2017 in Review

[Previous years in review: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013]

This has been another crazy year. The fall, especially, was busy, stressful, and just a bit overwhelming. With Nate writing his thesis the next few months, things will be a bit less intense. Nate lost his paternal grandmother in late November, which was quite sad for all of us.

In terms of traveling, we did make it out to a few places: 

- We went on a cruise to Mexico to start out the year. 

- I made it to San Diego twice (spring, fall) for some weddings and visiting friends/parents. 

- We went to Ukraine twice (spring, summer) with all three of us both times! And the second time was for two weeks, so we had a good long time to hang out with my grandparents. 

- We traveled to Barcelona and to Milan and Venice. 

- We did a few things around Switzerland: Lucern, 4th of July, and kid-friendly stuff. 

- We are ending our year as we started it - in the US. 

This time for our trip to the US, we ended up flying into and out of Chicago and driving a bit. This way, we spent a week and a half in Nebraska, followed by almost a week outside of Chicago where my brother now lives and my parents flew in for. We also got some time to visit three different sets of friends/families in Iowa and one in Chicago. It was nice to have this time with friends and family, and enjoy the conveniences of the US. We were especially excited to hang out with Chase's new cousin and our goddaughter, Tindra. Chase also spent time with all of his grandparents (and living great grandparents). On our way to the US, we missed a connection and ended up having something like 30 hours to explore Warsaw. We made the most of it, even in the bitter cold, exploring the city's old town and seeing the Christmas markets. For Chase's country/state count, we are at +3 for Mexico, Italy, and Poland, and +2 states for IA and IL, so he's currently at 3 continents (NA, Europe, Africa), 10 countries (USA, Switzerland, France, Spain, Morocco, Ukraine, Great Britain, Mexico, Italy, and Poland), and 9 states (MA, CT, RI, NY, NE, CA, NV, IA, and IL). We definitely plan to travel a bit more next year. 

In terms of crafts, I did two knitting projects (headband and dress), and put together a calendar. As always, I am planning many crafts for 2018 -- I just hope I find the time to get them done. I only did one post on Chase but he's growing up so fast! He will start school next year which is just crazy to think about. 

As in previous years, I will leave you with an Instagram collage. Follow me on Instagram, or on Twitter if you don't have an Instagram.

Picture-A-Day Calendar

For gifts this year, we decided to do a calendar of 2018 using our own pictures. I had heard about a company called Social Print Studio which prints calendars with 365 pictures on not-too-thin paper. I have to say that they were really good and their customer service is amazing. I decided I would make one of those "on this day"-calendars the same way Facebook shows you pictures of things that happened on that day some number of years ago. I thought it would be super quick but it ended up taking me lots of time to find all the pictures, edit them to the right size, and label them correctly. In the end, I used pictures from a few days before/after to make it so no two consecutive pictures/days had the same year. I cannot put all the pictures here because the post would be way too large, but I did end up doing statistics with the pictures I ended up choosing:

Things to do around the Lausanne/Morges area

As Chase gets older, we are finding more fun things in the area to do with him, so I am chronicling these things here to remember and to maybe help others who are in the area. This list is not exhaustive, but consists of activities for which we have pictures and which are more memorable. These are activities we've done in the last 6 months or so, during which Chase was 3-3.5 years old. 

1. Museums in Lausanne and Morges, including:

Cantonal Zoology Museum in Lausanne

This is the top floor of the Rumine Palace near the Riponne metro stop. It was started in 1818 and has such cool relics. Chase really enjoyed it when we went as there are multiple exhibits and lots of (old) animals.

Olympic Museum in Lausanne



2. Lake & parks in Morges

Obviously, we spend a lot of time in Morges, but even if we didn't live here, it still is a great place to visit as there are parks all along the lake. Chase loves watching the boats near the castle, going to the three main playgrounds around Morges, and riding his bike or trotinette all around.

3. Wine tasting

While this is not an activity for the kids specifically, we have found kids are more than welcome to be around. We have many wine tastings in the Morges/Lausanne region. Every May/June there is an event when the wineries open their doors and you can get a passport (for only 20 CHF) to visit 50+ of them over two-three days. We have gone with friends for the last few years (last year we went to Fechy which was particularly nice and quiet) and have been enjoyed it a lot. There are also other events set up in the area as the one below which was in a tent at the park near our apartment.

4. Short Day Trips

Thanks to friends who have a car, we've been able to do a few kid-friendly day trips. Even without a car, there are many places we can easily visit, but these are the ones we did recently:

Les Paccots
This is mostly a ski resort but has a fun "train" ride and short hikes, perfect for kids in the summer.

Fort de Pré-Giroud 

This was an awesome visit of a decommissioned Swiss Army fort. It was really cool to learn the history and check it out. 

Désalpe in St. Cergue
The Désalpe is an event when the cows come down from the mountains in the fall. They dress the cows up and parade them through the town while they have food and activities set up for kids.

(photo credit to Yordan)

5. Ouchy

Boat to Evian
From Ouchy (which is Lausanne's lake front), you take the boat across the lake to France - specifically to Evian. We went there with Bridget when she visited in March. We also went there previously with Nate's parents and possibly on our own.

(photo credit to Bridget)

(photo credit to Bridget)

Merry-Go-Round and Playground/Park
Ouchy itself actually has an amazing playground for kids to play on, along with a nice park and a merry-go-round.

