Wow, I have some catching up to do. Everything here in Swissy land is going well. We are now in somewhat of a normal life routine again, which is great.
We are in the process of deciding between two houses to rent and should make our decision within the next day or so. Actually, we know our decision. We are just waiting on the landlord to reduce the rent on the one place. Knowing that will never happen, the house we will most likely get is in a small town outside of Geneva. Population 830! Yikes, and I think that may include the chickens (who eat french bread by the way). So it is a very small farming town located about 20 minutes from downtown. 10 minutes to the boys school and 2 minutes from my favorite shopping mall. The house is a 17th century village home. Completely renovated inside. Lots of charm. It is small and the yard is tiny but there is a little park across the way from us. Their is a farmer across the street from the house who sells eggs daily. The other day there was a hawk in the yard, the chickens got scared and therefore, no eggs for the town folks on Wednesday. Guess you just can't plan for these kinds of things. Kevin is currently in the market for a scooter, (in particular, a red vespa that will go well with his large red sunglasses and black leather pants) to take to the train station every day. He can't walk to the station so, scooter it is. I would also love to drive the scooter. You see so many moms (and women who look much cooler than I) hopping on their scooter and driving around downtown in their knee high boots (and leather pants).
Anyhow, school is going well for the kids. Alex is making friends. He had a few rough patches at first. The class is small and there are only a handful of boys in the class. Hard to fit in . Things are better now thankfully. It is funny. He is starting to use words like rubbish and summon. For instance, he would say, Auston, you need to summon a pokimon card to trade! Ahhh!
We decided to enroll Auston at the same school. He has now been going to school for a month. The schedule is Monday-Friday 9-3:30 with a half day on Wednesday. I felt like this was a bit much for a boy who just turned 4! So, he is going Tuesday, Wed and Friday for the time being. He loves school and has been making lots of friends. He is in a bilingual program with two days all in french and the 3rd day in English.
Speaking of french, we are all taking french lessons. We have a french tutor come to the house for both kids once a week. Kevin and I are both also taking private lessons for an hour twice a week. I think it makes such a difference for the kids. They hear french all day long, they even watch cartoons in french. In fact, we were in Paris this past weekend and Auston said, "mommy, why don't they speak french here?" Well, we all know that Parisians speak far better english then you speak french (so they think) so we took the easy way out and spoke english the whole weekend. They speak alot of english in Geneva too but they really encourage you to speak french and will be patient with you as you try.
So, we have been taking a few trips over the past weekends. We tried skiing again a few weeks back and had tons of success...other than the time Kevin was dangling from the toe rope, hanging on for his dear life in hopes of pulling himself back up onto the seat. Poor hubby, wish I had a picture of that. Not too many people can fall off of toe ropes. Hope he never reads my blog, he'd kill me. So I scheduled lessons ahead of time for the kids at a resort called Lelex and even got helmets. We were all set. The only problem is that when we got there and went into the ski school we discovered that we were actually at the wrong resort. Dam GPS. I had to very quietly ask the women, "so where are we right now?" Thankfully, they made room for the kids to take lessons at the "jarden des enfants" anyhow. So, other than ending up at the wrong resort, all was good. We are going to ski again this weekend..not sure where yet. Who knows, we will probaly end up going to the wrong place anyhow!
Another weekend we headed to a small town called St. Cergue which is about 20 minutes away. This is where Alex took his school field trip to go dog sledding and snow shoeing. Since Alex was now a pro, we went back and the whole family went sledding and snow shoeing. It was a lot of fun. Beautiful views from way up high on the mountain. The kids did great. Although Auston kept saying this was boring and eventually Kevin had to carry Auston, snow shoes, polls and all, on his shoulders back down the mountain. That was a picture. St. Cergue is such a great little town. I really would love to go out there on my own to go snow shoeing sometime. It would be so peaceful to hike around on a sunny day in the snow. They also have a great package that includes night skiing and fondue from 6-10 every night for $25! For once, a great deal in Swissy Land!
I've included some pics of our snow shoeing experience! Write more soon!
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