Skiing in Sölden

So, this was the view from our guest house balcony - not bad hey!!!

We had great sunshine (for about an hour), which made the girls blink and squint...

There was a little chapel on the hill next to our pension, and the girls and I went to explore it. The photo below is from the side of the church.
The guesthouse had a farmyard out back, and the girls specially bought carrots from the local Spar to be able to give the sheep a treat.

We stayed in Oetz which was about 30kms from Sölden, so every day we had the drag of driving 30 minutes through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world..The girls, all dressed up and ready to ski!
The slopes at Sölden were really stunning - very wide and the snow was in great nick. The downside was the crowds. This photo was taken on the Saturday when the ski resorts do a change over, so most of the patrons were packing and leaving or arriving and unpacking with only the locals having a chance to hit the slopes. The next couple of days was a complete zoo.
The resort itself is situated on a couple of glaciers, so once you ascend the first few lifts, you can do some amazing routes with lookouts at over 3000m. Unfortunately, we had overcast weather while we were there with complete cloud cover from about 2000m, so the trip to the glacier was pointless as we couldn't even see our skis higher up the mountain.

Unfortunately, the little Zazz got sick the day we arrived, so we probably spent more time babysitting than skiing and were restricted to the very basic slopes when we were skiing. Amber took a big leap forward on this trip though, doing some decent reds with Dad and doing really well. The tractor girls... (an old farm tractor was parked outside the restaurant...)

Amber loses her first tooth!

Ever since Cousin Vincent showed off his wiggly tooth to our two girls, and on looking at the horror on their faces I had explained that losing teeth was something that only happened when you turned 6, there has been a fixation with the magical number 6. Somehow, this was the age when everything changed and you were suddenly a "big children". Well, Amber turned 6, and being the dutiful mum, I checked her teeth for signs of fallage. Little did I ever expect that I would indeed find a "wiggly toof". It was definitely the fastest fallage I have ever witnessed! From first examination to all out was a sum total of 3 days!

And here is what happened when it came out ...

For Sarah the sight of Amber's tooth lost it's novelty fast

Amber's 6th Birthday

Amber and Saz have been counting down the "sleeps" to Amber's birthday for about 3 weeks, with the excitement building gradually as the number dropped from needing two hands to just one. We even managed to get them interested in what a calandar is! At least now it has a use, illustrating the dwindling days until present time, err... I mean... birthday!

We offered Amber the usual choice of dictating what kind of cake she would have, and after some indecision between a fairy, butterfly and a hedgehog, she decided that a heart cake would be nice.

Our usual cake-making routine is a night-before scenario where we are both piecing together fine art on cakes at 2 a.m. trying every shortcut and standards dropping by the minute. This year, a stroke of genius befell us and we offered Amber the chance to decorate her own cake any way she wanted to.

3 packs of (different coloured) chocolate topping, half a pound of sprinkles of various kinds and some arty weaving of patterns later, we had a VERY decorated cake.... and a very chuffed Amber. I think this is what we will do every year from now on.

Sazza, (the Apprentice) got to help - how pleased are we..?
The big day arrived, and with it, the stampede downstairs to discover the Pressies. It must be mentioned here that the last few days have been card-making days. Amber and Sarah have some Israeli friends, Gali and Shir, who share the same birthday week. Gali's (5) being the same day as Amber's and Shir's (2) the next week. So, the girls were given 2 cards each to make and the choice of who to make their cards for - Sarah chose Amber and Shir; and Amber chose Amber and Gali (in that order).

Anyway, I digress, the stampede for pressies...

It has been tradition in the Wood household until now, that both girls get presents on birthdays, but the birthday girl gets the bigger pile. I am not sure for how much longer this tradition will hold... Amber's stash of pressies (the purple card on the top is from Amber :-)...:

And Sarah's stash: Amber is now the proud owner of a new watch Teacher Hanka lent the girls her harmonica probably a year ago, and they have loved it so much that they now both have one of their own. After pressies, the girls got themselves dressed (spot the trend setting fasionista) and we headed for school.

Today was a big day at the school as we had planned a party for Gali, Shir and Amber, and although it is not the Czech tradition to celebrate birthdays with much ado, they made an exception for us and broke some rules.

This is Gali (say Gaalee), with his sister Shir (Sheer) behind him and his mom, Bell, behind Shir. Gali and Shir are their best playmates at school and they often wish out loud that they could keep Shir. Fortunately Gali speaks English. He arrived at the school a year ago, and could not speak a word of English - he is now pretty much fluent. Shir has been known to answer with her limited vocabulary of "first words" in Czech, Hebrew, and English.

The classroom was especially decorated for the day, with the class helping to make decorations in the days leading up to the party. Catching up with Bell: Sarah has no problem fitting in with her friends and is sitting down to read a princess book here with Anichka and Shir: Some of the kids cuddled up with Teacher Hanka for a story: The (second) best part of the party - the EATS! Afterwards, it was time to burn off some of the sugar high with some exercise. Gali's mom does the exercise classes at the school and leads them in a very vigorous bout of exercises around the small classroom. One minute frogs, next minute Elephants...Hanka arranged a piñata for the party... Amber, who got the first shot, blindfolded, nearly hit Gali while trying to hit the piñata.

