Halloween Party 1 at the church

To begin the Halloween festivities this year we attended the churches Halloween party put on by American families from the other ward.  There were little stations that the kids could go to such as: guess the amount of candy in the jar, decorate a cookie, drop a penny on the target through water, and even a Haunted House along with this back drop set up for great family pictures to be taken by one of the members.  All this was followed by Trick-or-Treating around the church house to the different parents standing in the doorways.   Lexie and I dressed up as witches, complete with green faces.  I'm so glad that darling little dress fit her that we had saved from the last time Kaitlan wore it!  Great fun.

Kaitlan the cat and Aubrie the ghost next to her witch of a mother and baby sister!

Halloween party 4 at our house

My neighbor Vesna asked if I would be interested in doing a Halloween party with her so her kids wouldn't be so disappointed with the trick-or-treating situation here in Switzerland.  I agreed and the kids really all did have a great time.  Kaitlan had two friends over earlier in the day, Anisha and Anshali, they enjoyed doing Princess things together.  Then Vesna, Andrea and Marco arrived along with my friend Laurie Theuer and her daughters Marlow and Savanah.  We went on a treasure hunt around our street until we found the bone which the kids used to try to break open the pinata.  Aubrie and Kaitlan did a fantastic job making this eyeball pinata, so good in fact that it was incredibly hard to break open!  After we made monsters with our food followed by Mummy races with toilet paper.  It was a great night!

As you can see from these 2 pictures this was Kaitlan's 3rd and 4th  costume for this Halloween season!

Our pinata made a great "mask" once it was crack open!

Wow, who knew there could be so much fun to be had with toilet paper?!

The sun was setting as we filmed this part of our treasure hunt so it's kind of hard to see.  These are the giant stacks of wood close to our apartment are from the logging company down the street.

Halloween party 3 at the WAC

Our English speaking group, the WAC, had a great Halloween party this year. Lexie and I wore our witches costumes again and Ted agreed to the token skeleton apron, while the girls choose to be a ghost and a pirate.  At the party there were lots of spooking looking food, crafts, a few games, a haunted library, and scary stories being told-which I helped with this year.  All followed by the voting of the best Jack-o-Lantern and Trunk-or-Treating.  We are happy to report that Kaitlan won third prize for her Headless Horseman!  The girls favorite part was of coarse theTrunk-or-Treating.  I think Ted really enjoyed passing out the candy and getting to visit with so many kids.

Halloween party 2 pumpkin carving

This was quite the year for Halloween parties for us.  While not an official party we enjoyed a chili and pumpkin carving night with our new neighbors the Hammonds.  Aubrie and Kaitlan put a lot of work into their Jack-o-Lantern this year since they learned there was a contest at the WAC, which really pulled out their competitive nature.  Aubrie chose a witch and Kaitlan chose the Headless Horseman.  Our neighbor Cameron, who is from Australia, carved his very first pumpkin with us and went the traditional route.

Fall fun at Minau

On October 15, 2011 we spent the afternoon at Minau (a spectacular botanic garden on an island in Lake Constance).  The Dahlia's were in bloom and the looked outstanding!  It was a cold day but the girls had tons of fun any how. 

We warmed up for a bit in the Butterfly house.

These Redwoods were awesome.

My cuddly pink bear!

Aubrie pondering the bigger questions in life like-what on earth is this enormous piece of metal doing here?

Fun with the Bartels

Aubrie's very good friend from Hamburg Melina, and her brother Leander and mother Viola visited us again this year.  Unfortunately our family got the flu the day before they were due to arrive so they didn't end up staying at our house with us.  We waited 3 days after our symptoms were gone before getting together to avoid passing the germs.  Over the next week we enjoyed going on a boat ride along the Limmat river and a bit into Zurich lake, then we checked out Rheinfalls with them and took a boat to the middle island in the falls and lastly we checked out the Knie Zoo in Rapperswil and got to ride on an elephant.  Lots of fun.  The big downer though is even though we tried hard not to spread our germs Viola's family came down with the flu on the day that they were to take their 12 hour train ride back to Hamburg.  It became the trip of hell running to the public restroom every 15 minutes and praying for it to end.  I felt so bad for them.

feeding the elephants

Are these not the biggest Porcupines you have ever seen?!?

Aaaahhhh!

Riding on the elephant.

Here you see the elephant trainers, they were jabbing at the elephants the whole time to keep them moving.  I felt horrible having contributed to the terribleness of these elephants lives.  It took the fun and excitement of having rode and elephant right out of it.