Schnee!

This morning the packers showed up for our things at 8:00 AM on the dot, as promised.  Since Dennis was home to direct them and fill out their forms, I advantage of a chance to walk Alex in to school, lugging in a bunch of our extra art supplies and a few toys, donations for the playhouse corner.  As is true everywhere in the world, teachers generally make do with bits and scraps here. (But they make extraordinary things from them.  My favorite is the large snowflakes hanging in Alex's classroom window, made by impaling packing peanuts on chopsticks.) So Alex was terribly proud to be sharing with his class.

I assumed the packers would be at work for a while, so I continued on to the grocery store, but they were done and gone by the time I got home: it took them exactly 38 minutes, from the moment they rang our doorbell to the moment they left with our boxes. That's called Swiss efficiency.

Not working.

So, unexpectedly, Joey and I had a free morning.  The snow has been falling thick and fast each night, and I figured that the Schlitterweg, the 4-kilometer sledding trail that runs down the length of Ütliberg, must be covered at last.  So Joey and I got bundled up for a morning in the snow.

While we waited for our train, Joey practiced making snowballs. But, as soon as he'd laboriously made one, he'd take it and throw it down a hill, and then grunt with frustration: "Not working! It not getting bigger!"  It took me a moment to figure out what he was trying to do: I think he wanted to make the giant snowballs he's seen in so many cartoons, the ones that grow improbably massive as they roll down hills.  Sorry, kiddo: it was a little too powdery, and our play slope was only about a meter long.

But that's okay. There was different fun to be had.  We rode the train up the the mountain, Joey pressing his nose to the window the whole time, rhapsodizing about the pretty snow.  And then we hopped onto the Schlitterweg, the entrance to which is just about adjacent to the train tracks. It doesn't get easier.

Except, the further down the mountain we went, the thinner the snow got, and the runners on our little sledge didn't distribute my weight very well.  I had to get off and walk alongside Joey for about half the ride.  The one parent-child duo that I saw on a plastic toboggan seemed to be doing much better, though, as did the man who flew past us on a snow bike, something I've never seen before I moved here and desperately want to try.

But I did manage to take a little video, while we were flying down the mountain, as well as some movies of Joey playing in the snow and doing his best impression of Brainy Smurf.


With about a kilometer to go on the Schlitterweg, Joey started to get really quiet and still: he seemed cold, and possibly a little bored, so when we got to the base of the mountain I had him hop off and play a little more before walking home.

We passed by Alex's school on our way, and watched Alex throw snowballs and make snowmen, something Joey was inspired to try.

Unfortunately, with beautiful, snowy weather, comes another phenomenon, the Snow Bully. Ella came home panting with a story: a bunch of sixth graders were lined up outside the school, taunting the little kids, calling, "Komm, Schweinchen." Come here, little piggie.  And they were throwing snow at the littler kids, particularly at the ones who dared go nearer.

Unfortunately for her, Ella's attracted to a little danger and excitement, so she decided to throw a snowball at the sixth graders before she made a break for it.  Ella may be tall and fast, but sixth graders are taller and faster, so she was grabbed and pelted with snow a couple of times before she broke away.  No tears, though: "Aw, it was my own fault. I could have avoided them, if I really didn't want trouble."

Hot cocoa and homework

And she was dressed for snow play: I'd given Ella snow pants this morning, as she was suiting up for school.  She hesitated before putting them on: "I'm not sure what everyone else will wear," and when she came home for lunch, she reported that "only two people in the whole school were wearing snow pants, just me and a teeny-tiny first grader!"  Oh, well, you don't have to wear them if you don't want to, I told her.

"Oh, no, I want to! Are you crazy? I don't want wet pants all day."

So that was that: Ella's apparently no slave to fashion.  And she does seem to understand the repercussions of her practicality.  When I put her to bed, she sighed, "Mom, I didn't make any progress with Felix today at all. I suppose it's possible he didn't want to be seen with the girl wearing the snow pants."

After a long bedtime chat with Ella, I made a quick run to the store, to pick up a scale, so we could see how terribly overweight our bags were.  Unfortunately, we were a little too ambitious in what we'd set aside for our packers, so we'll have to check a few boxes with our luggage.

And, after we wrestled with our luggage, Susannah came over to help pack up the piles of things that Daniel will be picking up tomorrow.  The house is simultaneously more bare and more cluttered: somehow, though, we'll get through these next few days.  The hazelnut Bailey's Susannah brought over certainly didn't hurt.