yodeLaiho

Updating…….slowly

yodelaiho — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:52:40 +0000

The girls have had music concerts recently and I’m trying to post the music videos to You Tube. I have about 8 to load, and the first just took 20 minutes – it’s going to be a long evening.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Ihgj3J4_pUU“> http://www.youtube.com/v/Ihgj3J4_pUU” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”350″>

Here is the first, I think. I’ll try to get them all into a playlist as they load.

Back to Italy

yodelaiho — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:32:42 +0000

Andy had to travel to Italy last week for work so the girls and I decided to join him Thursday when he was done. We started off in Bologna, drove towards Florence and spent the night in a beautiful hotel just outside of the city. The Tuscan country side was amazing and every bit as beautiful as they say it is. The next morning was spent in Florence, then it was a short drive over to Pisa. After that it was over to the sea for an evening of relaxation and a morning in the sun.

Click here to see pictures from the trip, or click the Italy tab at the top of the page.

And here are a couple of YouTube videos.

http://www.youtube.com/v/buD3-ZcQvEw“> http://www.youtube.com/v/buD3-ZcQvEw” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”350″>

Ciao, Venezia.

yodelaiho — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 18:33:21 +0000

I attached the pictures as small thumbnails here on the home page. Venice was just too amazing to post small photos, so click on each one for a larger view.

Three days roaming Venice yieled over 350 pictures between Andy and I – yes it was that beautiful!!!

It was evening and very overcast when we arrived. And since cars are not allowed in Venice you travel by boat or foot.

These are taken from the boat along the southern coast.

The next morning started gloomy and rainy as well, but the girls didn’t care.

There were masks to try on, and pigeons to feed.

Not shy at all, are they?

Just around the corner we stumbled into the piazza San Marco.

You may recognize some of this from the movie The Italian Job. The girls did, so now they were convinced that they were truely somewhere ‘cool’.

More wandering led to beautiful little streets such as these and much gelato! Can there ever be too much gelato? Yum, yum!

And then there were the canals…

And the canals filled with gondolas…

I could have stood here all day and watched the boats glide by. But there was still more to see.

This is the Grand Canal (largest canal that passes through of Venice) as the sun started to peak out for the first time.

We had dinner at a great little place just down on the right. Sat outside right on the water and ate tons of fabulous pasta while watching the boats go by.

Ciao for now. Tomorrow I will add more pictures.

Swoosh!

yodelaiho — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 08:05:42 +0000

Winter break started last Friday and yesterday we do what all good Swiss families are supposed to do during the holidays – we went skiing.

Weather was perfect – blue skies, temp around 30 degrees, little wind, clear view for taking in the scenery.

Both girls are doing great and will be downright scary-fast after their lessons in January.

Mira riding the T-bar up to one of the littler runs.

Arianna riding up.

Mira

Fabulous views. What you can’t see is that between the houses and range of mountains beyond is a valley that’s about 1000 feet down. Makes for a fun car ride up!

There is about 3-4 feet of snow on the ground.

Think they’d let me move in here?

Took a few videos of the girls. Double click the picture to go to our YouTube account to see all 3.

Swoosh!

Arianna’s Winter concert

yodelaiho — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 09:16:26 +0000

Beginning in 4th grade all students at the international school must take instrument lessons. Arianna chose the trumpet. It’s amazing how quickly she has learned, never having any music lessons before.

The school had it’s winter concert last week and I took some videos of her playing. The picture isn’t great, but the sound is rather good.

The first video is the trumpet choir, made up of the trumpet students who take additional private lessons once a week with the band director. They play “Star Wars’ followed by “O herre Gott, Dein gottlich Wort” and for the first song, Arianna is standing furthest to your right, the second song she is furthest to your left.

The next video is of the entire beginner band. It has about 40-50 students who all began playing this year. I was blown away when they started playing. You won’t be able to see Arianna at all.

If you double click on one of the videos, it will take you to my YouTube account. To the right you will see my user name “Knitserland”. Click on this and you will get to a page with all of the concert videos. Click on each one to view.

Enjoy.

