Daley Ponderings

Waking up at the above mentioned 2pm left us just enough time to get ready to go to the Renaissance Dance Rehearsal at 3:00.  Janet wanted us to dance to medieval music at the wedding reception and thought it would be a good idea for us to practice ahead of time.  About 20 of us were there, and had a very fun time.  It's group dancing, like English Country Dancing or Contra Dancing. Each person has a partner, but all the sets of partners dance together as a whole.  Some of the dances did not use partners, but were all holding hands together in a circle.  We did many different dances and often were quite clumsy at it, but it was fun nonetheless.  The boys were not very interested in dancing, and even took a little nap.  Noah did join in during a couple of the simpler dances, but was intimidated by the more complex dances (if only he knew that we didn't know what we were doing...).  Jonathan was sad that he was by himself, but there wasn't much to do about it since he didn't want to dance, even during the simpler ones - I suspect it was more a pride issue of not wanting to change his mind after saying that he didn't want to dance earlier.  I think it might have been different if we started with the simpler dances earlier.

Right after that, we headed to the Stücklins' house for the Meet and Greet.  They had an amazing spread of appetizers and desserts which we all (except poor Noah who was still recovering from the previous night's sickness) munched on as we chatted.  We met various family members including Stephan's siblings, Cornelia and Philipp.

Mom set up her powerpoint presentation of Janet and Stephan, which was fun to see (maybe it will be posted somewhere sometime?)

The kinds of Christmas trees they have in Switzerland lend themselves well to candles on the boughs - the branches stick out horizontally and are not very dense.  Andreas lit the candles that were set up on the tree and we had a Christmas carol sing, including a fun (if not perfect) rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus.

Jon got an emergency call from a customer and cloistered himself in the basement to fix the problem.  This caused us to miss the last bus to the train station, but Philipp took us all in his Mobility car.  Then we took a train and a tram back to Richard's and crashed into bed.

Except for Faith and Jon.  They were both wide awake until at least 3am, maybe 5am. How do you tell an infant to change her sleep patterns?  We planned to get up at 7 to do laundry, since that was the first free time slot.  But I woke up at 10, surprised that it was so late.  I woke Jon up and we decided to go ahead and wake the kids up too to try to get onto Swiss time.

Jon was just opening the door to go to the basement when Richard came home. Perfect timing!  I was glad we had woken up.  Richard was able to help Jon with the washer, though he admitted he didn't know what all the symbols meant, either.  It turns out that the washers and dryers there take a very long time.  The wash was still damp when Jon took it out of the dryer after three cycles.

Noah immediately took to Richard, climbing up into his lap and enjoying his presence.  We gave Richard our thank you gift: a mug with pictures of us and some hot chocolate mix that's made near our house in Pittsburgh.  Faith fell asleep on the couch and I didn't know if that was a regular nap or just catching upon the sleep I woke her up from, so I gave up on trying to force her sleep changes.  I folded the laundry and hung up the damp pieces, and switched beds and sheets around so that our host could have a bed (we were sleeping in his.)

Getting things settled caused us to be late to the wedding rehearsal, so we were rushing around.  But when we got off at the bus stop, we weren't quite sure where to go.  There was a nice big church right there, but there was a sign above the side door that did not match the name I remembered.  So we wandered around for a bit before realizing that some posters on the sides of the church had the right name.

The rehearsal went as well as rehearsals usually do, slightly chaotic but we got the idea.  We met the flower girl, who is seven years old and whose mother I had not seen for at least ten years.  Isabella and Jonathan hit it off right away and had fun together running around the church in the down times.  A couple of us joked about the organist's level of comprehension - it was quite similar to what Alain (best man) had been telling us the previous night about his experiences with working with Indians - lots of nodding, but not necessarily much understanding.  We maybe should have paid more attention to that, as the confusion that happened at the ceremony might have been avoided.

After the rehearsal we went to Valda and Elaine's for a spaghetti dinner.  We met more friends, mostly church friends, I think, and had a fun time. Noah was much more comfortable in the crowd than he usually is.  I think he really likes Switzerland; it's too bad he won't remember it.

Stephanie experimented a bit with my hair to see what to do with it for the wedding, and the boys "helped" her out.  I think someone has a picture of that, but I haven't gotten it yet. Elaine was doing the girls' nails, so I joined in and got a very light shiny pink.  I declined the pedicure, however, since I was going to be wearing closed-toed shoes.

We took the tram home and once again crashed into bed.  This time Faith went to sleep at 1am, which was a thankful improvement, especially considering the hour I needed to wake up to be ready for The Big Day.