The road is long

....with many a winding bend

Cascade de Nyon

We went for a walk along a frozen stream to Cascade de Nyon.

We stopped for a photo....


then we went to the top of the falls...

and threw some sticks and stones at the stream.

The boys found a slide in the snow so we slid until the light began to fail...

then walked back to the car.

The spring

We found a spring near the stream.
It was awesome - the sand at the bottom bubbled and it had little streams of air bubbles coming up.
I3 wanted to throw things into it.


We also found some fungus...


and built a little dam.

Easter?

I guess Easter must be on the way.

We stopped by the bakery to buy a baguette....

and found this on the counter....

and all of these too. Mmmmm chocolatey goodness.

Avoriaz

We've started taking the boys up to Avoriaz.
Lots of people hate the architecture there (the kind of people who think that a ski town should look like a twee picture on a chocolate box and have lots of ginger bread houses) but I love it. From below it blends into the cliffs and in the town itself there are no cars, only sleighs, so you can ski the streets and enjoy the silence.

Schooling the boy

The elder boy a.k.a. Y5 a.k.a. Mr Crazypants Talksalot id doing his first 6 months of kindy with the peeps at Sydney Distance Education Primary School. Frankly it's a pain in the butt. We're all sick of writing letters when we could be discussing the lifestyles of owls or skiing but that's schools for you - why educate students when you can mass produce a bunch of mindless drones?

Anyways......
Here's some of the stuff he's done.

We went for a walk past the village (so he wouldn't attack the neighbour's gardens) and collected some plants (2 types of pines, 2 types of fern, ivy, moss and lichen to be precise) and .....

stuck it to an outline of his favourite numbers.


We made a puzzle of Western Europe and coloured the countries in like their flags. You might be wondering why the U.K. looks even wonkier than the other countries.

It's because we swapped it with the North Island of New Zealand. I hope the Kiwis don't mind :p


The lonely country in the middle is Thailand. We're not too keen on scale :p

The waterfall.

This waterfall is on the Choucas run. In summer the run has asphalt on it not snow and when the Tour de France comes to Morzine they ride along it.


13 wanted to smash the waterfall *sigh*

Some stuff I have learnt.

1. Safety orange is not a good colour for a one piece ski suit. Nor is clown vomit with polka dots.

2. Jumps are only fun when you land them.

3.Singing to yourself on a ski lift earns you some pretty odd looks. Rapping gets you funnier looks.

4. No matter how many times you ask them if they want to pee at lunch children will always insist on stopping to pee on a tree 5 minutes after you ski off.

More signs.

Vincent: .....you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?

Jules: What?

Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that we got here, but it's just – it's just there it's a little different.

Hehehe....... I had to throw that in somewhere.

The EU might have a single currency now and freedom of movement across the borders but every country still has it's own deer signs.

The English deer is a pretty solid fellow who likes a run.

The French deer is a bit jumpier and he has a smaller rack.

The German deer is a bit fitter and likes to leap.

The Italian deer has the smallest rack of all - he's more streamlined so he can leap for the sky.


The Austrian deer may have skinny legs but at least he's got genitals :p

The Spanish deer has genitals too and he's possibly got the highest leap of all.


This deer is from Japan so he's totally irrelevant but he's so frisky he deserves an honourable mention.....


This is an English horse! Y5 took one look as we drove by a sign and exclaimed "Look out for donkeys!!" Hehehe, he's not far wrong.

A walk in the woods

We went for a hike by the lake. We carried our poles because we've noticed that all the hikers near the pistes carry them and we wanted to fit in.

At the end of the lake we walked through the woods for a while.


We saw some interesting signs. It seems that weird alien life-forms aren't allowed an the cross-country trail and Y1 tells me that it also says 'No leaving kids behind'.

You're also not allowed to carry a manbag and shop.