Mason's 4th Birthday

The latest biggest day of Mason's life has come and passed. He turned four years old. On the morning of his birthday, Mason sat at the breakfast table looking dejected. He said to me, "Daddy, my feet don't touch the floor!" Apparantly Mason thought that turning 4 also came with an overnight growth spurt of about two feet. He was pretty disappointed.

The weekend before, he had his big 4th birthday party with his friends. One of his other friends, Christina, was also turning 4 around the same time, and so the two shared the same birthday party at a place called Planet Jeux. Christina wanted all the girls to come dressed as princesses, and not surprisingly all 9 girls in attendance came in complete princess dresses and tiaras (I think I will buy some Disney stock). Going along with the theme, Mason asked all the boys to also come to the party in a costume. Much to my pleasure, Mason decided to go to the party dressed as his favorite MN Vikings player, Adrian Peterson. While we were a little nervous about how sharing a birthday party might go, everything went very well, and Mason and Christina were both willing to share the spotlight for the day.

Earlier this year, when we asked Mason what he wanted to do for his birthday, he said, "I want to go skiing!" We had made plans to go back to Zermatt, as it is the only sure-fire place to be open in late November. As it turned out that weekend, Zermatt was going to be hit by a blizzard. 60 mph winds and heavy snow at 12000 feet did not seem like a good idea. So, we canceled. Luckily, we also received early snow nearby, so Mason and I went skiing that weekend anyway. After a great first season, Mason seemed to forget that he knew how to ski. He stood at the top of the hill and said, "How do I get down from here again?" The first run took about 45 painful minutes, but after a snack-break, Mason wanted to get back out on the mountain and try it again. Two more runs and he was almost back to last-season form. If only his dad could do the same...

Désalpes - Bringing Down the Cows

This weekend, we decided to partake in an age-old Swiss tradition: the descent from the alps of the cows for the winter - known as the Désalpes. We hopped in the car and started to make our way to the mountain village of Charmey. About half-way there, we ran into some stopped traffic and sat in the car for about 30 minutes. Finally, we heard the bells start ringing, and shortly afterwards a parade of cows, decorated with their best bells and bouquets of flowers began to stream by. Apparantly, we didn't get to the village in time to miss the first herd coming down the mountain. Mason and Nicole jumped out of the car to get a better look at the colorful, incredibly smelly parade. The cows seemed to like watching Mason as much as he liked watching them (as you can see in the picture). After the first herd passed us, we made our way up the mountains to Charmey, dodging cow-pies all over the road.
The village of Charmey was packed with people, many dressed in their traditional swiss costumes, and most of them consuming beer, wine and sausages pretty freely, while the smell of fresh cow-pies filled the air. Nicole felt like she was back in Wisconsin. An MC gave information over loudspeakers about which herd was coming next, where they were from, and where they were headed.
George watched the cows passing nervously from his perch in the backpack carrier. I think he was a little scared of how big the cows were and how loud their bells were as they marched past us. Towards the end of the last herd we saw, I was standing a bit too close to a passing cow, who decided to whip his tail in my direction, sending a nice spray of you-know-what landing on my jacket and forehead. Nicole was nice enough to grab the baby-wipes to help me clean-up, but not before she continued to casually take some more pictures. I guess after watching the cows move at their glacial pace, Nicole decided to take it nice and slow as well. Lucky me.
For more pictures and some video of the Désalpes, check out the pictures and video links to the right.

Look Who's Walking

Yes, yes, I know I start every post these days with, "I know we haven't posted anything in awhile", so I will not start this post the same way this time. So, anyway, since our last posting, George has reached quite a few milestones. First teeth, first birthday, first temper tantrum, and now, his first steps.
If you haven't see his first birthday pictures, please follow the "Our Pictures" link to the right to our Shutterfly website where you can see the latest pictures. I admit I am doing a much better job keeping the pictures updated on Shutterfly than keeping this blog going, but I promise things are going to change. We have a lot of action coming up in the next few months, so I think we will have some good blogging material to work with.
So you can see how George's walking has progressed in the last month, you can follow the "Our Videos" link to our YouTube page and watch some video of the little guy waddling around. Notice that George is also taking on some of Mason's finer personality traits already, as he is probably the loudest 1-year old on the planet. I guess when you have to compete with Mason, you adapt quickly to survive in this household. Mason is also teaching George the finer points of ripping toys out of other kids hands, which George is already starting to do at playgroups. On his own, George is also keeping us extremely busy as he opens every cupboard and every drawer in his reach and emtpies all contents. While we are busy cleaning up from one cupboard, he moves quickly to the next one and starts emptying those contents. We can't seem to find any good child-proofing locks in Switzerland that will not ruin our cupboards, so we just deal with it. Now you know why we never post on the blog anymore...

