Fantastic Day

Today was such a great day. It started out with not being quite so rushed to get out the door in the morning for church because we had Stake Conference at 10 instead of church at 9. Which means we had to leave the house at 9 instead of 8:10. Then we rode the train to Zollikofen to go to the stake center there, which just happens to be next to the temple. It is gorgeous. And it was SUCH a beautiful day today—after weeks of gray skies, the temple spire against the blue was breathtaking.

Here we are in front of the temple doors staring straight into the sun. :)

The conference was broadcasted from Berlin, and Pres. Uchtdorf was there with his wife and also Barbara Thompson, both of whom I love. And get this---Pres. Uchtdorf speaks GERMAN!! Ha ha, kidding. But he did speak in German, and so did Sister Thompson, who served a mission in Germany. And Sister Uchtdorf spoke too. Also in German. ;) But we went upstairs to the English translation room where it was translated for us. Which is awesome, and also funny because President Uchtdorf talked for a little while about respecting others as ourselves, and even so in our own family, and how we need to remember to always endure our family. HE mentioned this a couple more times—enduring our families. And I thought, hmmm, I’m guessing that’s not exactly what he means. Sure enough, when we brought it up to a native German speaker afterwards, they said “ertragen” can mean endure/tolerate/put up with, *OR* can mean sustain/support. However, it IS good advice both ways. Some days you just have to focus on the enduring part. :)

So after visiting for about an hour after the meeting ended (Brett saw many people he recognized from his mission days and had a good time catching up), we took the train back. When we got to the train station, we had about 1.5 minutes to get to the complete other end of the station to catch our train home. So we RAN all the way through—Brett first pushing the stroller with Ethne and Tell, then me running holding Hazel’s hand, then Jethro running last. It was awesome. Awesome because we caught our train in the nick of time. :) I think it’s funny how we had to go to a meeting from 10-12, and we left our house at 9 and got home at about 2. It’ll be good to have a minivan. Although it is fun to visit with all the other members on the trains going the same direction, too.

So we had some lunch and then Brett and I tried to sneak in a nap while the kids played. Jethro got my camera and took pictures. Isn’t it nice that Ethne gave us her blankie? Then when Talmage woke up from his (very much needed) nap, we went outside because it was suuuuuuuch gorgeous weather. Other people were out enjoying it to, so I begged Brett to ask a person passing by to take a picture of all of us by the Swiss cow. Brett said no, but then I whined and begged and reminded him it was my heart’s desire to have a family picture by the cow, so he gave in. I love him. :)

Then we went on a walk to somewhere we hadn’t explored before. Can you see how warm it was???? No hats, no gloves, Hazel just wearing a light jacket—this makes me SOOOOOO happy!!! Jethro and Hazel ran up and down the hill.

Every time I look at this picture I about laugh my head off. I’m not sure how it is that Hazel looks exactly like a little doll that Jethro’s flopping around, but it’s hilarious.

What glorious, bright sunshine! I think sunshine is one of my favorite things on earth.

Then Hazel convinced us to walk to the playground at her school. Talmage LOOOOOOVED this swing.

swinging from Kayli Bell on Vimeo.

Then we walked home again as the sun was going down. Then we had some dinner and stuff, and got ready for bed. Talmage was being HILARIOUS tonight and he was giving Ethne these huge, enormous hugs and being that he’s as big or bigger than her, he’d knock her down and it was the cutest thing in the entire universe.

Later, when the kids were in bed and I was looking at these here pictures, Brett went to go milk the cow. I was sitting here, minding my own business and suddenly I hear, “I am descending the stairs this very moment.” I looked around to see a walkie-talkie sitting on the window ledge beside me. I picked it up and said, “You’re so weird.” Then I was told, “Please maintain radio silence unless it is absolutely necessary to contact me.” I continued receiving updates throughout his venture.

“I am now approaching the Wegemann residence.”

“A light just came on!”

“A dog is approaching.”

“It does not appear to mind my presence.”

“I am now engaging the milk dispensing apparatus.”

“I am now completing the milking operation and will return to homebase shortly.”

