Carey'd Away

Still Life Challenge – Glass Bottles

Reflective surfaces can be quite a challenge, but much easier to manage with my new lights.

Recycled Glass (seriously)

Purple Perfume Bottle

Bottles and Beads

Crystal Perfume Bottle

Empty Bottles

World Book Day 2010

Matthew and Nathan’s school is celebrating World Book Day by allowing the children to dress up as their favorite book character.
Of course that means I have two Harry Potters today.  Aren’t they adorable?

Battling your evil twin is hard work, isn’t it Harry?

Old Friends in New Places

One of the great things about traveling a lot and living all over the world is that you get to meet many interesting and wonderful people.  One of the first families we met when we moved to Malaysia in 2001 was the Yigiter Family – Nuray, Burol, Dennis and Ege.  Matthew and Ege are the same age, and they made friends quickly.  When we moved back to Malaysia from Thailand in 2008, Ege and Matthew were in the same class at Mont Kiara International  School.  Last weekend we met up with the Yigiters in Geneva city center as they were here for the day on their way home from a mid-term break ski holiday.  It was fabulous to see them and hear how life is back in England (they left Malaysia last year too).

New Hobby

Matthew has decided to learn the guitar.  His school offers lunchtime classes for beginners on Mondays, but he’s starting late in the school year and is going to have to do a LOT of practicing to catch up.  He’s cool with that though, so we took him yesterday to Nyon to buy a beginner’s guitar.  We’re all really excited about his new hobby.

Snow Day

We got up on time yesterday, even dug out the car and drove to school.  But not many others did and given the option I chose to bring the kids home to help with the shoveling.  I mean have a nice snow day and hot chocolates with me.  :)

Ski Day

The kids got back well from Ski Camp.  They were 12 lessons ahead, confident, a bit tired and happy to be home.  But when we asked them Saturday afternoon what they would like to do on Sunday, they chimed, “ski!”.  So we packed up the car before sunrise and headed over to the French Alps Sunday morning.

My  main objective is really to ski, so I only brought our little Olympus U-Tough camera.  I took a few shots from the moving car and then pretty much forgot I had the camera with me until we were through skiing.  Opps.

We were surprised to see that the roads through the center of Geneva were not cleared.

The roads were much better once over in France.  And the sunrise was beautiful.

Mike took some video of the skiing, but I have not connected that camera yet.  I was busy skiing, but did remember to step out as we were repacking the car to get this quick snap of the cable cars coming up from the village.

And a couple Nathan took in the car on the way home.  :)

Christmas Concert

Matthew and Nathan are going to a cute little British School in Geneva.  It’s been quite an adjustment for all of us, as it is very different from the large international schools we are used to.  It has both pros and cons, but all in all we are very happy.   By the time we arrived (through snow covered streets) for the show we had to park quite far from the school and the little gym was standing room only.  But it was still great.

Christmas Flower

Last month I bought our family’s first ever Christmas flower at the local DIY shop.  The kids and I planted the enormous bulb into the tiny plastic pot that came with it and added some of our own extra soil.   Then we put the tiny pot inside a bigger ceramic one for support, put it by our back French doors, watered it and waited.

We didn’t have long to wait before it began it’s rapid journey to bloomdom.  We had a tall stalk with a bud in no time at all and then the bud unfolded and exploded into an enormous four piece firework of reds, yellows, greens, and pearly white.  Gorgeous!

Of course life hurriedly swirled around our new beautiful flower and while I had intended to photograph it properly, all I managed was a few snaps one morning with the Canon point and shoot camera.  Luckily for me though, this fancy flower has shot up a second budded stalk that is in the process now of unfolding.  If it explodes into a gorgeous bloom before we leave next week, I’ll make myself find the time to shoot it properly.  But for now, the snaps…

Cross-Country

We were supposed to go up to Les Gets this weekend for skiing, but there just wasn’t enough snowfall this week for that to happen.

So instead we went car shopping. Mike was fairly certain he wanted a Volvo XC70, preferably a Cross-Country. So we set out to find a Volvo place he’s seen on the internet. It is no great surprise that we had a difficult time finding the dealership (sometimes it seems we could get lost on a straight road), so finally we gave up and searched for “Volvo” on our GPS, Daniel.  He took us to a different dealership than the one we’d set out to find, where we were pleasantly surprised to find Mike’s perfect car waiting for us.  It really does suit him.  :)

It had just arrived the day before and another person was interested in buying it, but had not yet committed.  As it was everything that Mike wanted, we went ahead and did the paperwork.  The dealership has a few things to sort out, but he can pick it up the first week in January, which is perfect timing as that is when we return from our Christmas trip to the states.

It comes with ski racks, snow tires and even chains.  Yay!  We’re all set.

Nathan Skates – video

On Saturday, Matthew had an all day indoor soccer tournament, so Mike and I took Nathan skating. We went to the little sports center that our village shares with the one next to us and all three of us skated. It was only Nathan’s second time on skates, but he did really well. He’s not afraid to just get out there and do it. Thankfully after not skating for 37 years, I managed not to fall, but I am sure I’ll make up for that with lots of falling this weekend on the slopes. Ack!

Here is a little video of Nathan skating across the rink with me following him. And Mike sneaks into frame at the end.

Nathan Skates