Easter Weekend

I had a busy weekend in three countries! We had Good Friday off from work and school, so Raph and I went canoeing on the Bielersee. We found a place to put the canoe in and paddled out past the peninsula to the opposite shore. He remembered that Ligerz has cute old streets just off the main road, so we tied the boat there and walked through town. Mom, if you come visit me, we're going to Ligerz. You'd like it. It's very Italy-esque and doesn't look a bit like Basel. It's also itsy bitsy, but we entertained ourselves for quite some time sitting on a dock eating a box of ice cream. Then we paddled back across the lake, dodging speed boats and lake steamers.



Proof that I did too help paddle, despite whatever slanderous rumors to the contrary are floating around.

Experimenting with improvised methods to maximize paddling efficiency. This isn't the way to do it.






(The oh-so-hip van we found.)

If I ever learn to paint and decide to win the duck stamp contest (watch out Hautmans!) the Bielersee has nice, accessible waterfowl habitat areas and could be a good place to get some duck photos to work from.

Saturday I went to France and saw the Statue of Liberty. We visited several towns, including Colmar, whence the creator of the famous French gift to the U.S. hailed. There is a nice replica in a roundabout. We drove around her a couple times, and I think that's gonna save me a trip to New York.




Easter Sunday: I had 15 kids in my Sunday school class! That's a lot...but in some ways it's almost easier to teach class with 15 than it is with 5. I was working together with another teacher this time, and that was fun. Aubrey and I cooked dinner for some friends at her house in Germany in the evening. When we left church, we knew the main ingredients of what we were making (as in, we had meat...and some veggies) but hadn't decided exactly how we were going to cook any of it. Thanks to the trusty Internet, however, and our combined easy-cooking know-how, we managed to have dinner on the table a mere 10 minutes later than planned. Not bad! In the end, we made turkey with a meat sauce that M1 taught me to make this week (you know it's easy if a five year old teaches you to make it), and steamed vegetables, potatoes, plus tasty contributions from our company.
We didn't have enough lids, but plates work great. "So ghetto," according to Aubrey, but perfectly functional, if you ask me.

I think Aubrey is the sunniest, most smile-inducing Easter chef ever! What a pretty lady and a gracious hostess. :)

Hank, Aubrey, Raphael, Josh, and Ben. And because I know what you're thinking, we DID invite girls too. We can't help it if they didn't come.

Zopf

Those braids in the header are my morning handiwork. I started work earlier than usual today at 7, because M1's two week spring break from Chindsgi starts today and their mom had to leave for a teacher in-service retreat. The girls were going to the zoo with their grandparental units late morning, so my first couple hours were spent finishing breakfast and getting them ready. Our hair session went like this: I asked M2 if she wanted her hair done. No, she said. She did not. M1 said she wanted hers done though, and that changed M2's mind in a hurry. M1 tried to assert the "me first" rights of being older (very diplomatically, I might add, as older children often do). So we had a quick chat about thinking about others and letting them go first sometimes too. M2 was therefore first on the stand. She wanted pigtails, and they were a perfectly satisfactory pair of pigtails until M1 had french braids. After that, pigtails just wouldn't do at all, so I re-did M2's hair to match M1. The whole event took a half hour at least. Then we talked about hippos. And monkeys. And read a couple books. And rode bikes and played badminton outside.

More word trouble this week: The word for the "zoo" is "Zooli," which doesn't look hard, and I recognize it when I hear it, but every time I try to say it the word for pigs (Seuli) slips out, and I can't quite remember how the vowel is supposed to sound for zoo. M1 politely refrained from laughing until I confessed to her that I couldn't remember which was which, and then she grinned away every time I said it.

Isn't this the cutest piece of bread you ever saw?

Swiss people are so clean!

This is for the Americans, mostly...