Caught up!

Well, since I didn't blog while my family was here for two weeks, and it's taken me two weeks to catch up on those blog posts, I thought I'd just write one more post about what we've been up to since my family left. Also, there will probably be a pause in blogging for a week while Jeff and Amanda are here (woot!).

One of the highlights from the last couple of weeks with Carsten is this: crazy faces! He's been a lot of fun to watch lately because his personality is coming out more. Carsten makes funny faces quite a bit of the time and even does them in front of the camera. Here's some photos of him just being goofy:

teeth!

love :)

haha :)

We celebrated our 5 year anniversary on June 24. In honor of our special day Andy bought me beautiful roses (pictured below) and a truffle cake from the fancy chocolate shop in Zurich. We rented the movie "Tangled" from iTunes, and enjoyed our date night. On Saturday the weather was pretty nice, we went on the 'Planetary Hike' on the top of the ridge overlooking Zurich. Carsten managed to fall asleep in the hiking backpack for about 50 min, and I would say that we really enjoyed our hike! It was a fun weekend of celebration for our anniversary :).

pretty roses :)

Zurich!

Sleeping baby :)

Carsten had his first 'real' meal of vegetable beef soup that I pureed for him. Up until now, most of his meals have been separate. I'm looking forward to having him eat all the same things we do! He's had dairy now, so now we just need to introduce eggs! :)

Vegetable beef soup :)

 Here's a photo of all of us in our hiking sandals! I should mention that Carsten rarely wears shoes because he pulls them off, but he is wearing them briefly here :).

It's been pretty hot here the last few days, so when Carsten and I got an invite from another mom who Andy works with, we decided to go to one of the Zurich swim areas. These are typically on the lake and the one we went to had a particularly nice kids area (not in the lake) where the water continuously flowed down and for the area we were in, was never deeper than about 3 inches. Carsten loved the pool, but I must admit, he was not a fan of the sand in the lake. He had had enough of the sand between his toes after about a minute. Here's some photos of Carsten's first swim:

They had some small fountains you could sit by.

They did get you wet though :).

He had fun! :)

Ok, I think that's all the blog posts for a little while :). Happy reading!

Hoogeveen Vacation - June 16

Mt. Rigi! We headed out pretty early in order to start the 3 hr trip up to Mt. Rigi, which is on the Zurich side of Lake Lucerne. We realized on the train (about an hour into the trip) that Ashley had forgotten her train pass. We got off the train at Zug (without getting a ticket - woot!) and went to the ticket booth to buy her a ticket. The guy was really nice and issued them such that if she went back to another ticket office and presented her pass with the new tickets, she'd get a refund. After we got her ticket we waited for a train in Zug to continue on our trip. Once we got to the base of Mt. Rigi, we had to wait a bit for the cog-rail train up to the top of the mountain. I should mention that this is one of the few trains to the top of a mountain that is covered by the Swiss pass (otherwise you usually have to pay 1/2 fare), and plus, Mt. Rigi is one of the closest mountains to Zurich.

Mt. Rigi! I think it's a fairly unimpressive mountain, but it was fun to walk down and had pretty good views :).

Cograil.

We reached the top of the mountain and were greeted by a pretty good view of the Alps, Lake Lucern, and Lake Zug. This was fun for me because when I was there in 2009 there was pretty much nothing to see because the cloud deck was on the mountain (consequently I thought it was a dud...). The top of Mt. Rigi has nice cement walking paths (you could take a stroller here) and once we reached the very top (after a steep but short climb!) we had lunch. It was beautiful and fun except for all the BUGS. For whatever reason there were a million bugs (both big and small) flying around and bothering us. I must admit that I'm pretty sure Carsten ate some with his lunch... poor kid. Here's some photos of our view at the top:

pretty Alps!

haha :)

cute!

at the top!

Lake Zug.

Mom and Dad!

The whole crew!

Love Carsten here :)

ready for some hiking!

pretty :)

Swiss Ashley and Luke!

Swiss Mom and Dad! For those of you who remember, Andy and I had photos in these for our 2009 Christmas card :).

