Brienz

On our way home, we stopped by the old homestead in Brienz. It was an old carpentry with the machines being ran by water power. It is in poor shape now but still a very pretty spot. It is fun to hear stories of how they grew up and what life was like back then. There is a beautiful view of the village and lake of Brienz from Maria's old bedroom window.

Disentis

We had two weeks off in October and one of them was spent in an as of yet little explored (at least for us) area of the country. It is also the home of the fourth language of this country, romansch. It is a mixture of latin, italian, french and german and is very difficult to understand although fun to listen to. We had snow upon our arrival late Saturday night and it stuck around for a day and then disappeared. It was a relaxing week spent mostly at the pool where we stayed. Ralph's mom came with us and helped with the cooking and child minding (mostly Alinya) while we swam.

Our house was the one with the blue shutters and we were on the top one and a half floors. The complex shared a pool and indoor and outdoor playgrounds as well as kids' supervised entertainment about 8 hours a day. The kids went a few times but mostly enjoyed the pool, outside playground or hanging out in the apartment.

I didn't have enough space to do the whole song!

Liam is 4! It was a fun day with a fun boy...Thursday is our busiest day of the week with our lunch kids, piano, then soccer but in between I did have time to be with Liam and to enjoy him. He has always been a very happy boy, generous with his smiles and hugs and that hasn't changed. We are so lucky to have you in our family Liam!

Kim and the kids met us at the lake yesterday in Murten, the town where Ralph works. It was surprisingly hot and the kids enjoyed one last dip in the water before the temperatures fall next week. There must be a fingerprint on my lens again....

More birthdays!

Ralph's birthday was on Sunday, and he requested a relaxing day and that is how it turned out. We had lunch and then played for awhile after opening presents and then went for a long walk in the beautiful fall weather. The boys rode their bikes over the whole motocross circuit and then we came home and ate dessert for dinner. What a day! The motocross is two Saturdays and next Sat I will try to get some pictures. It is cool to have it right down the road from our house. We are going to meet Kim at the lake today (not for swimming though, it's too cold!) so maybe I can get a few pix of them too.

I have two extra kids on Thursdays and I tried tabletop spaghetti out on them and it was a great success. They laughed and slurped and asked immediately if we could do it again. It was great fun. Their mom takes my boys on Monday so we both have at least one day when we don't have to be home to make lunch. It works out well and always goes by really quickly.