Videos

Here is Bluet chasing French pigeons

And here is a new gimmick that allows one to shoot time lapse videos on the iPhone

More International Visitors

Standing practice.

And from even further afield, last week Nana and Wayne flew in from Missouri to enjoy the Swiss life. After a day or two of wandering around Zurich......

 
.......we went to France.

All aboard the very clean and well below capacity Swiss train.

Switzerland is surprisingly close to France - from Zurich you can be in Basel in less than an hour, and at the train station you can walk through a doorway to platforms 30-35, and immediately arrive in France - there is a big sign saying 'France' above the door, so that you know. Once in France, we boarded a (Significantly less clean, older and overcrowded) French train to take us to Colmar in Alsace. Immediately upon boarding and leaving the station a French man got up and started to play the accordion. I do not think he was being paid by the French tourist board either.

As you can see, Colmar looks very French. It is where the man who made the Statue of Liberty came from.

Here is Bluet enjoying a delicious French pain au raisin.

During this trip Bluet somehow became fascinated with going inside churches ("You have to be quiet in the church") and looking upwards at the beautiful stained glass windows.

This religious art is crazy and surreal and quite good

This religious art is rubbish

OK, I'm done with museums. Can we go home now please?

French playgrounds are great - there were no swings, no roundabout and the see-saw could be worked by one kid alone - so no swing pushing or see-sawing or roundabout spinning for the parents - perfect!

International Visitors 1

We've been busy the last couple of weeks with visitors from foreign climes, as you will soon see. First, Andrew and Maria came to visit from Slovakia/Scotland/Norway. So we showed them the sights of Zurich and it was very fun, but unfortunately I have left it so long to write up, that I can't remember exactly what we did. Perhaps some photos will help......

Sight one: Ilona

At the river; Bluet probably ate some ice cream a little later on. And we all jumped in the river because the weather was so hot

The tram, going somewhere. We took the tram a lot. Ilona did not face the right way for this photo

Of course, we had to go see the world famous Zurich pond. This day it rained

The big pond; I think Bluet got her feet wet

A park near the big pond

A new person to push the swing proves popular

Exhaustion

Looking at the bees - we went for brunch at PQ - which is funny, because when Bluet was the same age as Ilona is now, and Andrew came to visit New York, we went to the branch of PQ in Central Park. 

Andrew and Maria bought Bluet a lego house for her birthday, which is still being played with every day

Then we went for a walk in the woods near our house. There is a gun range up there (we discovered), where the European championships were taking place, so our pleasant walk was interrupted by sporadic gun shots. We also saw some of the women's marathon the day we went to look at the pond, and quite possibly would've been visible in the background on TV. 

There are also big piles of earth

1-2-3 Jump!

Just outside of the city there is a place where you can take a cable car up the mountain and get a great view of the city. So we did a small excursion by tram, train and cable car. Bluet loved being in the 'little car' above the trees, and we saw a splendid view of Zurich.

Apple Juice at the top of the mountain. It was too fizzy for Bluet

Coming up next: more international visitors

Microscopy

A week or two ago it was raining (as it often does) so I took Bluet and Ilona on the tram to the dinosaur museum. Bluet was instantly attracted to this microscope. I don't know where she gets that from.

Peppa Pig

Bluet reenacting one of her favourite episodes of Peppa Pig at speed

Local Playground

We have already found our closest local playground. We go there rain or shine. It has swings. What more do you need?

Chasing a "beautiful butterfly"

We are back

Hello again. It's been a while. We just moved house (to somewhere we hope to stay for a while - there has been a lot of house moving recently). We have a garden and lots of rooms, and a lot of stuff still to unpack or put away. For a while there we had no internet, so no blogs, but I will try and catch up. First, in children news, since we've been 'away' Ilona has become very very good at crawling, very good at pulling herself up to stand, and very good at stopping crawling as soon as I start to film her. Here is today's crawling video

Meanwhile Bluet is still into Peppa Pig.

Finally, we are almost through packing, but whilst in the process of unwrapping boxes and other paper-wrapped items (like a really boring Christmas when you already know what everything is, and some of it you actually don't really want anymore...).

Then I started to unwrap this bookcase

Inside I discovered 2 fully inflated balloons.

This begs two questions 1) how did they stay inflated for 3 months? and 2) why did the movers pack the balloons in the first place? I can only assume that moving men know that balloons stay inflated in shipping crates, so pack them to give you a lovely surprise at your new home. Otherwise why pack something that is obviously rubbish

Still, Bluet enjoyed playing with them. Strangely the red one had deflated within 3 hours of unpacking, whilst the yellow one was still going strong.

Strangely the red one had deflated within 3 hours of unpacking, whilst the yellow one was still going strong.