Party in Solothurn

One Saturday a few weeks ago, Jachen, me and Jachen's grandparents all piled into our car and we drove to Solothurn to go to Jachen's mom's birthday party. They drove with us so that they could stay over night and take the train back. The drive was rainy, never fun. After Jachen's grandma got all her talking in, I turned on the Beatles song, "Here Comes the Sun"...I was hoping it would stop the rain and lure out the sun. The grandparents got a chuckle out of that. I then proceeded with more Beatles songs, grandma was quite happy to be hearing the Beatles. We arrived in Solothurn, which is about a 2 hour drive, dropped off the grandparents said hello to the birthday girl and Jachen, Desiree and I set out to "craft" stores. We had heard there were a few good ones in their town. The first place we went I was able to find paint, below, and a few other items. But the "craft" stores here, like I have said before are pretty sad.

Paint! However there were not many color choices and they are expensive for the size. But I love the colors I bought. I have painted a little with them, but my goal is to paint a lot with them. I hope to see the bottom of the jars soon.

We then went into downtown Solothurn in search of another craft store. Found some beads in there, but that's it. We then walked to Mcdonalds for lunch. After, we found our way back to the car and then headed to the party. The video below of Jachen wimp fighting his sister.





I found my dream bike.

The beautiful street that Jachen's mom lives on now. Her home is the one on the corner closet to me which is the first thing on the video. Too bad the clouds are low and covering the massive mountain. It is such a pretty area.

Untitled from Monica Duschletta on Vimeo.

Jachen used google maps to get us to the party, however google maps decided to take us on the "short cut" which ended up being a really confusing and winding roads leading us up and down a mountain. I got carsick...that is something I experience these days with windy Swiss roads. Finally, we found our destination. The party was at this place that holds these mini retreats. They have different games/activities that enable groups to be formed thus building team skills and working together. So that is what we did. We were separated into teams and we had a few games to do and each team tried to get the best scores in each category. The first game we did was guess how much their huge pig weighed. Our team won this event...I would like to credit that to my years of watching Biggest Loser. Then there were such games as milking a cow...a fake cow but was built to let us "milk" water. In this event we were timed and had to milk as much as we could. The other events were hitting balls with a hockey stick into different sized holes, playing a horse shoe type game, archery, and darts. Each member of the team took turns and you would just move on to the next station when your teammates all finished. It was pretty fun. Then after we went inside their cool facility and they made us a delicious 3 course meal. First was salads then after we had all sorts of grilled meat and veggies and potatoe dishes. Then of course dessert. After dessert the owner handed out team prizes. Our team came in last, but we each still won a pad of paper with a cow on it. The 3rd place team won homemade honey. The second place team one smoked cheese and then first place won smoked salami. All the prizes were products of their farm. After the handing out of prizes Jachen's mom opened gifts. We heard there was a faster, more direct route back so we took that, forget windy roads!

He showed us how to play and keep score for each event. This is our instruction of how to shot the arrow. Isn't Swiss German a little silly sounding?

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That would be Jachen's grandpa throwing darts.

It was a long and fun evening.