Happy birthday Dear S

Come December and January and the main discussion at home centres around how do we celebrate the girls birthdays. I’m all for a big celebration with the girls, when I was growing up we had a party at home on the terrace for each of my birthdays and I still look upon those times fondly. These stopped after I turned 11 and then it was just maybe lunch out with friends, or cutting a cake at home. So while the girls are still young and want to celebrate with their mom and dad around why not make the best of it.

S has been asking for a party at home for some time. I’ve been quite reluctant since we have a flat and not a house and having 10-12 kids running around wrecking our apartment doesn’t seem like a great idea to me. But S promised to keep her friends under control and the hubby and her got into the act and started planning party games and activities with gusto so I thought why not. A was also happy to have the party at home and since there were only a few girls in her class and few girls she knew well in the other class the invite list was small for her party and we thought  we could manage it at home.

The parties turned out to be great fun, and all of us enjoyed the planning, shopping and the parties.

S’s party was held on her birthday, which was on a Friday after school from 4 pm to 7 pm. There were 11 kids in all included our 2 so quite manageable.

The games (all planned by S and arranged by her and the hubby) were :

1.     Pass the Parcel : We wrapped a small prize and a ‘punishment’ in each layer of the parcel, and whoever got the parcel would get the prize and have to do the ‘punishment’. S wrote all the punishments herself (with some friendly inputs from us!) – she had ones like ‘Sing a song in your mother tongue’, or ‘Tell a joke’ . It was great fun. Some of the kids were reluctant to do their punishment but then others offered to do it for them and then everyone got in it together. For eg for the hopping on one foot for 10 hops, we had all the girls hopping around the living room!

2.     Musical chairs: A classic and one of my favourites. I must say the girls were all quite aggressive in reaching the chairs in time. In the end there were just 2 girls left – a new girl and someone who’s been in the school since EY1. Everyone started rooting for the older girl and the hubby felt bad for the new girl and ‘rigged’ the music playing so she could win. If only life was so fair!!

3.     Musical Statues, or Freeze Dance : The hubby and the girls had been doing some research on this for the last one week leading up to the party and had the favourite dance music for the kids ready and stored on their favourites on You Tube. They found a couple of cute numbers like ‘I’m a gummy bear’  and another which I can’t remember the name, where they had kids dancing to the song and the kids could copy their steps. Whenever the music stopped the kids had to freeze and whoever was the slowest at freezing was out. We had bought small prizes for everyone who got out (no losers in the girls birthday parties…) and for this game it was bracelets and everyone wanted the princess bracelet and was more than happy to get out!

4.     Pin the Nose on the Olaf : The birthday party was Frozen theme so we had Pin the Nose of Olaf as a spin on the more traditional Pin the Tail on the Donkey. There was a big poster of Olaf, and cut outs of carrots for his nose and the kids could stick it with blue (pink!) tac.

5.     Wild hitting of the Pinata : We ended the games with a home made Pinata. The girls and the hubby had over the last week crafted a home made Olaf piñata and stuffed it full of sweets. It turned out to be quite strong  and the girls had many chances to hit it until it finally burst!

In addition to the games we also had 3 activities/crafts to keep the girls busy

1.     Crown making : Painting a paper crown and sticking jewels/stars etc on it

2.     Decorating a jewelry box: Decorating a cardboard box with sparkly stuff and ribbons (what fun). The prizes were all stuff you could keep in a jewellrey box, so the idea was for the girls to make the jewelery box and takje home their haul in it!

3.     Face painting : I had called in my nanny (she’s a friend’s nanny but sometimes babysists the girls during school holidays when I am at work) to help with the face painting and to generally help out in the party. We had bought some stecncislk to make flowers and butterflies on the faces, but that didn’t turn out so well so she just ended up drawing freehand on their face. It wasn’t very professional looking but the girls liked it.

And how can we finish without the food. Last time so much of the cake was left over that this time we instead went with cupcakes (the cake lady made some awesome ones with Anna, Elsa and Olaf figures on them) and then pizza, chicken nuggets and some treats for dinner. The girls were tired and hungry after all the games and running around and consumed the chicken nuggets and pizza faster than I could make them!

After dinner everyone relaxed on some mattresses on the hall and watched some of the Frozen movie

All in all S had a lot of fun both planning and enjoying the party. And I have to admit it wasn’t that difficult though I was quite stressed for some time before!

A’s party details coming soon...

Treks this year

Now that I look back this year we seem to have done quite a few treks. I am going to attach the link from the website of a Zurich blogger (who captures it so much better that I would ever) wherever we have undertaken the same trek.. (I usually look to her website for inspiration so those will be quite a few...) 

