Uncle Shaun Comes to Town

We were delighted to have Uncle Shauny and Maria come to visited us in Feb! We took them all around the city of Basel, as Maria had not been here before, and it's a lovely place to walk around even when you know it well.

 

 

 

 

 

Then a bit more walking in our local Muttenz area.

 

It was great to have someone else to hold the bike when Benjy had had enough!

 

"Hey dad, that's my bike!"

 

 

 

 

The weather wasn't great but at least it wasn't raining

 

Off we went to church on Sunday

A visit to our local chickens

 

Not forgetting the moos

 

 

 

 

 

Then home for a bath ~ once again Uncle Shauny drew the short straw!

The boys were super excited to experience the joys of spiderman-foam in a can

And played a great round of  'balance the bottle on your head'

 



 

 

 

 

After which Shaun was promptly dispatched to bedtime story duty

 

 

 

I don't know about him, but we had a great time!!!

 

It was a fun weekend and we hope they will stay with us again!

Happy Easter!

 

Guess who visited the Kackie Household last night?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two very excited little boys, the night before

 

 

 

 

 

And the hunt is on...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to review the haul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whoa, that's a lot of chocolate!

 

Easter bunny even left a pretty one for mum!

Snow, snow and more snow!

We`ve had an amazing amount of snow this winter. It staretd in October (very unusual) and it has still been snowing this week - again, very unusual . Of course, we have had milder patches all through, but still crazy weather for Basel. The upside of all this has been great skiing, which started early and is still going strong.

 

This year we have really made the most of the snow and been skiing a lot. We´ve done a few weekends away, the odd day trip and a week long trip to an Austrian resort. We are only an hour away from several ski fields.

 

 





We stayed in th Tirol area of Austria, on the Zugspitze mountain. We stayed in a ´Familien` hotel, which is a hotel that caters for families -  with childcare, playgrounds, kid menus, and more. It was awesome. Flynn did ski school each morning and he made amazing progress! He can now ski down blue runs very happily.

 

 

 

 

 

Benge had lots of fun sledding and spent three mornings at the childcare centre on the mountain. This gave Blake and I the opportunity to ski together on those days.

The mountain was utterly awesome, with huge, long, wide runs and many areas in which to ski.

Most days we dropped Flynn at ski school, then Benge played with Blake or went to the childcare and I skiied. Then we all had lunch together and then I took the boys back to the hotel so Blake could ski. It worked well and we all had a ball.

 

 

Flynn took some pics in the gondala

 

 

We were so proud of Flynn! Many of the kids in ski school ended up falling over again and again through exhaustion or simply having had enough of trying. A couple were bawling by the end. But not our Flynn - he was stoic and gave it everything.

 

 

He`s third from the left.

The resort facilities on the mountain were awesome. There was a great restaurant and everything was at far more reasonable prices than Switzerland! There was a lot of spaghetti bolognaise being eaten by our family!

One of the resort buildings from outside

The view from our hotel room

There was an indoor pool with an outdoor part too  - you can swim through the automatic doors into the outdoor part. The water is obviously heated, but the air was freezing! The boys loved it though.

Another day, Blake took Flynn skiing for the day with his best friend´s family.

 

I´ve swapped my snowboard for skis and am loving the change!

 

 

 

All in all we have had a great time skiing and sledding this year, and next year Benjy will be starting ski school, so a whole new chapter of family skiing will be starting, yay!