For Father’s Day Brian and I went on a hike… without the children. Yes, that’s right. After that soggy march through the mountains last weekend we could not convince them to go for a hike. Plus Bea has a bit of a cold. Oh well – Brian and I had a good time. He rode…

Claire is going to play cello next school year so we went into the city to rent one today. It’s bigger than she is and I feel like it’s so fragile – like I’m not qualified to touch it.

We went for a hike today – to Ägersee. It’s a nice big lake about a half an hour drive from home. It started out lovely and I was all blissful walking through the colorful meadows. But by the end we were completely soaked. It had started raining part way through our seven mile hike…

I’m moving along on my quilt. I’ve finished all the half-square-triangles and now I’m ready to start the curved portions. First I had to lay out all the pieces and choose which petal colors I wanted to match with each flower center color. Fun! As the girls wrap up their school year they always have…

Claire brought home the Diary of Anne Frank. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read it before. But now that I am reading it I am amazed. I’m amazed at what a smart insightful person Anne Frank was. How can it be that she was only 14 and 15 when she wrote her diaries? Was…

It has felt very summery and hot around here this week. It think we will soon be swimming in Lake Zurich. This time of year I look around and see all the lovely gardens coming up and it makes me miss my little patch of land back in the States. There is a beautiful garden…

As I mentioned, Verona was the first stop when Brian and I went on our honeymoon 17 years ago. I remember feeling nervous about everything and while I enjoyed myself I was not very relaxed. It was my first big travel outside of North America. This time we had two hangers-on (Bea and Claire) and…

Just a quiet week so far. The school year is quickly coming to an end. No school this Thursday and Friday so we are taking a train to southern Switzerland and then on to Verona, Italy. We’ll stay a couple nights and then watch the Giro d’Italia on Sunday. The Giro is like the Tour…

Well I’m back in my sewing room beginning a new quilt. I’m making the Flower Shop pattern from Modern Handcraft. Today I wanted to make a test block and learn how to sew curves. It all went together easily – especially with some videos tutorials from the Modern Handcraft web site. Now I just need…