Saas Fee, Switzerland

Since Mason's first disastrous ski lesson in early January, he has come a long way. After figuring out how to snowplow (or "make pizza" as he calls it), he has improved steadily, and is now chasing mom and dad down the slopes (or, often, we are chasing after him). Learning to ski has helped with his concept of time, as he now understands weekends as the days we can go skiing. With his new-found passion, we decided to skip a warm-weather vacation this year and go on a ski-holiday.

We found a hotel in Saas Fee, Switzerland (pronounced "sauce fey") that offered on-site child-care for George, a spa for Nicole, kids dinners every night and ski runs up to 12,000 feet for guaranteed March snow. The village of Saas Fee is car-free, with only small electric cars allowed inside. Upon arrival, the hotel bellhop came to the parking ramp to pick us up in the electric taxi. Mason was very excited, as he had been reading one of his books called the "Snowy Vacation" where a bellhop picks up the family in a funny car, so Mason thought it was the coolest thing ever. The hotel was great (Mason walked in the lobby and said "ooooh, fancy!") and they upgraded our room to a two-room suite, so Mason had his own bedroom. Nicole declared that this would be just like a second-honeymoon. And then reality set in...

First, Mason had no interest in attending the kids dinners, instead preferring to torture mom and dad and the rest of the hotel guests in the main dining room. Then, George came down with a high fever on the third day, rendering the child-care useless for the last few days. Also, Mason's overall behavior for the first few days had us looking into whether it would still be legal to put him up for adoption. Luckily for us (and him), his behaviour improved the last few days, and for the last two nights he actually agreed to go to the kid's dinner, so we were able to eat our dinners in the relative peace and quiet of a 7-month old.

As for the skiing, it snowed non-stop for the first two days, with high winds, making visibility very poor, but the snow was excellent. We were definitely the only ones dragging our three-year old along to ski for the first few days, and I think we were a bit self-conscious as everyone stared at us on the trams up the mountain. However, Mason skied the runs very well, only getting tired coming down the runs from the very top of the mountain (I think the altitude at 12,000 feet was a bit much for the little guy), and a few intermediate runs we needed to take to get from one side of the mountain to the other. He preferred to bomb down the easy runs, despite our constant pleas to practice his turns. "No, Daddy, I need to make my french fries and go really, REALLY fast." "French fries" is the term we use for making your skis parallel. The weather cleared the last few days, and along with all the fresh snow, it made for great conditions. With George sick, Mason and I tamed the mountain on the last day, with Mason making really nice turns on the last few runs. Amazing how fast little kids can pick it up. Next season Mason will probably be a better skier than me, not that that is saying much.

Start 'em young

So it has been about 4 months since our last posting. Since the arrival of George, our lives have been pretty boring, and we have been suffering from major lack of sleep, so I didn't think anything we were doing was interesting enough to blog about. (Nicole's edit: Our lives are definitely not boring, we love our little bundle of joy. We're just not as mobile.) I suppose our trip home over the holidays qualifies as interesting, if you are into reading about torture. Some solid advice for everyone out there: never take two jet-lagged kids on a two-week, 7-stop driving tour of the midwest. Actually, it was better than it sounds, we had a great time visiting family, but still about the most exhausting two-weeks of my life. It actually feels relaxing to be back at work in comparison.

Anyway, so now that we are back in Switzerland, and ski season is in full swing again, it was time to introduce Mason to the joy of skiing. Basically everyone in Switzerland starts skiing at the age of 3, so we thought we would join in the tradition as well. It started on Saturday with a private lesson in the nearby ski-resort in Villars. This lesson can only be described as a total disaster. Mason's instructor was a total jerk, and within 5 minutes, Mason was crying inconsolably and I finally had to intervene to settle him down. For the rest of the lesson, I had to do the teaching to Mason, because if the instructor even looked at Mason, he broke down crying again. That was a nice waste of money. It wasn't completely for naught, however. At the end of the "lesson", Mason was skiing a bit on his own and was starting to get into it. That night, Mason commented that he wanted a "mommy teacher" for skiing, and not a "daddy teacher."

On Sunday, we formed a group with 3 of Mason's little girlfriends. This time it was much better. The instructor (despite being a "daddy teacher") was very nice and made the kids feel very comfortable right away. This time we stayed away from the lesson, at the request of the instructor, and only watched from a far distance. Mason seemed to really enjoy this lesson. The instructor would go down the bunny hill with one kid and then go back up to get the next one and come down. At the end of the lesson, Mason couldn't be patient any longer. As the instructor took one girl down, I saw Mason start waddling towards the incline, and as he reached the slope, he just took off and bombed the hill by himself and needed to be stopped by a passerby to avoid sailing out of the bunny area. That's my boy!

After the lesson, Mason told me, "I didn't cry today! I went really fast down the big, big, BIG hill!" I think we have the makings of a ski bum.