Skiing vacation

It's busy here, but I want to finally post our (few) pictures from our wonderful skiing vacation in early January. We went on a trip to the French Alps (the village of Les Gets) together with my mom for a week - Clara's first time skiing!

We flew to Geneva (with a change in Zurich to avoid the awful EasyJet-flight). Flying with Swiss airlines is pretty nice, it turns out. The kids were treated well and got toys, the flights were not too full, the stewardesses nice, and you get as much chocolate as you want! Both ways, Oscar slept at least on one leg of the flight, and with my mom there to help, travelling was a (relative) breeze. Our  landlords (from whom we rented the vacation apartment) picked us up from the airport in Geneva with their minivan. Actually, thank goodness we didn't have to drive on those serpentines in the snow by ourselves...

The apartment was brand-new and pretty nice: two bedrooms, two bathrooms, plus a living room/fully equipped kitchen (including the Raclette and Fondue sets). Our landlord also organized a crib, high chair, and even his own old baby bathtub for Oscar.

In the closet

Peekaboo!

Clara, me and my mom all took skiing classes in the mornings. Chris took care of Oscar during this time - but Oscar was very very jealous that he was not allowed to go skiing!

Clara had a lot of fun! She happily went to her class every day. And even though skiing is quite hard for the little kids, I think she really learned something - the difference between the first and last days were enormous.

On her last three days, Clara's group went higher up on the mountain in a gondola to a bigger beginner's area. Here they are:

Clara (purple pants) and her group walking over to the beginner's area from the gondola.

In the week she learned to walk around on her skis, take a magic carpet lift and a rope tow, be pulled around, ski between Mommy or Daddy's legs, and even make a snowplow and ski down the little hill by herself. Clara also told us that she took a chairlift, which means she even went on a regular (green) run with her group, but we didn't see her do it because our classes were at the same time (too bad! I would have liked to watch her more). My mom and I also enjoyed our classes and learned quite a bit.

As you can see, we were really lucky with the weather! They had apparently the best snow in 7 years, and after quite a heavy snowfall on our first night, basically all our days were sunny and quite warm.

Oscar spent his mornings in a little play area in the tourist office (see below), riding the (free) choo-choo-train which shuttles skiers from one mountain to another one through the village, and riding the gondola up and down the mountain.

Both kids had so much fun in the snow! Since we're apparently not going to get any real winter this year in Berlin, it was nice to take this little break with snow and sun. The skiing was also great, and we'll definitely do this again. We might have to wait two years though so that Oscar can go skiing, too...