Sunday-Funday! Badminton, Kayaking, and More!

Sunday morning again! The kids and I woke up and went to church. This time we grabbed a whole pile of children's books from a table at the entrance for Katie to look at, but everyone ended up paging through them. We can't really understand any of the German spoken during the mass, or read any of the German in the books, but it was still interesting to look at the pictures, and we did try to follow along in the songbook. It's still the same Jesus though! After mass a nice older man approached me to welcome our family - I think he thought we were moving in! He spoke a little English and I told him we were visiting my sister, and we chatted for a little bit while the kids played on the playground outside.

I took this picture while walking home from church. The wooden house is a traditional style, older Swiss house, surrounded by newer modern homes. The whole town is full of juxtapositions like this.

Malorie and Siraj purchased this nifty badminton/tennis/volleyball combo setup prior to our arrival, and today we set it up for the first time. The kids loved it! Here's a little video of some of the action.

There was also some kind of bird of prey circling overhead. My camera is super grainy at this range, but you can hear its cry in this video.

After the babies had napped, we decided to head to the local beach for the afternoon to break in the new inflatable kayak Malorie and Siraj purchased. Lily was the first one who got to go out with Uncle Siraj. I took a little video as they paddled away, and you can hear Katie pitifully say "I want to go with Siraj." Unfortunately we only had two life jackets, and none of them were small enough for her. Hopefully we'll pick up an infant one and go out again before we leave Switzerland.

There is also a small kiddie pool, and the other two times we visited the beach it was not filled. But it was filled today! Maybe they only fill it on weekends?

Here's a photo of Katie giggling and running away from me.

Joey was next to go out on the kayak. They went out super far, all the way to an island in the middle of the lake. Siraj said he told Joey to navigate, warning him about boats in their path, and that Joey was really terrible at it. Then he said he asked Joey to describe what he could see, and he was only describing things like the boat, the oar, and their life jackets. It wasn't until they were back on shore that Siraj realized Joey hadn't been wearing his glasses! He has really terrible eyesight without them, poor guy! Maybe we'll buy an elastic cord to go around his head so he can wear his glasses out next time. Joey still had a great time though, and is still bragging about how they went all the way to the island.

Joey's turn on the kayak.

The kids also had fun playing in a nearby creek that feeds into the lake. There were a bunch of local kids playing in there too, including the neighbor boy that they had played with in our backyard! Super fun! We met his parents, who both spoke English (his mom is Danish and his dad is German). Their son only speaks German, but the kids still had fun playing together.

Lily playing in the sand. It's nice there's this sandy area here, because the beach is so rocky. 

Mary and Joey rode home in the car, but there wasn't enough room for everyone so Lily and Katie and I walked home. On the way we stopped and fed the fish and ducks in the castle moat. It was pretty entertaining, so I filmed it. We also passed by this sheep grazing right next to the sidewalk. Katie adores seeing all the animals, and it was great to get such an up close view of this one with her.