Our fabulous Swiss National Day. Oeschinensee

On Monday, August 1- which is Swiss National Day, we celebrated our Swissness by climbing a mountain, roasting wursts, and taking a dip in a freezing cold alpine lake. Ahhhh, good times.
We picked this one (Oeschinen See):

And it was so beautiful. The sky was blue and clear and we could see the snow-capped mountain peaks.


So, since Brett saw on the map that there was a little road that went all the way up to the lake, he thought he should take the stroller and it might be a bit easier carrying our lunch and firewood and kids and stuff. Well, he thought wrong. It was a nicely paved road, yes, but it was STEEP (a lot of people take the chairlift) and our stroller is honkin’ and heavy and it was really hard work pushing it up. Not that I know from personal experience mind you, as Brett wanted all the glory of pushing it up himself and so he did all the work. Orrin and Talmage both fell asleep on the way up. Talmage is heavy. Anyway, just believe me it was steep and hard. So, we were actually still going at a pretty fair clip, and there was a group of 6 or 7 adults in front of us, and when we were pretty much at the top, they had stopped for a rest with about half of them on one side and half on the other, and as he went through them they all started clapping for him. It was so funny and awesome.

Another time we passed a guy going down as we were going up, and as he went by he said, “Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fuenf!” He was very astounded at five kids. Ha ha.

Since we were in Switzerland, we shared the lake with a herd of cows. :)

We made a fire and cooked our wursts and nutella muffins and hard boiled eggs and sat close to the fire because right then it was windy and actually pretty cold. We had not brought any sweaters, although luckily there was one of Ethne’s left in the stroller that we wrapped around Orrin. Then the kids got on their swimming suits despite the cold and went down to the water.

It was FREEEEEEEEZING!!

Jethro was pretty brave though and went in pretty much to his neck but then he said it was hurting and got out again.



Then I harassed Brett to swim in it. So he did. He swam for a short bit, then said it hurt and got out. :)






I wanted to get in, in fact, I had told Brett that if he got in I would get in, so Jethro was trying to get me to get in. Except I didn’t want to change into my swimming suit in the trees (as there were quite a lot of people around, it being Swiss National Day and all), so I went up to the restaurant to see if there was a bathroom, and there was. So, I changed and went to the water’s edge, and wondered why I had wanted to get in. :) Actually, I got in pretty quick, swam out a ways, and when I felt my appendages starting to shrivel up (which was in about 7 seconds), I swam back. Then I went out again because Brett hadn’t taken pictures the first time. It was intense.


We all got changed and walked around to the other side of the lake.




Have you ever noticed how kids can play for about two hundred hours in rocks and water?




There was a ‘sculpture garden’ but it was a little weak. These were the best ones:



Finally, we started down. Of course, it was a real fight with the stroller on the way down too.

So Brett rigged up a better braking system. I was doubtful, but it worked like a charm. He barely touched the hand brake and wasn’t being dragged down the hill; in fact, usually he had to remind us to let up a bit, and we were barely pushing down on our sticks. Sometimes it’s really handy to have married an engineer.





That night we let Jethro turn his eye into a flaming torch.

And Ethne turned into a little fire devil.



And we let the kids stay up for some fireworks. Talmage’s vocabulary grew to include the words ‘bang’ and ‘boom.’

Happy Swiss National Day!!!!
And happy birthday to my new niece, Ruth, who was so special that fireworks went off for her!