Bastille Day/Apartment lease signing party

I guess we really haven't addressed this on our blog, yet, but a couple of months ago Daniel accepted a job transfer to Geneva, Switzerland. I had mixed feelings about the move, it seems like it will be a better work environment for Daniel but I hated to leave Marseille, however, my biggest reservations stemmed from the difficulty of finding an apartment in the area. There is a severe housing shortage and we had only heard horror stories of people having to live in temporary housing for months while visiting and applying for every apartment posted, and finally taking whatever they were accepted for. We made a trip out there the middle of June and managed to set up 7 visits (it is required that you visit the apartment before submitting an application). Our fears were not assuaged when talking to the current tenets of the apartments and finding out that there were between 15 and 50 applicants for each apartment we were looking at. The regie, some middle man organisation which we still don't fully understand, makes the final decision very subjectively. It is a difficult process to describe because it is so foreign from an American persective, but to say the least, it was very discouraging. However, we prayed really hard and fasted and the day after we submitted our applications we were accepted not only for an apartment, but for our favorite apartment! we consider it a huge blessing. We had to pick up the keys the middle of July, so we built that trip into the 14 Juillet holiday.

We broke the trip up a little bit and tried out the 4 star camping experience that we usually make fun of, thinking it would be ideal for the kids. I found one with some waterslides and was convinced. We spent the Saturday before at a waterslide park and the kids loved it so much I wanted them to have some slides, even if they were miniture. We actually really enjoyed ourselves. We spent a lot of time in the pool.

The kids also enjoyed jumping around.

Chilling out in the hammocks

I'm not sure who enjoyed chiling out the most, but probably Daniel

Enjoying some pizza from the restaurant

Trying to catch frogs; unfortunately they proved to be a little to quick for us. Apparently they are faster than the frogs we were used to in Texas

Jonas always wants to do everything himself now, freaking his mother out. We even lucked out because they had their 14 Juillet celebration that evening on the 13th with a concert and fireworks. Four-star camping treated us well.

The next day we heading up to Annecy to celebrate the real 14 Juillet. It was a very fun experience participating in all the festivities.

Dipping our feet into the surprisingly warm alpine Lake Annecy. We enjoyed some concerts and a great fireworks display and got back to our new campsite maybe a little too late considering the early hour we had to be at our new apartment to sign the lease and get the keys. It was worth it, though. They kids had a blast. The most exciting part for me and Daniel was definitely the apartment business. Now I can say I really am excited to move to Switzerland!