Cover your ears

This place has really been tough on the ears lately. Over the past few weeks, we've noticed Tanner's voice cracking from time to time as it starts to change. (Heaven help us all.) Now, to make matters even worse, he's come down with a cold. It's awful. He can't utter a sentence without spanning about four octaves in the space of ten words. He's worse than a Garth Brooks song.

For the sake of our sanity, we've requested that he not speak until he turns 17 or until he gets over his cold, whichever comes last.

More "lasts"

Well, this past weekend saw us doing two more things for the last time: Stace and I had lunch at a ski resort in the Alps for the last time, and we all drove to an obscure part of Germany to play with monkeys at a monkey park for the last time. (Okay, honestly, that was also the first time to do the monkey thing, but I'm pretty sure that it was the last.)

A series of lasts

We're now to the phase of our stay in Switzerland where we keep doing things "for the last time." Saturday was the last ski day (although Tanner is begging me to take him one more time on the slushy snow this weekend), I used up my last annual Zug bus pass, and we're planning our last intra-Europe spring break trip.

I experienced one today that's more painful than all of those, though: I booked my last business class flight. I have a trip to Minnesota coming up in April, and then I'll probably never again have another business class flight before I die. Is it possible to grieve the loss of a tolerable overseas flying experience? I'm living proof that the answer is yes. You can bet that I'll be making full use of the individual movies with noise-cancelling headphones, "Would you like some orange juice before we take off, Mr. Wood?", lie-flat seats, free snacks in the galley, meals on real dishes, "Can I take your coat for you, Mr. Wood?" . . . . Well, you get the picture. Are you all feeling my pain?

Bonus ski day

I took Tanner skiing last Saturday and told him that it would be the last ski day of the season because I figured the snow would be melting by now. Happily, we had an unusally cold week with lots of precipitation, so we were able to squeeze in one more day, and Lindsey actually got to do some skiing this year. She was finally allowed to ski after recovering from her broken arm. She was pretty rusty at first, but she figured it out before too long.

The weather was beautiful. I told the kids to enjoy their last ski day in Switzerland. I'm not sure that they'll have a chance like that again.