dripping with passion

first of all, can you believe that (^^) is real?! switzerland is outrageous. secondly, this post has a lot of pictures in it. i’m trying to get our sisters’ trip documented in not too many posts, and there’s just so many good photos to share! so, just a fair warning here at the top :) after our time in anita’s hometown, she guided us in our two cars towards germany through the magical engadin valley. the scenery on the drive was breathtaking, and it was fun to switch around who was in what car and we had some fantastic conversations. i have so much to learn from each of my sisters and sister-in-laws and of course my mom. i am so incredibly grateful for their examples and perspectives.    we stopped to see the roman tracks at julier pass. this was where carts crossed over the mountains way back when. the scenery was so stunning!

paragliding in switzerland has to be among the very very best things i’ve ever done or will ever do in my life. i can’t express how much i loved this experience. it was such an incredible, magnificent HIGH. saydi, shawni, kristi and i met up with the awesome guys from x-dream fly at a grocery store parking lot. they took us in a van up, up, up the side of a mountain. the views of the vast scenery, those ubiquitous swiss cows and the darling flower-boxed houses were spectacular! and we all had butterflies in our bellies thinking about running off the side of a peak! eek!! when we got to our launching place, the guys started quickly working to get the equipment set up. these four swiss men that flew with us were all so so great. we loved learning about their lives and we had so much fun with them! and they all helped us to feel really safe. we got all suited up (shawni somehow scored with this full-on ski suit that her tandem flyer happened to have in his bag! and she had borrowed

for the past five or so years, my mom, three sisters, four sister-in-laws and i have been talking about planning an epic girls trip to switzerland. last month, our scheming and dreaming came true! {thanks to my mom’s wise inventing of the funds received from the sale of her parents’ idaho farm, the awesome dads and babysitters that took care of the twenty six kids left at home, and planning contributions from each of us – most especially anita and aja.} the nine of us, plus one really cute baby boy, met up in zurich and then traveled through parts of switzerland, germany and austria together. it was indeed epic – an incredibly joyful and beautiful and wonderful week. it’s challenging to create a record of a trip like this that was so jam-packed with awesomeness and details. i’ve done my best to gather photos from different sisters’ cameras, now back home scattered across the globe, and will chronicle our adventure in just a few blog posts in an attempt to remember and share all thi