July 2008 - Kids, Visitors, Parties, and a June Milestone

Not exactly chronological, but due to high demand, I had to post this video from June. A Cambelle milestone.It's just a small sample of what she can do. And she's got 4 top teeth coming in...2 are through and 2 are trying.

Back to July, yesterday, Katie, Marti and I met at the Manora for lunch. The great thing there is a playground, so the kids love it, too. Here's Kacey and Charlie ...

Occasionally, Kacey will wake up and dress herself. Here's what she came down in one morning last week.






















Two weekends ago, I found out that Dave was going to Turkey for work, and I was having 5 visitors, at random times over the next week. My friend Stephanie had a nephew graduate from High School, so he (Tyler) and his friend (Andrew) were backpacking through Europe and they stopped here for 2 days on their route between Venice and Munich. They I fed them some Swiss food, showed them around Fribourg and took them to the chocolate factory. Hopefully they'll send me some pictures so I can post them on here. Kacey LOVED them...she sang for them and I heard her say to them, "So far, I've had a really good life." They headed out toward Germany on Friday, the 18th. I was impressed...I told them that after navigating the language issues and the trains over here, they'll have no trouble in college.

Also, two friends that I knew in college came here to meet up and go to the Tour de France. Paul came in from Atlanta and Kyle lives in Warsaw, Poland. (Kyle got married last month in Poland, and we had planned on going, but Dave's work schedule stopped that trip.) Paul was here for two days. He rode his bike to Schwarzsee. And, he went to the Fribourg Jazz Festival with me, the girls, and Marti and her boys one night. Kyle and a friend of his, Theo, drove 17 hours from Warsaw and were here for about 8 hours...they left on the morning of July 19th. I know they're loving life in France right now... yes, I'm jealous!
















On the afternoon of July 19th, Luca's mom had her 40th birthday party, so Kacey and I went to it while Cambelle stayed with Tom and Katie ... thank God for them. They taught Cambelle how to walk and say 'Tom'. Here are a few pictures from Barbara's party...






















And more pictures of the kids!

July 2008

Dave made it back home on July 3rd, so July 4th was fun... 'Daddy's home', plus Katie and Tom had everyone over for burgers, sparklers, etc. We had lots of 'America Flags'... even a flag cake. So, Kacey loaded up on points that night (inside joke, long story...)

We went to the Montreau Jazz Festival one Saturday. That was fun. You can see Kacey and Charlie enjoyed the music. And, this lady in green was so interesting. Before Marti took this picture of her, we saw her riding through a fountain that the kids were playing in. She seemed like quite a character. Even her toes were painted that exact shade of green...


















It's been warm and sunny a few days. When that happens, we try to find some water. We took a walk to the fountain near our house to play with Charlie, Benji, and Molly. We got a pool and had them all over to play one day. So, there have been 3 warm enough days for playing in the water...but they're few and far between.

April, May, June 2008

Sorry to be so behind on updates to this. Very sadly and surprisingly, Dave's father died at the end of May. Not having the words for that has made it hard for me to spend time on this. It's been a tough few months, particularly for Dave. On top of losing his father, he's had an excessive amount of travel for work... ironically and fortunately, he traveled to the U.S. for work on the day his dad was hospitalized, so he was able to spend much of 3 weeks with him and his mom. But it's been, for lack of better words, very surreal....unbelievable. Bill was amazing and nothing we could write could describe how amazing, but he's left a big hole in our family and we'll miss him terribly. All the cards, letters, calls, condolences have been very appreciated.

Given that, proceeding with petty talk of other things we have done feels kind of disrespectful and meaningless, but I have lots of requests for pictures. So, I'm putting in some information from April, May and June, just for the record.

In April, me and the girls made a trip home to Atlanta at the beginning of the month to attend a wedding and visit family and friends. Dave's parents drove up to see us and none of us knew how valuable our time was with Bill during that visit. On their first day with us, we had family photos taken of the girls and all of their grandparents. I hesitated to do it since Dave didn't come with us, but thank God, we went ahead with it. Those are invaluable now. At the end of April, my parents visited us in Switzerland to operate the infirmary in our house...almost all of us were sick, so we didn't get them to Germany as planned. But, the 2 days before they left, we all recovered and had some nice weather, so we took drives to Lausanne and Chamonix before they flew out. Anyway, there are a bunch of pictures from our visits with everyone in April.

In May, just before leaving for the U.S., Dave had a holiday weekend, so we took a train to Locarno for 2 nights. The day after we returned from that, Dave's left for the U.S. for work. Bill was hospitalized that day and was in the hospital for most of the month ... Dave was fortunately in Florida for much of that time. The girls and I stayed in Switzerland, where on May 21, Sam Billington was born, so Charlie is a big brother and Cambelle has a boyfriend...he is the second baby born from the families who moved over here. Anyway, Dave returned to Switzerland on the 24th thinking his father was recovering, but very sadly, he passed away on the 27th. So, we all travelled back to Florida to spend time with Dave's mom at the end of May and into the beginning of June...and we saw Uncle Dave and Amy briefly while we were there.

In June, Dave flew back to Switzerland to go to Berlin for work. The girls and I stayed in Atlanta a few days to visit my grandfather, who had a major surgery in mid-May and was in a rehabilitative nursing home (he's scheduled to come home Thursday, July 17th, but will continue rehab). We returned to Switzerland a day after Dave returned from Berlin and two days before he left for Turkey. Two days after Dave left again, Jeanne-Marie, Robert and Mike arrived to visit us. We had a fun week with them... they biked and hiked all day, then cooked and cleaned for us all evening, then made us stay up late watching the Euro2008 soccer tournament. Soon after they left, Dave had to go back to Berlin.

And I'll get to July in the next post...hopefully this will get me caught up enough that I can be more timely with the next updates. And,I'll get a video up of Cambelle crawling soon.

MAY

JUNE