1. We started with the Klangweg : http://mummysdelight.blogspot.ch/2014_08_01_archive.html

I wrote a post about this myself! This is a 3 km trek with musical instruments every 300 m or so for the children to bang on.  

2. Stoos Panorama weg trail :  A lovely trek overlooking the Lucerne lake..

 http://momstotszurich.blogspot.ch/2007/06/stoos-panoramaweg-trail-ch-sz.html

I ended up going on this trek twice. The first time we went with the kids - we took the chair car up and trekked down. Took 2 hours through some tricky snow covered spots. The second time I went with a friend and we trekked up and down. Much faster without the kids, it took 3 hours to go up and down! This time tricky spots walking pasts cows in the mud. 

3. Children's Adventure Trail at Murren. 

http://ciaobambino.com/kid-friendly-hiking-on-childrens-adventure-trail-murren-switzerland/

We had gone with some friends to Murren for a weekend and when they went up Jungfrau we decided to do a hike in Murren. This hike had the most amazing view of Jungfrau, Eiger and Monch

How have we kept busy?

This year we decided not to travel anywhere over the Christmas break. As you may have read in the previous post the hubby wants to make it a sporty holiday so we are here in Zurich over the 3 weeks long break. The task of keeping the girls entertained for 3 weeks seemed daunting but its not so tough as I'm finding out...
The first week the hubby was still working and I was able to take only two days off. The days zipped past as below...
Saturday we went to watch Penguins of Madagascar (loved the movie) and Sunday we took the girls to the Zoo.
Monday the girls were with my friend (who daughter is in the same class as S) and then S had ballet. Tuesday i was off from work, and the girls had their ice skating lesson in the evening.
Wednesday we went to Fomel Fun (an indoor play area) with some of their friends.
Thursday the nanny was with them since I was at work, and after A had ballet and then the English lesson.
Friday was a relaxing day at home after the many days of activities!

The second week was also quite action packed!!
Saturday I took the girls for a trek at Uetliberg mountain- this was the planetweg trek with the solar system proportionately represented over a 6 km trek. The girls walked for 2 hours and i was quite impressed. We stuffed ourselves at Mc Donalds after and came back for a long rest.
Sunday we went scootering at Zurich horn park, lunch at Frascati (our favourite Italian place) and then for a long walk through old town Zurich. Came back home and rested and then out for dinner to a Thai restaurant i wanted to try for ages.
Monday and Tuesday of the second week I was working but the hubby was off. Monday morning he took the girls to rent their skis for the season and in the evening we all went swimming.
Tuesday morning he took the girls ice skating to the Dolder and in the afternoon we lazed around at home.
Wednesday we spent the whole day driving to Laax for our first skiing of this season and were pretty exhausted at the end  of the day. It was also Christmas Eve when we returned so Santa had to visit at night.
Thursday : Christmas morning. Day of opening stockings and relaxing at home! Girls were thrilled to see their stockings filled with little goodies (which the hubby has been shopping over the last two months) and S spent the morning trying to solve the Rubik's cube with the hubby
Friday : We went to the Technorama Science Museum. Its a wonderful museum where scientific concepts are taught through puzzles, games and experiments. I learnt as much as the girls. We went there a year ago as well and this time i felt the girls understood more and as they become older I think they will appreciate it more and more..

