to 13 weeks).
So what did we do this holiday time? Well, i think we took it fairly easy; i had just planned on one thing we would do each day.
The housework, such as cleaning, vacuuming, washing etc, still had to be done; as i am teaching Tobias to do these things (i think it is important for him to learn to be independent and these contribute towards that), we spent both Mondays of the holidays doing that.
We did go and catch a movie, Zoomania/Zootopia (depending on which language). It was a fun little movie and we liked it lots. Even better was having the entire cinema to ourselves! See how all those empty seats!
Then we also got in some squash practice and Tobias had some friends over on another day.
The big thing we did do was going over to Alasce, France with a couple of good friends. We visited the Memorial of Le Linge, a World War I memorial site, which 17,000 men gave their lives. There were trenches still existing at this mountain location in the village of Orbey.
It has quite a nicely done small museum with artifacts and displays showing what the soldiers wore and had to go through. They even have a little film show telling you the history in a language of your choice.
i thought it was lovely that the museum was taken care of by some retired people, to whom i wish i could have spoken to (my french is unfortunately non-existent) because i am sure they would have stories to tell of fathers, brothers, uncles who lived through the war.
We had lunch at a little French restaurant, and of course, i ordered snails 😉 The food was good but took a while to get to our table…This is the entrance to the trenches, the German ones were better built and therefore better preserved. On the right,That’s what it looke like through one of the “gun-holes”.Left: French cemetery, Right: German cemeteryIt is an amazing view from the top of the trenches.On the way back, we stopped off at Eguisheim, a cute little French village which has these cute timber-framed houses with these lovely Hobbit-like doors. i loved it!We had dinner at another little French restaurant and look at the flaming dessert i ordered 😉
Oh, we even got to geocache while we were at this memorial site. 😉
Then it was the weekend and the second week of holidays started.
i had planned to do either a small building project with Tobias or a garden project; since his class did the topic of plants and nature, he decided we should plant some tree/plants in our little garden. Which we did.
Left: Tobias removing the wild flowers/weeds so we can start planting. Right: All planted; a blue cedar and some campanula and dahlias (which you can not see yet, cos they are just still tubers in the ground).
Our village offers a Ferienpass each Spring holiday, where kids can sign up for lots of different activities such as visiting the Migros to see the inner workings, or visiting the local butcher, or the bakery, or inline skating, or going to look for beavers or spending an afternoon with the hairdresser and tons of other interesting activities.
This year Tobias was only interested in canoeing so that’s what he did on that Thursday afternoon. And while he was canoeing, i volunteered to help out with the playgroup kids afternoon. So it worked out well.
Tobias tipping out the water from the canoe after the afternoon’s ride.
Then a very exciting visit from my Primary 6 classmate, whom i have not seen in almost 30 years! We picked her up after Tobias’ canoeing and went for dinner at our local restaurant in our village.
Tobias had his best friend came stay over Thursday night and he spent the day with us on Friday. Which left me free to catch up with my friend 🙂
We went up to the Weissenstein, in the new (well, new to me because i have not gone up in it since they opened this new and bigger one) gondola. Tobias’ friend suggested a different restaurant from the one i normally would go to at the top of the mountain. It was a fair walk, but we had great weather and it was a good way to work up an appetite. Plus, i discovered a place i had never been to.
Going up in the gondola… look at the amazing view!Left: Walking to lunch. Right: Tobias stopping to read one of the signs along the Planet Way walk.
After lunch and a short walk back to the gondola, we came down and rode the bus into town. It started to rain so we stopped at a cafe for a snack and waited out the rain. Then we headed home as the boys seemed tired and relaxed a bit before getting ready for dinner.
My friend took the morning train to Basel for her next meeting and we had friends come and visit in the afternoon. And for dinner, Tobias decided to try his hand at cooking his favourite food of all time, sushi! It was a nice way to end the holidays.
He has never been more excited about cooking something 😉
That has been the question we have been asking for the last 3 months.
This winter, snow has been little and it doesn’t stick around for more than a day at our level (about 500m above sea level). And even in the ski resorts, snow seems to have become a bit of a rare sight.
Check out the photo below of the slopes in Engelberg just before the new year. The slopes, which were snow-covered, were icy and one of them was littered with pebbles, which all made the skiing no fun at all. We gave up after lunch and decided a walk in the little town was better and was rewarded with lovely local produce from the Kloster and that pretty view of the Kloster framed by the mountain behind it.
We waited a number of weeks and tried again in February, during the recent school Sports-holiday. We went to Lenk. We were worried on the way up to the ski place as it did look so green. That first day, we skied through wet, heavy snow, (which turned to rain towards the end of the day) but it was still better than it was in December.
Then overnight the snow arrived, in force! See that lovely snowy view which greeted us just outside our hotel room. It continued snowing through the day quite heavily, which made visibility quite poor, but it also meant skiing on fresh snow, which was quite good.
However, the poor visibility also meant we came across at least 3 accidents on the slopes, which required medical aid, including a heli-lift. i hope those injured are on their way to full recovery.
Then, of course, on the day we leave, we were greeted with perfect ski weather; blue skies, sunshine and slopes covered with freshly fallen snow overnight. Sigh!
But check out the difference between the snow cover in the resort area and the non-existent snow along the highway, on the way home.
Well, we hope that there is more snow now on the slopes, especially since the school is going for ski camp in 2 days!
Then we also got in some squash practice and Tobias had some friends over on another day.
trippingdifferently 