After the boys got hold of the stick it did not last very long until it was down and ransacked.

This was followed by some party games of musical pillows and pass the parcel (which ended in tears for those sorely missing out on pillows or parcels) and then CAKE TIME!

Amber was spoilt with some more presents from friends and teachers and she stole away to a quite corner to unwrap and investigate her presents.

Not long after, Colin & I packed up to leave - This evening we are leaving for a 4 day trip to Austria!

Easter Preparations

After getting back from Austria, we discovered with Alarm that Easter was already in the shops! And in fact, was just around the corner!

The Easter traditions in the CZ are very festive (check the link for info), with all kinds of decorations, markets, traditions and festivities. At the local SPAR, I got the girls some Easter crafts which they very eagerly piled into after school. In the mix were some bunny alice bands, baskets, fake grass, coloured eggs and little hens, and window stickers.

"Hop little bunny!"
The window decorating:
And Easter baskets:

New updates to checkout

Some updates of our Dec/Jan holiday that have just been published (ok, I know we are 2 months late already..):

1. The 1st part of the ski holiday from 26 Dec to 5th Jan. Each day is a new post, but there is a link to the following day at the end of each post, so start here:
"26th Dec - The Arrival"

2. The 2nd part of the 3 part series of our Dec/Jan Ski holiday with the Marais:
"A week in Ski-Heaven"

3. The 3rd part of our ski holiday:
"Final Roadtrip Home"

Rainy Ski Week-end in Germany

Knowing that our ski days are numbered (what with February rolling into March and -9 becoming somewhat alarmingly +9), we are cramming in as much ski time as humanly possible. This week-end after viewing the webcams and confirming that there is infact still snow on the mountains, we decided to head back to our traditional haunt - Arber.

During the night, the sound of very wet precipitation started to cause some alarm about the feasibily of actually skiing the following day and waking up, we confirmed our fears... it was raining cats and nearly dogs. There was the occassional snow flake in the flurry and then an attempt at something more solid when it showered down inches of hail stones. We decided to lay low for the morning, updating blogs while the girls caught up on some German lessons. I am sure that if they were to have watched as many cartoons in Czech as they have in German that their grasp of the czech language would be far more advanced...

We eventually managed to persuade to girls to leave the warmth and comfort of the TV and head for the blustery outdoors with the allure that lunch is only available outside of the apartment. We had planned to take a drive past Arber ski area to see what was happening, and then to drive through the forrests and generally just explore somewhere new. After looking at options on the GPS, we headed course for Deggendorf.

This was also the week-end that the world cup ski race was planned for Arber, so there were slopes all nicely marked out and TV cameras and vans all about, but no actual skiing on the go. The slopes were all looking decidedly slushy.

There was still much attention being paid to the race course - probably the disaster recovery team eventually consoling themselves to the fact that this was a non-recoverable disaster. I am sure that the snow groomers and cannons will be working this evening to try to recover for skiing tomorrow.

Driving through the forrest, the whole mountain was becoming one big waterfall. There were rivers cascading down every hill and all the rivers below were in full flood.
Not far from Arber, we came across a beautiful lake. I had seen it on the maps before, but we had never ventured this way. I was somewhat sad that we had never been this side of the mountain previously as I could very easily see myself skating up a veritable storm here (on a somewhat more frozen verion of the lake).

Seeing the melting layer of ice sheets, it reminded me of Ice Age 2 and I almost expected to see some giant prehistoric creature swim under the shallow ice..
Next stop was Deggendorf. The hunger mites were growling from the back seat of the car, so lunch was more of a priority than siteseeing at this stage. Nevertheless, we got a good stroll through the town square before finding a suitable restaurant.
And had enough time to pick the flowers en-route

After lunch, I couldn't help but point out the sign below to Colin, who promptly whipped out his camera:
Saturday evening, while still blustery, the rain had subsided long enough for our 2 adventurers to hit the great outdoors.
We all went to bed full of expectation for a sub zero night and zero precipitation for the next day. Unfortunately our prayers were not answered and we woke up to an equally sopping day as before. Today we decided to visit the glass factory in Bodenmais, the neighboring town to Arber. We were in luck to have the girls try their hand at glass blowing once more. Sarah has repeatedly asked for us to visit the glass factories with her fond memories of her previous glass blowing experience (Sarah the Glassblower, April 2007). This time, Amber got to have a turn as well. The results of their blowings were beautiful plant watering balls.
Sarah also having a turn:
So, you fill them with water, stick them into the pot, and then they slowly feed the plant with water as the soil dries up. This very gladly replaced the wonderful invention of Colin's, which was an old milk bottle that was filled with water and turned upside down in the pot...
Aparently it is supposed to get cold again this week and slip below zero again by the week-end - here's holding thumbs!!!