Another Solo Trip to San Diego

This has been an odd year as I made solo trips to San Diego twice! This was mostly because Chase is older and can stand to be away from me for a few days, and Nate has a bit of flexibility in his schedule. In October, I took a few days to fly to LA to visit Sakina and meet Sophie! I then drove down to San Diego to go to Liz and Jack's wedding, which was super fun and felt like an awesome HMC reunion!

I spent the rest of the time with my parents. My mom and I had the chance to do a Wild Animal Park caravan tour and were able to feed the giraffes and feed (and pet!!) the rhinos! It was an awesome tour as we went at sunset and all the animals were super active after a hot day and were putting on an awesome show for us! My mom's birthday fell in the days I was visiting, so it was also nice to celebrate her. 

Other than seeing my parents, I also spent some time with my cousin (who was visibly absent from our Ukraine trip this summer as she was working in London this summer before returning back to San Diego to finish her senior year). However, when my parents and cousin were at work/school, I enjoyed a burrito and some beach time in the best place in the world. 

3rd Annual Summer Trip to Ukraine

This summer, just like last year and the year before, we spent some time in Ukraine in August for Chase's daycare vacation. Before going to Ukraine, my mom came to visit for a week to watch Chase and hang out with him. We actually spent two weeks in Ukraine this year (all at the summer house), but we were working for one of them during the day while my grandparents watched Chase. He had a great time playing with even more of Sonia's old toys. We even went out for one night in Kiev with my uncle and aunt, and another night also to Kiev with Olia and Kolia. The weather was a bit hot but we had a great time overall and ate lots and lots of good food that my grandmother made (with my and Chase's help). 

Exploring all the 15+ year old toys!

Enjoying a rare night out together!

Three years of great summer trips!

Barcelona

This July, Paul was going to be traveling around Europe so we decided to join him for a weekend in Barcelona. As we had been in Malaga and Madrid a few years ago, it was a great opportunity to visit another part of (former?) Spain. We rented a AirBnB in a quieter area but had good access to all of the main attractions. Thankfully, Chase was pretty well behaved and he even ended up taking afternoon naps in his stroller (although, probably the last time that will happen on trips). The first day, we walked around city, down the Passeig de Gracia, past the Barcelona Cathedral (1L below) and by the 4 Cats Cafe. Next, we spent some time in the Parc de la Ciutadella, where Chase spent time popping big bubbles and playing on a playground, and we all posed with the big Mammoth (1R). We also walked by the Arc de Triomf (2L). The next day, we saw the Miro museum (2R on the terrace), the Sagrada Familia (3L outside & 3R inside), and dipped our toes at the beach. Not included in this list were taking many walks, looking at cool architecture, and of course, eating awesome food, including many tapas. I was particularly impressed by the Sagarada Familia but also enjoyed the Miro museum and just exploring a cool city. 

As these pictures were taken by Paul, it looks like he's not even on this trip!

And there he is! Also, most of these pictures are in the morning so Chase is wearing his eye patch. 

4th of July in Switzerland

This year, we had a 4th of July BBQ at the beach. We held it on Sunday, which was an overcast day so there was no one else on the beach, but it didn't rain so it was quite peaceful and nice. We had two other American families from church join us, who also had little boys so they all played together. This year, I wanted to improve on the flag cake I made last year by doing more layers. Last year's had 3 red stripes outside the blue flag area so I wanted to see if I could get away with 5 this time... making my way up to 13 in a few years. I actually ended up with two cakes this year: one for the 4th of July party that had the blue part of the flag on the circumference of the cake, and one that I brought in for the lab that had the blue part of the flag in the middle of the cake. To do this, I started off making cake batter using this recipe and dividing it into a 1/3 part (which received blue food coloring) and a 2/3 part which received red food coloring. I cooked the cakes using a small spring form pan and in turns as I only have one small pan. I put them in the refrigerator overnight, which is an important step!

The next day, I prepared this frosting to assemble the cakes. I also picked out the red, blue, and white sprinkles out of a container of assorted sprinkles but that is not necessary and if you're in the US, I am sure they actually sell red, white, and blue sprinkles -- a luxury we don't have here. Now I was ready to cut the cakes. For the red cake, I cut it into 5 equal(ish) smaller cakes. I then cut the blue cake into a ring and a smaller cake. Next, I cut 3 of the red cakes the same way as the blue one. If I had a larger cake, I would have only done 2 of the 5 that way but since it seemed like the flag would look not proportional with the frosting, I decided to do 3. I think if I do more layers, I will need to get a larger cake pan to keep the rectangular shape of the flag...or just not worry about it like this one.  Once everything was cut, I started to assemble it using the frosting. I actually put the cake in the freezer between each layer to harden it up so that it could stand the weight of the next layer and so that the frosting "layers" looked tidy. I was careful to ease the blue and red circles into each other without breaking anything as some of the red circles were quite delicate. In the end, I frosted the outside of the cake and added my sorted sprinkles and then returned it to the freezer until I needed to take it to the BBQ/work. 

At the BBQ, I removed it from the container and made sure it looked ok and then had the honor of cutting it (ignore my odd facial expression). 

And here it is on the inside! I was very happy with the way it came out. I wouldn't say it was the best tasting cake in the world (to me) as it was a standard pound cake with frosting but the design was super fun and everyone enjoyed it!