The third week was wonderfully snowy and no less busy...
Saturday : We woke up in the morning and the whole city was covered in snow. It was just beautiful. It had snowed the whole night and there was a thick layer of snow on the ground, on the trees and covering all the houses. It was amazing just to stand at the window and watch. We went swimming again, and as expected the pool was nearly empty as all the others were out enjoying the first snow! We had a long swimming session followed by lunch at the pool and a good siesta at home after! (ok siesta only for the hubby and me, the girls refuse to take naps in the afternoon these days)
Sunday : I took the girls to watch Paddington. One of the girls in S class (Z) also joined us alongwith her mom and it was a fun kids outing of movie followed by a pizza lunch. A did not enjoy the movie so much (she prefers animated movies) and got grumpy halfway, but S and Z kept giggling throughout!
Monday : We went skiing to Hoch Ybrig. Me and S had lessons for the first two hours and then the hubby. We went to the main Hoch YBring (and not the smaller one we had been going to) and we went on the blue slope at the top. I really struggled to come down - unfortunately I think i have not got skiing down so well yet and I am very nervous to make turns on slightly steep slopes, so we came down a lot slower than expected. In addition on the second trip up, there was a snow blizzard and was hitting our faces very hard on the ski chair lift up. S and I were freezing when we reached the top for the second ski run down and visibility was quite bad. We somehow made it down and scrambled to the warm kindergarten where A and the hubby were. S and I took one hour to warm up !! The hubby did well in his 2 hours with the teacher - he managed to go 5 times on the blue slop, in the same time it took me and S to go down twice...
Tuesday : We took the girls to the Connelli Circus. S and I liked it, but A got bored half way through and the hubby did not think much of it. I agree it was not a patch on the Russian circus i saw in India while growing up, and the we didn't understand much of the jokes since they were in German, but the acrobatics and dances were nice and I thought it was a fun outing and something out of the ordinary for the girls to see. There were no animals (not allowed in circus performances here) so it was quite different..
Wednesday : I had to go to Berne to submit A's passport at the Indian embassy for renewal and that took the whole morning and half the afternoon. The girls stayed home with the hubby and helped clean up the house for the 'New year's party' in the evening. We had a party at home for New Years Eve after ages. Not much of a party actually  -two couples came over with their kids. One of them is in S class, so they had a blast. We finished dinner late, just in time for the 12 o'clock church bells. The girls did some hand sparklers in the balcony and the adults had some champagne, and we finally settled down to the watch the New Years firecrackers from the balcony. The fireworks are burst over the lake and we had a good view from our living room window. It was quite an amazing display which went on for 20 mins and included hearts and smilies!!
Thursday : We took the girls sledding to a slope near the Dolder. Our neighbour had told us about this place but we had never been there before. It was a lovely long slope and the girls had a lot of fun going up and down. The view was also great- it was part of the Dolder woods which was covered fully in snow. We had lunch at the Diegenried restaurant afterwards, which also has a lovely view of the snow covered woods..
Friday: We went ice skating at the Dolder ice skating rink. It has a Christmas tree in the middle and we have to ice skate around it. After some time it got very crowded (think its very popular compared to the KEK where we usually go).
Saturday : We again went skiing at Hoch Ybrig. This time we were not troubled by snow blizzards, but the previous evening it had rained at Hoch Ybrig and the slopes were quite icy and slippery. S and I went on two different blue slopes, but to be honest i sucked at them both quite badly. At one steep part I was too nervous to ski down so i took off my skis and slid down on my bottom! While S came effortlessly down the slope doing turns. So much so, that the next time the teacher helped me down the steep slope and we let S come down on her own. Needless to say I was quite embarassed, but I've realised that skiing is really not my cup of tea. I don't think i can progress beyond the blue slope and I think I'll just be happy coming down gentle easy blue slopes and leave the red slopes to the hubby and S! S enjoyed skiing much more this time (since there was no snow blizzard attacking us!) but she wanted to relax in the kindergarten with A while the hubby had his 2 hour lesson in the afternoon.
Sunday : We are just relaxing and enjoying the last day of the holidays. I am quite tired after the skiing and so are the girls and want to take the day to just prepare for the coming week - no more getting up at 8:30! no more afternoon naps!
Sigh it will be back to the old grind.
Happy New year everyone!

Running and a sporty holiday

The hubby has decided to run the marathon this year (Zurich marathon in April 2015). I'm inspired and am planning to run the city run of 10 km on the same. I've been lucky to find a friend (another mom at school) who can run at the same pace at me and we've been able to run 10 km in the city a couple of times over the last 2 months. After running on the treadmill, I haven't found it that difficult, but I must admit we run pretty slowly (we cover 10 km in 1 hr 10 mins as against 45 mins of the running club at school). But that's comfortable enough for me. We also talk continuously so that helps take my mind off any aches and pains - today i tried to run alone and after 2 km i had to alternate running and walking - I find the treadmill much easier.
My friend and I are thinking of taking part in a few city runs this year - definetly Zurich, maybe Lausanne, Fribourg, Greifensee, keeping fingers crossed.
Anyway this year for the winter holidays we (the hubby!!) has decided not to travel anywhere and we are going to make a sporty holiday of it. So everyday either running, skiing, swimming or ice skating!! Sounds like a plan. I have to admit that I am not too keen on the skiing part - I am still scared on the blue slopes and he wants to try red!
Anyway this is a welcome change and I think its nice for the girls to see us be so involved in sports. S likes skiing, swiming and ice skating and A likes the last two. Being here in Switzerand, if you don't like winter sports its difficult to find stuff to do in winter with the snow, the days getting dark at 4 pm and the very few options for indoor entertainment (as compared to the States). 