Really, what could be a better ending to such a nice day?

(p.s. Yesterday was nice too, after Brett and I got over being mad at each other in the morning that is. Brett and our friend David went to the priesthood session and David’s wife and kids came over here to play while they were gone, and then we had dinner together. It was a good time, including some rounds of Indian leg wrestling and the like. It’s amazing how it doesn’t really matter to kids that they don’t speak the same language. They play with legos, they dress up in princess outfits, they wrestle, they dance. Words are extraneous.

Also, we found a desk that somebody had left on the side of the road to be taken to the dump (which you have to pay for here—not a free service) and it is nice and I like it so we took it inside and now I have a place to put my computer, which is really good because before it was just on the floor in the corner with the couch pushed in front of it to try to deter kids from getting into all the many wires. Free is maybe my second-favorite thing in the world.)

Images of this February Day

 

Pretty things

Kids ready for playing in the snow after I went to a kids second-hand store and got Hazel’s coat and snowpants and Jethro’s snowpants for 1/2 price. Sweet. And Ethne’s cute little suit was a hand-me-down from a family in the ward. Really sweet. :) Talmage was all bundled up too, but he wouldn’t stand for a picture.

Hazel is sooooo pretty. I can’t decide which picture I like better. (I know, they’re close to exactly the same. But that’s why it’s so hard to choose.) She really looks good in pale pink. Then her cheeks just match so well.

This is a picture I took when I was back in Utah. Don’t you just LOVE the color of a winter evening? When it’s getting dark fast but it’s just a shade of beautiful blue? I love it. That’s one of the things that’s great about living in the country. You can’t really see it the same when you’re surrounded by houses and lights on all sides.

The end.

German

Brett wants me to learn German. Let's just say I am not as enthusiastic about the idea as him. I won't go into reasons.

Anyway, Brett ran across a blog post the other day entitled 'Don't Learn German' and we thought it was HI-larious. Here are some of my favorite parts, but you can click here to read the entire thing:

Living in Germany is great, and I would recommend it to anyone. Speaking German, on the other hand, is terrible and it should be avoided at all costs. In fact, Mark Twain warned us way back in 1880 in his essay The Awful German Language not to bother with this language. There are countless reasons not to learn German, so let’s discuss a few:

The German language is, in fact, impossible to learn unless you begin learning it as a baby. Starting to learn this language is impossible if you start later, because your brain will lack the capacity to learn so many senseless details, such as the different forms of the word “the”.

• You probably know in German there are three different genders der, das, and die. So for every single noun out there, you need to memorize a gender as well (the are some rules for determining gender, but for every rule there are just as many exceptions as examples that fit, so you still have to memorize every single one individually). But you also need to change the article, based on the case that you are using the noun in. Let’s see what this looks like in German:

	German
Nominative	der	das	die	die (pl.)
Accusative	den	das	die	die
Dative	dem	dem	der	den
Genitive	des	des	der	der

Now let’s translate that table into English:

	English
Nominative	the	the	the	the (pl.)
Accusative	the	the	the	the
Dative	the	the	the	the
Genitive	the	the	the	the

Do you really want to learn a language that has 16 ways to say the word “the”? And it doesn’t stop there, you need to learn 16 ways to say “a” (in English 2), and 32 ways to change adjective endings (in English we have 0). And you want to try to do this in real-time in your head while trying to carry one a conversation… forget about it.

No matter how good your German gets, most Germans will speak English much better than you can speak German. Let them do the work in learning your language, since they have to do it anyway to talk with the rest of the world. The British have figured out you can live in Germany with no problems without speaking a word of German, so just follow their lead.

Use your lack of German speaking abilities to your advantage in the workforce. For every professional job in Germany, English is a required skill. So by default, any professional working in Germany who doesn’t speak English fluently either lied to get the job and/or is incompetent. Forcing these people to speak in English gives you an unfair edge in order to dominate negotiations. Try negotiating in German and you have the exact opposite situation… don’t set yourself up for a weaker position by learning enough German to get you into trouble.

You will never learn how to say ö or ü.

