Faking It...

Following our trip to Barcelona, we set ourselves on getting ready for Christmas.  So on Friday night, we made the trip to the local "Home Depot" to buy ourselves a tree - of the beautiful green, plastic variety.  :)  In the past, we have always bought a real tree, but garbage disposal is a bit more complicated here compared to the States, where we can just take things to the curb.

Here, there are specific recycling bins for everything - paper, PET plastic, glass of different colors and compost.  And I just learned that we are supposed to tote our empty milk containers back to the grocery store to recycle (whoops!)

Here in Geneva, and I suspect across Europe, everyone is pretty environmentally conscious.  Even the yogurt containers have little perforations so you can take the paper label off an recycle...at least that is the only reason I can think of!

The good news is we already recycled all this stuff in the States and had a compost bin in our back yard, so it hasn't been hard to adjust.

So...we decided to go with a fake tree this year.  You should have heard us explaining to Hayden, after he asked us if we were going to pick out a tree and put it on the roof.  It went something like this: "Last year, remember when we went and picked out a tree and Dad put it on the roof of the car?  Well this year, our tree will come in a box, so it might actually might fit in the trunk." 

I felt quite silly after the explanation and it went right to the top of the list along with explaining what a Dry Cleaner was and why we only take certain clothes there, when everything else gets washed at home.

I felt that we should go a little more Swiss in our decorations this year, a change from what our tree typically looks like.  The good news is it just took a box of small ornaments and some ribbon, so it didn't break the bank.  

On Sunday, we saw our first snowflakes of the season.  It was just a light smattering, so nothing that stayed for long.  On Monday, however, we got a decent amount in the afternoon, right before school let out.  On the way to the car, despite the snowfall and cold, Hayden stopped to scrape all the snow off the top of the fence and steal a taste off the sidewalk on the way to the car.  I could barely get him to stop to get a picture.

Yesterday, I mentioned that it was Winter.  Hayden's ears perked up and he replied, "It's Winter?  That means we can go skiing...?  Can we go tomorrow?"  He has been ready to go skiing for a while now and I have kept him at bay by saying that first, it needs to be Fall and the leaves will turn and fall off the trees and then it will get colder and it will be Winter.  Good thing we go on our ski trip soon!  While I am not a huge fan of the cold, I am looking forward to a week away, teaching Hayden to ski, and hopefully getting on the slopes too.  We have rented a chalet with another family (also newly relocated from Cincinnati) and now with the snowfall, it should be a fun time!