Have you seen this coat?

Last seen: March 23, outside the ski lockers at Club Med Cervinia (left on a bench, unmonitored)
Rightful owner: Frank Mount (who left to get a post-skiing beverage)
Brand: Columbia (not even something nice and expensive, like North Face)
Place of purchase: Marshall's (or some such Canadian equivalent)
Age: at least 4 years (but only worn for skiing)
Condition: Used (and probably pretty sweaty considering the warm temp this week)

If you know the whereabouts of this coat please leave a comment to this post.  The owner is pretty perturbed and can't quite figure out why anyone would want to take his coat.  He is thankful there is only one ski day left, that it is pretty warm outside, that his wife did not want to ski today and could give him her ski pass, and that whoever took the coat did not also take off with the backpack sitting there that contained the entire family's passports.

No reward offered!! (Since I think we only paid $50 for the coat in the first place.)

We miss you, Madeline!

We saw this statue and couldn't help but think of you!

Alpine Skiing

While I wasn't looking forward to a cold Spring Break, I was looking forward to skiing and it has been great.  I took today off (vacation from vacation) but skied the past 5 days.  We skied over to Switzerland twice (the hotel is in Italy).  Skiing here is much different than in the Canadian Rockies - much higher, wide open spaces, not much difficulty - but I think I like both for their different pluses.

I took my camera when we skied into Zermatt, Switzerland yesterday and got lots of good photos.

 Two places at once-

one foot in Italy, one foot in Switzerland

The very impressive-looking Matterhorn

Excellent skiers!

Despite how the above photo looks, Olivia retired her famous "snow-plow slide" skiing style and was very impressive on the slopes all week!

At the Iglu - a bar and HOTEL made of snow

Frank's favorite stop as evidenced by the photo

We had great weather the whole week.  It snowed on Sunday as we arrived, over night, and most of Monday which left a great layer of powder which just about lasted in the the mostly plus-freezing temps we had the rest of the week.  Apparently the snow was pretty bad before we arrived so we were lucky to get a good snow storm to start the week.

The resorts here all run together in one large ski area and there are mostly gondolas to ride between different runs.  One takes you all the way to the top of the glacier where you can ski year round.  It was a pretty scary ride.  Here are the views from the top:

Club Med

I wasn't sure how our Club Med experience would work out but it has been pretty good.  Emily and Marcy have particularly enjoyed it.  We have barely seen them as they have spent all their time at the kids club and with the friends they have made there.  Emily was a bit worried about doing the ski group but she ended up spending 4 out of 5 days with it and loved it.  She and Marcy both improved their skiing as well.  Here they are at awards night:

The advanced ski group

With Emily's friend, Juliette

(the only Canadian in the whole hotel I think, but Emily found her)

Marcy with her friend Anna

(from Mexico City, another rare North American)

The girls also participated in the kids club show.  This is right up Marcy's alley but I was surprised that Emily would put up with fancy costumes and face painting and dancing on stage but they both seemed to have fun with the whole thing:

Computer Accident

Create your own story around how playing on the computer caused this black eye!

Milan

As part of our skiing spring break we stopped in Milan for a few days.  If we ever get to Venice, I think we will have seen almost all of Italy.  Milan reminded me of a more touristy Naples. Here's what we saw:

The Duomo

From the roof of the Duomo

The Galleria

(an open air mall of high-end stores)

The Sfeurzo Castle

(I don't feel like looking up the corect spelling)

A bridge to the castle designed by Leonardo da Vinci

A small aquarium

Very old church, St Ambrose - city patron

(I'm like my mother, dragging everyone inside churches)

The Leonardo da Vinci Science Museum

(the description sounded really cool but it was pretty awful)

We did see plenty of cool Leonardo da Vinci works, including the Last Supper painting.  That was really cool to see and we were happy we managed to get tickets.  They allow groups of 25 inside for 15 minutes each.  Here's a statue of Leonardo outside the famous La Scala Opera House:



Three days was the perfect amount of time in Milan.  We didn't miss anything other than a trip to the soccer stadium but both AC Milan and Inter-Milan were not playing and not everyone wanted to just go look at a stadium again like in Madrid.  Last but not least we ate lots of good food:



Check me out!

I made someone else's blog.  And not just any blog, but a professional blog featured on the School Library Journal site.  And not just any blogger, but a woman who is well known in the library world.  I'm certainly the least professional of the bunch (#7) but I was featured at the end as well for furthering the cause!  Can this go on my resume??