Where we live.

I always like to be able to visualize in my head where someone is when I talk to them. Like if one of my siblings moves, I like it better once I’ve been to their house so I can place them in it. Anyway. So here are some pictures of where we live. (But only nice pictures, because if you saw the pictures of all the boring, blah stuff, how fun would that be?)

So these are pictures of the awesome colors in our house. Andrea, tell me you wouldn’t kill for these oranges and (kinda) limes. :) We have 3 bedrooms, a nice-sized front room and a small kitchen. Oh yeah, and there are two bathrooms, but one of them we turned the shower into a closet because we’d rather have the space than the extra shower. And really, inside our house there’s not a whole lot more to see. When we were packing to come here, decorations somehow didn’t make the cut of most importance. And we have enough furniture to get by, but not any more than that. That is okay. I will definitely, however, get some pictures printed and hang them up somehow.

Okay, so on to the more fun stuff, this is a little wood area that’s to the left of our house just a little ways. The day of the Fasnacht parade we came back to explore it a little.

And this is our favorite part of our apartment. Since our apartment is the last on the long street of many many apartments (making our walk to the bus stop very far), our big front room windows and deck look out on this farm. Behind it you can see (on a clear day, which has been unfortunately all too rare) a small little bit of the Alps.

See? This is closer than how we see it, because I zoomed in, but very lovely either way.

Incidentally, this farm is where we get our milk from. We walk down the road a short bit, bringing our own container of course, to this handy-dandy automatic milk dispenser. You open that little door thingee you see on the left, put your container on the shelf, put your coins in, and push the start button. The freshest milk a person could ask for. For cheaper than at the store too. 1 frank for 1 liter. So now one of Jethro’s chores sometimes is to go milk the cow. :)

And these are the cows that give us our milk. Hi cows – thanks for the milk! (Moooo-you’re welcome!)

More lovely pictures. A pretty pretty sunrise one morning.

And here are just a couple pictures of Bern from the bus station place. I like this dude’s sweet beard in this one.

Like I said, I just show the pretty pictures. All the many many boring, gray cement apartment buildings next to us on the other side of our house just aren’t as fun as the lovely mountain pictures. So you can just pretend in your mind’s eye that we are surrounded only by pure Swiss loveliness.

Fun with Fireflies

The other day when Brett was in Zurich I showed the kids the youtube video for Fireflies by Owl City. Jethro loved it, and watched a few times in a row, and before long they did this:


So having a very bare front room is good at least for dancing!

p.s. Go to this blog again for more pictures of my model sister and her handsome husband!

Happy Love Day

So, Valentine's Day is not celebrated in Switzerland. On Saturday I had the idea that we (being Americans) should make some valentines to give to our Swiss friends, but then I remembered we don't have a printer, nor did we have any plain paper. So I was lame and didn't make any. Lame me.

So for some really cute lovey posts you'll have to click HERE or HERE.

Yesterday I made us all write little love notes to each other that I read out loud after dinner. Brett had been the scribe for Hazel and Ethne, and he had written EXACTLY what they said. So when he asked Ethne what she wanted to say to Jethro, and she said, "nothing," he wrote it. Then we read Ethne's out loud, and they said things like, "I can't say anything to her," we all started laughing sooooo hard. The next one I came to that was from Ethne, I said, "This is from Ethne to Hazel," and I couldn't read it because I was laughing, and everyone started laughing, and Jethro was laughing so hard he was practically crying, and he gasped, "I'm laughing and I haven't even heard it!" Good times. Then I gave them all a sucker I had bought in Bern. Hazel's was a flower, Ethne's was a butterfly, Jethro's was a soccer ball and Tell's was an orange.

Oh, and let me not forget to mention what Brett's Valentine's Day present was to me... a RED minivan!!! Wooohoooo!! I am very excited. We haven't picked it up yet, but Brett went into Zurich yesterday and put down some money to hold it. It's a Chrysler Voyager, and Brett says it's an abomination to buy an American car when we're in Europe, but hey, we have an American-sized family, so we need an American-sized car.