What i can learn from the kids

Over the last few weeks I've been struck by some of the things i could learn from the girls

1. Absolute honesty : I remember when i was young I used to be 100% truthful, no white lies, always believing that its nothing but the whole truth. Over the years, while i try to avoid situations where i have to lie, I do indulge in some white lies to 'soften' the situation. But no so with the girls. One day at ice skating they split up the groups and S was put in a separate group from her friend. I knew she would get upset so i took her aside and explained to her that since they are at different levels they have been split and S has been skating for longer than her friend and is better so is at a higher group. My mistake. When her friend came and found that she was in a different group she got upset and what did S say? I'm better than you so I'm in this group. And i was like, crap. Of course her friend's mum and I intervened and got them together into the same group but afterwards I was trying to explain to S that sometimes its better not to be so truthful, and that one has to also be modest and judge the situation. I don't think she got it.
In another example, we were trying to sneak A into a cinema theatre (they allow only 6 years plus, even for kiddie cartoon movies!!!) and were trying to prep her to say that she is 6 years old if someone asks and we knew it was a losing battle the minute we started. She refused to speak or would give some funny answer!

2. Kindness and thought for others : S and I were baking muffins for her end of year christmas party at school and she insisted on making one with no chocolate chips for a boy in her class who is allergic to chocolate, and another with only 3 choc chips for her friend who doesn't like chocolate. Its amazing to see S being aware of people's different needs around her and trying to accomodate them. I think that stopped for me a long time ago!

3. Kids pick up on a lot more than you give them credit for : The hubby has a habit of coming home and relaxing reading his IPAd after work while the girls are having their dinner. I am usually doing the dishes or sorting out their school stuff for them at this time. I don't mind since I work part time and have the time from 3 pm to 7 pm to relax a bit (gossip with other moms/run on the treadmill etc) but the other day when i was parking the car and about to go into the house A said, Daddy must be at home doing his IPAD while you have to do all the work!!! You can be sure I mentioned this to the hubby many times :)

In other updates, I had a lovely spa weekend with some of my friends last  weekend. We went to a spa hotel in Flims. Some great massages and lunch/dinner/treks and quality time without being interrupted by the kids. I am now refreshed and ready for the next year of bickering, complaining and whining!

An overload of activities

So this year since I'm working part time and can make it to pick up the girls from school every day I've gone overboard and signed them up for a ton of activities. S has ballet on Monday, they both have ice skating on Tuesday, and then S has English, and Wednesday they have swimming, Thursday A has ballet and then she has English. Friday is the only free day (Hallelujah!). From January they will have skiing on Sunday additionally!!!
Ok ice skating and swimming is something I am very keen on for the girls to learn and touchwood they are progressing well. My aim and hope is that by next year we as a family can go swim and go ice skate. This year when we were in Corsica in the summer we had a lovely experience snorkeling but A was uncomfortable in the water in the life vest and she doesn't swim so she could not remove the life vest, so she sat on the boat while the rest of us were snorkelling. Similarly with ice skating, last year S and her cousins could all enjoy ice skating at the Millenium Park in Chicago but A had to sit out.
So these two activities are for me really :)
The ballet lessons are really fun lessons and in S case all her friends in school go for the lesson and it is straight after school so its like her fun activity and a threat from me to cancel her ballet class always works!
A has her best friend with her in her ballet class so she also enjoys it. She learned last year as well and was really proud to perform on stage so I continued it this year.
But the sum of all the activities makes me a very tired and cranky person. My day's schedule is crazy.
Up at 6 am to get the girls lunch and school bags organised. Crazy rush to get everyone ready and out of the house by 7:45 am. Drop them at the bus stop and off to work, Work non stop (lunch at my desk) till 2:30 pm and then drive to the girls school to make it there by 3:15 for the pick up. Then one of these wonderful activities and by the time we get back home its usually 6 pm. Then make their dinner, empty their bags, do the dishes, shout at them to eat their dinner, bath, story time, bed time and its already 9 pm!! I can finally put my feet up at 9 pm, but I'm so exhausted by then that none of the other housework gets done. Our suitcases took a month to get unpacked from the latest trip, the guest room is full of laundry and the house is quite a mess.
But never mind, I am loving it. I am happy that I can continue working and still spend time with the girls. I am eating much more healthy since the hubby and I have time over the weekends to cook a ton of food for the week and once or twice during the week I can whip up something quickly. And I am finally back to exercising. I try to squeeze in a couple of days during the week (when we are home early from ballet, or one of the girls has their English lesson) and once during the weekend. Am happy to say I am upto running 8 km over 52 mins (my best) and next week I've asked one of the moms at school to run on the road with me to see if I can venture to sign up for the 10 km run during the Zurich marathon in April.

