Swissterical: RETROBLOG--Extreme Catch-up Edition

It’s been almost three months since our last entry and there’s much to catch up on. It’s been a busy winter—and we’ll try to bring you up to speed.

We went home for Christmas at the end of December and had a wonderful time seeing family and friends. But as you know, we returned to the Motherland for New Year’s Eve—it always takes a bit of time to readjust after coming back.

Stacking dice on tongue depressors

But we had much to which we could look forward. In January, we hosted our first get together at Chez Ahlstrom—a 12^th Night Party. Never heard of that before? Neither had we, but some of our new friends introduced us to the idea. Twelfth night is actually the last night of the 12 Days of Christmas. In some traditions, it’s the evening before Epiphany; in others, it’s the evening of Epihany. Often it was believed that it was unlucky to leave Christmas decorations up after Twelfth Night (bummer for us—our party was actually a bit after Epiphany). A TNP consists of 12 people—in our case, 6 couples from church. The idea of the party is that each person is assigned a number and must then come up with an activity for their number. For example, SoulSwisster drew number 1 (CW believes this was rigged) and her activity was a “Minute to Win It” contest that involved several mini-competitions each lasting a minute.

These included transferring M&Ms from one table to another with a straw, bouncing ping pong balls into cups, and stacking dice on tongue depressers. CW had number 4 and organized everyone into playing Mastermind using people as the pegs. Other games included: a speed memory game of matching pairs (2), a Newlywed style game (5), a Where’s Waldo kind of activity sheet for the 12 Days or Christmas (8), and a puzzle involving matches (9), and playing We Wish You a Merry Christmas using water glasses (12). There was much wine, cheese, and laughter.

In late January, we went on Scout outing to a city called Kandersteg in eastern Switzerland. In Kandersteg, there’s an international scouting center that consists of a large property and a number of dorm arrangements.

All American Boy’s cub scout troop went as a group. On Friday evening, we drove up and before we arrived, it started to snow. Not light, friendly snow—blizzard-type snow. But we got there just fine, checked in, and spent the evening building an igloo. Or rather the dads spent the evening shoveling snow into plastic forms so the scouts could stack them. This worked well enough until the igloo was complete enough to enter and then it was the dads doing all the work. All the while it was still snowing. The next day, we got up and went skiing. Yes, the flatlanders from Houston strapped boards to their feet and went up the mountain. We had lessons (kids and parents separately!) and spent the day trying the bunny slope. It was particularly embarrassing that we (at least CW) continually fell holding onto the tow rope to go back up to the top of the slope (OK, yes, it was a very slight slope, but a slope nevertheless--gravity is not our friend). And you'll note that SoulSwister had control of the camera. Everyone had a good time, though I’m sorry to say we haven’t been again.

The after-ski was a cub scout bonfire and then a fondue dinner. SoulSwisster has reminded CW of two more exciting elements of the day. The first was the fact that the ski rental shop was about a mile from the gondola. That meant walking. Up hill. In ski boots. Carrying skis. For the first time ever. It was an extremely long mile. The second was catching the wrong bus back to the scout center. Which meant we ended up walking about 2 more miles, but at least we had regular boots on. CW had just blocked those things out of his memory. It’s better that way. To get home, we put the car on a train and rode it for about 15 minutes through a pitch black mountain tunnel. We came out in an area called the Valais (valley) and drive home from there. In any case, a good weekend!

That isn’t the only winter fun we’ve had. Close to our house is a little sledding area, or as they call it over here, “sledging.” We drove up past St. Cergue, which you might remember as the site of Des Alpes, the cow festival, and parked by the side of the road. Then SwissSis, All American Boy, CW, and their friend Aiden tried their hands at the hill. Having forgotten the basic principals of mass, gravity, and frictionless surfaces, CW took off—literally. He still can’t sit on hard surfaces. Did we mention gravity is not our friend? AAB also failed to emerge unscathed—he had a strawberry on top of a goose egg on his forehead. Who knew that icy snow could be so hard? We do now.

The weather is starting to get nicer here in Switzerland. In the past weeks, it’s gotten up to around 60. Last weekend, Dash had a cub scout outing at a place called Maison de Salève in France. It’s an 18^th century farm with a large area for nature walks. We took a 3 hour hike looking for animal tracks and signs—specifically foxes and wild hogs (who the guide assured us were nocturnal—at least I think she did, it was in French). We entered the woods and it was incredibly beautiful—it looked like we had emerged in a scene straight out of the Lord of the Rings. The kids had a great time climbing on the rocks.

We also had our first guests as Tina and Matt Richards came to Geneva on the first leg of their European honeymoon. We drove over to Chamonix in France and went to the top of Mont Blanc. It’s a bit of ride—two separate gondolas to the top at about 12,500’. And then you can take an elevator up another few hundred feet. It was quite chilly and there’s no air up there, but the view from the top is absolutely breathtaking...literally!

Lastly, we just had All American Boy’s cub scout Blue and Gold dinner which is one of the Scouts’ fundraisers. It was last night, so the theme was built around Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day. Dads and sons were supposed to bake a cake or pie to be judged in a contest and our den also was supposed to make hats for a skit (hence our hairy little leprechaun!) The skits were all quite cute and included an appearance by U2, St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, and the Lord of the Dancers-in-Training.

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