Winter Wonderland

Ok, so we are terribly behind and at risk of losing our readership - to the 11 dedicated souls, we apologize.

Anyway, I have a vision of what I want to post, but can no longer remember what the text should be. So this post is primarily a pictoral of Sam exploring his Canadian roots after a rare 32 cm dump of snow in Geneva. This dump paralyzed the city - seriously. Some news reports said it was the most snow Geneva has seen in one snowfall since the late 1800's - others the 50's, but still! No one here has snow tires and so people were abandoning their cars in the middle of the street etc., causing massive traffic jams. I loved it (not the traffic jam bit).

It has since snowed twice, luckily right before Christmas so we had a white one, but the snow always melts within a week. In fact, it must have been 15 degrees or warmer this past Sat - I was out with only a t-shirt on. But I digress...

Sam and Daddy making a snowman in the backyard.

After they put the hat on the snowman, Sam looked at it a bit then said disappointedly to Aaron "Hat no working!". When Aaron asked what he meant he explained, "Daddy, Frosty no come!". We explained that our hat wasn't a magic silk hat and told him to keep his eyes open. We're still looking.

Sam goes skating and plays some hockey

OK, so he didn't really skate on these single blades. This was his second outing, the first time we had those double blade strap-on skates and at least on the double blades he could stand. And we didn't have a helmet at that point so mostly he rode around in Aaron's arms. But he DID score 3 goals on a little net, which he was very excited about. He got a real hockey stick and a set of double blades from Santa. He's got a mean indoor slap-shot for a 2 year old.

Making snow angels

Daddy taught him snow angels. Sam's a big fan. He dropped and did this on the busy Unter den Linden in central Berlin a few weeks later. It was funny. Had to be there I guess.

Sledding on cool Swiss toboggans

Gotta get ourselves one of these, as they are fast (plastic versions of wooden sleighs on rails - 1/5 the price). A bit too fast for Sam, Aaron reports. He got a quite a bit of snow in his face and wasn't sure if he liked this sledding. His friend Katya loved it, though. She's there passing him. Sam got ski goggles in his stocking from Santa (see upcoming Christmas blog...that I plan to write sometime soon) so speed restrictions should be removed the next time out.

And of course, eating snow

This is the one snow sport that Mommy did with Sam. I'm a good teacher because he took to it right away. He even asks first if the snow he is eyeing is clean or not. It usually isn't very (actually, usually it very isn't).

Hot chocolate afterwards

Stay tuned for my next blog, entitled Sam bakes. It will be almost as exciting as this one.