Milestones (dated May 2014)

Mid April S reached her much awaited milestone – the falling of her first tooth. She’d been waiting for months since many of her classmates had already lost their first teeth. The combination of being grown up with her first tooth falling off together with the promise of the tooth fairy was too much to resist. The tooth was loose for about 2 weeks and she proudly showed her loose tooth to us, her friends and Ajja/Ajji over skype. One day it finally became very loose. I would have just waited for it to fall off but the hubby and her together managed to pull off the tooth. S was very brave – she wasn’t squearmish at all about puuling off her tooth (she did her herself) and didn’t mind the blood either.

That night the tooth fairy visited with 10 euros (since we were off for Bellagio the next day), and a handwritten note shaped like a tooth. This is all the hubby’s creativity i must admit. S was super excited with the handwritten note and the money and the note has found its way to her precious jewellery box where all `precious’ things are stored. S was very choosy on what she wanted to buy with her money and we went around quite a few shops in and around Bellagio. On the last day she finally chose a pair of earrings . A was quite upset that S got earrings and she didn’t and is now eagerly waiting for her tooth to fall as well.

And in milestones of a different sort we did our first trek in Switzerland with the girls last weekend. We have been wanting to go for ages but A has never been willing to walk for more than 5 mins and neither of us can carry her for an extended period of time. So its mostly been on flat roads with a stroller (when she was young) and more recently no treks at all. After much googling and mommy blogs searching  and waiting for a sunny Sunday (which turned out to be the main stumbling block) we finalised on the Klangweg which is a 3 km trek with musical instruments every 300m or so for the children to bang on (incentivises them to continue on the trek). Someone recommended that the children could scooter on this trek so we carried the scooters along.

The trek starts at Alt St. Johann (about a 11/2 hours car drive from Zurich). We have to take a cable car to reach Selamatt where the Klangweg trek starts. The cable car itself was pretty exciting as we chose to sit on a open cable seat with just a rod protecting us and our feet dangling over the side. I kept insisting that S hold me tightly and the hubby hold A tightly throughout. The scooters followed us in their own closed cable car J. The first 11/2 km of the Klanweg was on smooth road and the children were easily able to scooter on it. There were some very interesting musical instruments which were built in an easy to play way. The first set was a seesaw which was built around a xylophone and when the seesaw went up and down a ball would roll from one side to the other over the xylophone and make lovely music. Highly exciting for the girls to keep seesawing and making music. A few 100 meters down we came upon the pipes which could be turned upside down and a series of small rings would come down and make a clanging noise. There was even a smaller one which the girls could turn on their own. The next one has steel pipes carved into the trees and you could bang tennis balls at various heights and hear the noises which would be made. After this the Klangerweg pointed in the direction of a pebbly path and there was a smooth road which seemed to connect at a later point to the Klangerweg so since the girls had scooters we decided to take the smooth road. Somehow we missed the intersection with the Klanweg later and ended up on the smooth road for quite a while before realising  we probably had overshot Ilthios which we were where we were planning to break for lunch. This was confirmed when we saw a sign for Ilthios in the opposite direction. We had to then trek up a steep hill (the hubby and I carrying the scooters and the girls being surprisingly ok with the tricky climb and after much huffing and puffing we reach Ilthios which has a lovely restaurant with a stunning view. 

Lovely because there was tons of stuff for the girls to do there – there was a rock climbing frame, bouncy castle (a bit dangerous as there was no rope around it and some of the kids kept bouncing off), rope walking in addition to the usual slides and swings. The food was surprisingly good for a change,  quite different from the usual spaghetti/rosti fare. The hubby had two helpings of burgers and I had two helpings of the vegetable cutlets which taste like the cutlets at home. Yummy. To top it all there was the stunning backgroung of snowtopped mountains and open fields. Could go back there just for the lunch.

After a heavy lunch we decided to walk to the next cable station and continue on the Klangweg, but the Klangweg got more and more pebbly and diverged significantly from the smooth road which seemed to go in the correct direction and where all the others were going, so we decided after 20 mins of trekking to go back to Ilthios and start our journey home. Which was not that straightforward i might add. We took the furnicular down from Ilthios to Unterwasser – we were the only ones on that train and it was strange without even a driver and a bit spooky i might add. We then walked to the main bus stop to take the bus back to the place the car was parked. We were so comfortable sitting in the airconditioned bus (it was hot outside!) that we ended up overshooting oiur bus stop and when we finally got off we had to take the bus in the opposite direction to reach our car park. The girls and I had a long nap in the car while the poor hubby played some heavy metal music to keep himself awake for the long drive back. All in all great fun, cant wait to do another trek soon.

Addendum  :We did another trek with the girls in June and that was fun as well! More about that later...