Ice and Cold, Cold and Ice

As you can probably tell, our Chief Blogger has been down for the count or preoccupied or reading or (occasionally) cooking for me, so she has been off her stride of a blog per day. Now I could have picked up the slack but that would require commitment (from me) and expectation (from you) and frankly, who needs that kind of responsibility??

We have been hibernating in this cold and "the most snow in 30 years" city we now call home. I venture out to the gym and the grocery store these days but that's about it. You skiers would think we are nuts- so close to the Italian Alps and here we are sitting on our butts (but then again we do the same thing in Seattle while many of you are off frolicking in the mountains- but jeesh the Alps??!) Our neighbors, Stefania and Alessandro often go off with their ski club on the weekends and 7 year old Chiara would put me to shame on a slope. But as I say in Seattle, and now here, wow aren't those mountains in the distance just beautiful?

Wikipedia says: Monte Rosa, also called Dufourspitze (in German, lit. Dufour Peak), is a mountain in the Pennine Alps. With its 4,634 m (15,203 ft) summit, it is the second highest mountain in the Alps and western Europe^[1] and the highest of Switzerland. Its 2,470 m (8,104 ft) eastern wall is also the tallest in the Alps^[2] and its western side is covered by the Gorner Glacier, the second largest in the Alps. The peak is located in the canton of Valais in the municipality of Zermatt. It is the summit of the Monte Rosa Massif, a range lying on the border between Italy and Switzerland and composed of several summits over 4500 metres.