They are by a Japanese artist named Fmio Watanabe. I don’t know anything about him except that these are paintings done by hand and I knew that they must be scenes of Switzerland as soon as I saw them.
Maybe it’s my longing for spring that makes me swoon over the neon greens. I can’t wait ’till I can look across the lake and see the luminescent green grass against bright blue mountains instead of the gray white green haze that I see most days lately.
I didn’t take a single photo all weekend long. That hasn’t happened in a long time. It’s been pretty cloudy and I guess I’m looking forward to spring. Here are the girls goofing around in Bea’s bed.
I am also getting so excited to see my Mom and Jennifer and Jenna in a little over a week.
I do most of my grocery shopping at a chain called Migros. They have these fun promotions for kids and the one going on now is the best. Every time you spend 20 Francs you get a Nano. The Nano web site describes them as creatures from the smallest planet of the Milky Way. These little figurines in the form of a capsule can tumble, can be nudged and can be piled up with a bit of skill and patience. There are 48 Nanos, each is part of a clan and you can get a little album to keep track of your collection. Bea loves them and I think I do too.. we are experiencing Nano Mania.
Here’s an advertisement at the train station. Every time Bea sees an ad she shouts and points “there’s my Nanos!”
Uh I think I need to go buy some expensive groceries now. Gotta go –
The balloon fairies filled her room with balloons the night before. Here she is right after she woke up to the surprise.
The balloons migrated to the living room and then she danced in her tutu (a Christmas present from Aunt Jennifer).
We had a birthday lunch so that she could spend the rest of the day playing with her presents. I really enjoy decorating and making a cake for birthdays.
Here’s where Mommy got a little sentimental and teary-eyed. I can’t help it. All the moments from her tender life rush back to me. And then my heart fills to the brim with love for her. She was all “let go Mommy and lets get on with opening presents”.
There are the little red shoes that I splurged on. Her dollies just had to have something to go with all their new outfits right.
Pink cake of course.
Here’s the candle blowing expert.
And now she starts her 4th year (or I guess it’s technically her 5th year). It’s going to be another big one. I’m looking forward to a fantastic summer and then she will be a kindergartener in the Fall. Here we go.
We went to the Swiss Transportation Museum in Lucern for Bea’s birthday today. I hate to come across all superior sounding, but once again we were very impressed. Brian and I can’t help but think over and over that, wow, the Swiss just do things right. I also kept thinking that I have got to take Jennifer, Jenna and my Mom to this museum when they come because it so cool. It’s made up of several buildings – each one dedicated to a type of transportation – and in the middle is a big courtyard. There are more displays and kids activities in the courtyard and there are scooters everywhere that you can take to get from building to building. Bea was in love with the scooters and we had to convince her to park her scooter in one of the parking spots and go inside to see more stuff.
A wall of highway signs (you know they are highway signs because everything for the highway has the same blue. If it is a country road, the signs are green. Bike signs are red and walking paths (Wanderweg) are yellow. It takes some time to study but eventually you realize that the signs are in the shape of Switzerland. In the German-speaking part, you see the “Ausfahrt” sign for exist. In French you see “Sortie” and in the southeast you see “Uscita”. Gotthard pass in the south, Zurichsee signs in the northeast, Bodensee, Schaufhausen near the German border, Basel northwest, Geneva in the southwest. Really cool.
Brian and Claire by Floyd Landis’ bike. Pretty cool, even despite the situation. Brian has mixed feelings about Landis – it was so exciting to see him win and so sad to see the aftermath. Seeing his name on the tube brought all those issues back to memory. He said there was a sign by the display off to the side that recounted the glory and then said (in German of course), “At least the bike never doped!”.
Oh and Bea did scoot. She loved the wide open space of the inner courtyard. I bet if you asked her, this was the best part. Her scooter was orange.
One of my favorite parts was this big room filled with a map of Switzerland. It’s a really highly detailed map – and of course Switzerland isn’t very big – so we could easily find our little town. I got a good sense for the location and scale of the mountains. You had to slip big boiled wool slippers over your shoes so the map wouldn’t get scratched. I could have spent a really long time in this room in my cozy slippers, but the girls were just about cooked. So we headed out for a little more scootering and then headed home.
Cooked:
Then came the scooter race. Bea won this race and took it very seriously. Brian took about a hundred pictures of this encounter. Maybe I will do a montage some day.
We love you Swiss Transportation Museum – we’ll be back to see you soon.
Laowai 