Les Houches and the Coupe du Monde - Day 1

Early in February we went to Les Houches to see the men's downhill event of the Alpine World Cup.  Prior to moving to Geneva we didn't see many ski competitions on TV, mostly just for the Olympics.  After ski season started here, I noticed skiing on TV every weekend and many of the events were being held right in Switzerland.  So we decided to check out one of the events being held close to us in Les Houches.  Les Houches is located about an hour from Geneva in France and is a part of the Chamonix ski area. 

We got to the finish line just in time to see the first skiers.  One of the crowd favorites was Dider Couche (he's Swiss) and we also got to see Bode Miller ski.  It was pretty amazing to see how fast they went down the piste.  Later I heard it takes the crew a week to groom the slope and they spray it with water so it ices over.  Yikes!  If they don't get enough snow after the race, the slope can stay closed for up to two weeks because it's too dangerous for the public to ski on. 

Didier

Bode Miller

Team America!

 

January Round-up

Perusing my pictures from January I realized a few things.  

1. There were about 2.5 really great things that happened.  Like a snow storm and my first attempt at skiing.

2.  I took less than 10 pictures for above-mentioned interesting things

3.  It would be lame to make a separate post for these and other slightly interesting things.  So here is a round-up of the month of January.

January 9: Came home to flowers

January 14: The boats are back on the lake

January 20-22: Back to Zermatt for a Girls weekend and my first skiing lesson

January 29: Andrew's 2nd Birthday party

January 31: Snow covers Geneva

Boom!  January in a nutshell.  It was fun while it lasted, but I'm happy to have spring and sun and green things out my window.

Bonne Annee!

New Year's Eve was quiet for us this year.  No rockin' with Ryan Seacrest or fancy 10 course dinner.  We stayed in and had a pretty low key night.  I made some mussels and we had champagne.  I even found a countdown on one of the German channels.  They were broadcasting from Berlin which is in the same time zone. 

Merry Christmas

Christmas is long gone by now, but looking back we had a nice time in the States.  I tried to keep the stress to a minimum but we did have a pretty busy schedule.  Holiday celebrations in 2 different states with 2 families, plus visiting friends and taking care of boring things like Dr. appointments and hair cuts - all in 10 days - can get a bit overwhelming.  Luckily we had a few recovery days when we came back to Geneva.  

Here are a few pics of our holiday trip. 

I took approximately 100 pictures of these three awesome babies, and about 10 of anything else.  You can see what is important. Ha. 

And I got a fancy schmancy new camera from Jim for Christmas :D  Here he is playing around. 

Montreux Christmas Market

Freddy Mercury statue

Tartiflette

Montreux was our last stop before going to the US for Christmas.  We took the train and spent about an hour and a half walking around the lake, trying some food and hot wine and looking for some ornaments.  It was a cold day and snow/sleet showers would come and go.  Still, it was fun to check out another market before Christmas was over.