We moved into this apartment in June 2004, so almost 5 years ago. Since then we have had many visitors come to stay, both friends and family. We have loved every visit and hope to have many more in the future. However, there are many of you who, for one reason and another, have never made it across the pond to see us in our "natural habitat" so to speak. I thought it would be fun to photos of our place and surrounding area to give you a better feel for where and how we live.
These photos were taken on General Conference Sunday, in the afternoon. It wasn't a particularly messy day, but we didn't clean up before I took the shots, either. This is pretty much an accurate representation of how we live day to day.
This is part of the kids' play area upstairs. It is just an open landing in between the two main rooms. It is usually strewn with Playmobil people, engaged in various activities. Nick likes to act out complicated battle scenes, the girls' always have their people "moving" or throwing parties. "Moving" consists of a long caravan of people in various vehicles, with all their wordly goods piled on top. Noah usually acts out scenes from movies, and Sarah and Sophie will also play out scenes from Harry Potter quite regularly. Today the floor is clean, so they are playing another favorite game, Town. They set up tents, houses, or stores and then they take turns going to each other's residences to buy, sell or trade stuff. They can play for a few hours, because the set up takes longer than the actual game!
This is the view from my craft room upstairs. The kids and I love to watch the horses in the corrals eating grass, and often in the spring there is a new born foal to watch playing near his mother. Sadly, we just found out they are tearing down the barn to build some more apartment buildings. :( But the green pastures should stay, they can only build where the barn already was, thanks to the Swiss Green Law to protect remaining open spaces. We often go walking on the tractor trails that wind through the fields, stopping to say hello to the chickens, horses and cows along the way.
These are the stairs leading down to the main floor of our apartment. The kids love to sit on a crib mattress and slide down to the bottom. It's like an indoor roller coaster! Pretty much everyone in the family has also taken a spill on these stairs. Noah broke his arm just above the elbow on them, that was the worst injury. Alexandra tried to walk down them like a big girl, rolled all the way to the bottom, and hasn't gone down by herself since. She will just wait at the top for someone to carry her down. At least there is a thin layer of carpet over the concrete, to soften the blow a bit.
This is my craft room. Alexandra also sleeps up here for the time being, until we trade the kids' rooms downstairs. Sarah and Sophie also have their own craft corner with a big table and lots of sup
plies to make their beautiful creations. The gaming computer is also up here. That way I can keep an eye on what they are playing while I do my own creating. It gets very messy, since Alexandra wanders around looking in, and emptying, any containers or drawers she finds. But at least I still get to do something fun once in a while, and be with the kids at the same time. I have made a goal to do a serious cleaning during spring break, there is lots of stuff that could be tossed, and I would love to rearrange the furniture to make it feel more open. But this is my happy place and I feel very blessed to have it.
Here is a view of the hallway. One door is the girls' bedroom, the one at the end is the boys', and the stairs also lead to here. It is nice and wide, and we have lots of stuff hanging on the walls. The group of black frames should have another row on the bottom, but Miss Alexandra has an obsession with tearing them off as soon as I hang them back up. So I gave up for a couple of months, to see if she will forget about it. :) On the other side of the wall, we have framed watercolors from all the places we have visited as a family/couple. There are a few more that are still waiting to get framed and hung. It is harder than you think to find frames that match the color scheme of the others, fit the photos, and are in my price range. Usually, I find them at our Swiss version of Goodwill, throw out whatever picture is in there originally, paint them, and put my own picture in.
More coming in next post.