More ski photos

Team Viking in the Mountains for Xmas

Went to the mountains for 2 weeks over xmas and new year. Slipped in to a familiar routine of ski lessons for the kids and us skiing in the mornings, long lunch, then one of us heading out with Bella for some extra runs in the afternoon, and the other trying to drag Sebby outside , or in my case happily taking in some DVDs with Sebby. Sebby's first season, and he didn't take to it at first. Mind you he had his traditional Christmas illness, although he fought it off before it became bronchitis this year. Hurrah. We let him have one day off skiing in sympathy, plus Christmas Day off too. They both got medals. Sebby got the "I showed up most days medal". Bella did really well and got the bronze mountain medal. She really got the bug this season and really seems to enjoy it and always want to go out again in the afternoon. She even complained on Christmas Day that we weren't skiing (???) Quite a few friends were up too, including Carl and Sue, Holly and Cameron, as well as Chris, Becky, Alex and Jamie, so nice and sociable time was had by all.

Christmas Dinner

Mince Pie Mountains

Jo and Chris, Oscar and Flo came over for a visit pre-Christmas. Probably the last visit before they emigrate to Australia (or return home in Chris's case) next year. It was the weekend we were having a Mince Pie and Mulled Wine Open House for neighbours and friends. I thought you couldn't go wrong making mince pies - one jar mincemeat - one pack ready made pastry. Hmm, well turns out you can, and after a couple of disastrous batches Malc did a rescue trip to Jim's British Mini Market, and bought up boxes of mince pies. We did manage one succesful batch of "home made" mine pies in parallel. We later did a taste test. Turns out, once I'd mastered the fact thay you did actually need to grease the tin, and cook them for half the designated pastry time, they tasted much better than the shop bought ones. Oh well. It's mid January and we're still working through the shop ones. Didn't take any pictures at the actual mince pie event as the house was so full of people, including about 100 marauding kids I didn't have time. Was a good afternoon though, with the small exception of the drunken, smoking, neighbour who looked like an extra from Lord of the Rings (and not the Elf variety)...

Ski Apartment Extension

The new room (pre curtains etc.)


door to left thru to rest of apartment. Kids beds in our old room.

Whilst I was enjoying my gardening leave from Cadbury, I decided to do all those jobs you never quite get round to doing, like tracking down all your pensions, selling off those random shares you somehow acquired,and, as Malc will tell you, buying a lot of stuff etc. One thing we had discussed but never done was writing to the owners of the studio apartment next to our ski place to see if they would sell it to us, as they never seem to use it. So I did, and low and behold they did want to sell it to us. The owners were Swiss German which caused a bit of a translation issue, but with the help of Babelfish, and a notaire in the mountains who refused to talk to the Swiss German cos he was so rude, I manged to push through the transaction before the ski season started. A swift call to one of the teams who'd worked on our main house, and the Macedonians moved up to the mountains for a couple of weeks, a door was knocked through the room renovated and now we have an extra room with en-suite shower room. The kids have moved to our room and we've moved in to the new room, and all is good, feels a lot more spacious. 2010 shall hence be known as the year of house renovations.

a Christmas Song

starring Bella and Emily, with a special guest appearance from Spiderman...

Bella's class had a Christmas singing concert at school. However not sure of the Wisdom of putting the smallest girl in the class behind the tallest boy in the class, such that any video I took shows a whisp of blone hair behind someone else. Mind you Bella had been off school sick before hand, didn't appear to know the words, and isn't a natural perfomer and therefore seemed quite happy at the back. So here she is at home with Emily, where she fared a little better.