Back on board

yodelaiho — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:48:47 +0000

It’s been a while – I forgot how to get the pics to fit properly so if it looks like part of the pic is missing, it probably is. Just click on the pic to see the whole thing.

Time to get back to regular posting here. I’ll start with a glimpse from Wednesday afternoon and a couple hours of ice skating down by the lake. Kids had fun and did great for not being on skates for a year. We went with neighbor friends so they pop up in a few pictures.

The rink had these cute penguins for kids to practice their skating with!

Arianna practicing backwards skating, taught to her by neighbor friend dad, definately not me. I can barely stand on my 2 flat size 9 feet, no way I’m strapping on something that will throw off my sense of balance even more.

Here comes Mira!

Mira and Jess showing that pengiun who’s boss.

Rosey cheeks!

That means it’s time for hot chocolate! Any takers?

Maybe these two!

Zurich Fest

yodelaiho — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 08:43:49 +0000

Every 3 years Zurich holds a huge 3 day festival in July and lucky for us, this was the year. Activities and attractions surrounded the lake area and ran up and down the main city streets. The kids had the most fun at the carnival.

There were many ~~nauseating~~ fun rides!

And a beatiful view of the area from the ferris wheel.

We ate a leisurely dinner out side and were treated to an airshow just over head.

After that we worked our way through the crowds to a grassy area for the best fireworks show ever. You know the big grand finale at most shows, they lit that off and then some every few seconds! It was also set to music which was a fun twist.

It was a great day for us and most of the rest of the country! Zurich city as a population of about 375,000 but the area has an estimated 3 million visitors for this event. It’s that big! Aside from the carnival and fireworks there were water shows, air shows, motorcylce shows, about 60 stages with live bands playing (all at once) and more food than you could imagine.

This about sums it up

Rome

yodelaiho — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 15:07:02 +0000

Our hotel shuttle dropped us off just outside the Vatican wall. I was impressed by the wall alone-it’s huge! All across the street were your normal restaurants and shops which didn’t seem very different from any other city, but then we made it around the wall and saw this-

The pillars and walk way surround most of the piazza.

And when we walked through we were greeted by this familiar site -

This is St. Peter’s Basilica, the big domed building, where our friends were married -

The piazza is huge with several big fountains.

Cardinals going about their daily business walking through the area- Mira’s obviously very impressed.

Vatican Facts:

It is a seperate country within Italy, about 110 acres in size with approx 900 residents.

The pope is ruler of it all.

St. Peter’s Basilica covers just over 5 acres and has a capacity of 60,000, making it the largest Catholic church.

St. Peter’s was built in the 5th century and it’s believed the tomb of St. Peter, one of Jesus’ 12 diciples, is buried there.

Little fun facts passed on to us by friends who took the official tour -

The Vatican is the country with the highest median age and the lowest birth rate!

Go figure!

Best meal ever!

yodelaiho — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:31:03 +0000

Since moving over here I have taken more time to cook or at least fix a little something for dinner. It’s so nice not to feel rushed or to think that meals are a hassle, plus it’s healthier and cheaper in the long run.

That said, there is still no topping a good old American lunch!

Thanks Grandma Ski and Aunt Nancy and Uncle Edja! The girls haven’t been this happy with my cooking for a long time!

I enjoyed it too. I even had a glass of cherry Kool Aid of my own!

PS: I’ll start posting pictures of our trip to Rome tomorrow. I just downloaded them from one camera and there were 150! Of course many aren’t very good or similar but it’s going to take a bit of sorting. I’ll probably just show a few each day.

Regrouping

yodelaiho — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 07:47:41 +0000

Someday I’ll understand this whole blog thing a bit better. I hadn’t realized that all of my posts were piling up on top of each other on one page, making the site slow or even impossible to open for some.

There is probably a better way to do this, but for now I’ve put all old posts in the “Uncategorized” Category at the right. To look back on any of the old posts, click on “Uncategorized”, it will show you 2 posts. To see the rest, scroll to the bottom and click “Previous” where you will see another 2 posts.

The main blog page (the one you see now) will show only the 2 most recent posts. From this point on, the other posts should hide in their appropriate Category at the right, and these will be sorted by month.

Hopefully this will work.

It may not.

Let me know!