Meeting Susan in the snow......

Well......

I have been busy socialising here in Engelberg. What fun it has been! Here I am in Central Switzerland, and a blogging friend of mine, who is an American living in Zurich, and I, decided that a visit was in order. Definitely in order. I have a slight advantage here, because I have actually met blogging friends IRL and lived to tell the tale, and I loved meeting every single one. They did not appear to be axe murderers at all! But this was a first for Susan, from Swiss Family Olsen and she was brave enough to leap in her car and drive over an hour to get here from Zurich yesterday morning to meet a total stanger. Me. I am harmless really. Not to mention my sister, brother-in-law and mother.

I was looking out for her car, and made a valiant effort to clear the snow from the driveway as she arrived, so her first sight of me was actually of a slightly mad woman rushing back inside to get on her boots, hopping about on the doorstep putting them on, and knocking over the snow shovel in the process. She must have wondered what she had done, coming up the mountain!

And Susan is so TINY!! Marge and I took one look at her and declared that we felt like Amazons. Giants. However, it took all of oh.......2.6seconds for us to be totally at ease with each other, and we talked so much I nearly forgot to feed the poor girl. In fact we completely forgot lunch, which was something Marge and I remembered as we waved goodbye. We were mortified. I am SO sorry, Susan! I will do better next time. Or we can go to Duke's , my brother-in-law's restaurant.
We had such a lovely time chatting about everthing under the sun from global politics and economics to family and blogging friends. And shops. Sigh. We just needed more time. Susan is a total delight, and such fun too. And you know, I loved having my sister see the blogging world in action too. She reads a lot of the blogs I read, and now she has seen how wonderful our friendships can be in real life as well. As Susan says, it is all Boomama's fault, because her comment section is where we first discovered each other. Three cheers for Boomama!
Marge decorating her Christmas tree.

So.... here is what remains of the mince pies. I also forgot to offer Susan any. Grovel.

I have been entertaining. I loved it.

And then Marge and I popped over to the restaurant to decorate it for Christmas, and I stopped to watch the ski jumpers practicing on the slope. They are also very tiny. And certifiable. That is a loooooooong way to fly through the air. I considered that my weight may give me supersonic speed, but then gravity would come into action and I would either plummet like a stone, or land somewhere on the other side of the village. But, never fear, my knee and I will watch from a distance.

We had dinner at the restaurant, which was wonderful, of course, and then came home to crash in front of the tv. And snooze a little. The leg seems to be growing. It also hurts. But I am not going to think about it at all. That can wait till after Christmas. I refuse to let it stop me from doing anything right now.

Today has been a shopping day. Down the mountain. Believe me, the Swiss shopping experience is a delight. Bargains! Real sales! So many different things to look at and dream about. And the baby things....oh my word. The 4 of us were jammed into the car coming home, covered with shopping bags. Fun. Exhausting. Fun. Did I mention fun?? There were coffee breaks too, of course.

So there you have my latest news. I am having a wonderful time. I am here in the snow with great family and friends. I am grinning.