Once we finished our lunch and enjoyed the scenery we started hiking down the mountain along the cograil line. Now, I'd have to say that hiking with a child carrier, even a super nice one like ours, gives you a really good workout! Carsten fell asleep in the hiking backpack when Ashley and I were yodeling to him (I had given up on getting him to sleep and I think he must have decided that sleeping was the best way to tune us out.... :) ). We got down to the next train station and were going to have to wait about 40 min for a train, so we decided to hike down to the next train station since Carsten was sleeping anyway. This path turned out to be all cement too (I think it was a road as well for the farms). Here's some photos of our hike down:

More cowbell please!

hiking!

More hiking!

Waiting for the train down the rest of the mountain. We had fun!

Even Carsten got to have fun :).

Too cute :).

All in all, we had a great vacation! But all vacations must come to an end eventually. Thanks for coming out everyone! Carsten, Andy, and I had fun seeing Switzerland with you all :).

Hoogeveen Vacation - June 15

We had planned for Carsten and I to stay home 1 day of the week, so we decided that Wednesday would be the best day. This enabled Carsten and I to get some rest and housework done while everyone else could take a slightly more travel intensive trip. The crew decided to go to Geneva so that way they could see all the major cities in Switzerland. Plus, Luke was really excited to see the large fountain in the lake there. I was in Geneva in 2003 for a college vb trip, so I think I can narrate the photos a bit :).

Ginormous fountain!

 

There's a sailboat right in front of the fountain for scale...

Reformation museum. John Calvin - woot! Apparently this was really cool - I didn't see this when I was there, but I'll have to go sometime!

View of Geneva from the church. 

John Calvin wannabe? :)

Clock in the flowerbed. The Swiss love their clocks :).

I think the crew had fun in Geneva and were glad that they went even though it meant 6+ hours on the train for the day. Go Hoogeveen's Go!

Hoogeveen Vacation - June 14

This was the day we had decided to go up Mt. Rigi, which is on Lake Lucerne, and then hike down partway. However, our plans changed a bit when we found ourselves on the wrong train. We were headed to Lucerne instead of another small town. So we adjusted our plans (after first trying to figure out how to get to Mt. Rigi on the current train) and instead went to Lucerne, which had been on the docket for Thursday. I will say that this day helped me learn that we need to give tutorials to new people for the train travel to work out. I also learned that I get stressed out when traveling doesn't go as expected (when traveling with Carsten), and now that I know this about myself, I'd like to try to fix it so I can roll with the punches. The weather was absolutely beautiful, so going to Lucerne was also a good choice. The only downside is that we had packed a bunch of extra layers for everyone, so we ended up carrying around more than we really needed.

We got to see the two walking bridges in Lucern, the Jesuit church in downtown (Luke and Dad's favorite church), planes flying overhead in formation (no idea why...), the city wall (so many stairs!), the Lion Statue which is carved into a rock (again, no idea why...), the Glacier Garden (which had scars on the rocks from a glacier), and an art museum which I elected not to go in since I didn't have free admission and it was going to be a quick visit (apparently I made a wise choice here :) ).

1st city bridge.

so pretty!

us in the bridge

Mom carrying Carsten in the hiking carrier.

planes in formation!

Jesuit church.

old school dam that leaks water through the wooden slats (I think it must be on purpose)

2nd bridge - they redid the sides with new wood so it doesnt' look as cool anymore...

city wall! And yes, we did hike all the way up one of the towers.

Amazing view of the city at the top of the tower, but I'm not sure it was still worth all the stairs.... :)

Stairs!

Duplicating a photo that Andy and I took when we were here in 2009.  We had to work with what we had at hand :).

Walking on top of the city wall.

Lion. Reminds me a lot of Narnia.

Glacier scars.

pooling water under the glacier.

can you tell what's going on here?

or here??

Us (minus Ashley) with Mt. Rigi (peak just to the left of Dad's head) and Lake Lucerne in the background. I love Carsten's yawn in this photo :).

All in all, it was a fun day! We got to see almost everything we wanted to in Lucern. There was a museum featuring a famous musician that was recommended by my Grandma Hoogeveen that we didn't quite have time to go see, so we'll have to catch that next time!