about a dream: July 2012

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Day 26: YouTube

Today the girls watched Shrek (again), and we enjoyed listening to SmashMouth's cover of "I'm a believer" at the end. So afterwards, I asked them if they wanted to watch the Monkee's perform it on YouTube.

"Yeah!!" they yelled, excited.

So I put it on, and Maggie wailed!


She was really upset about it too! I totally should have seen that one coming. The monkeys! She must have been so excited to see a bunch of monkeys perform it. Bad mommy!

Then later this afternoon, we (I don't remember how) decided we had to see Destiny's Child perform "Survivor," which incidentally I don't think I've ever heard in its entirety, and certainly had never seen the music video for.

Well, the video takes place on a desert island and Destiny's child are supposed to be shipwrecked there. I had to explain the premise to the kids, because they were totally confused as to why the women were in a raft and whatnot. So we're watching as they ascend the Aztec-like temple where they're joined by a bunch of other dancers, and Maggie says, "If they're on a desert island, where did the backup singers come from?"

Ha! The funniest thing is, no one had said "back-up singers" to her today. It always cracks me up to just find out that she knows terms like that.

The rest of today was equally lazy and fun. We watched some Shrek and some olympics, played outside, and lazed around. We had to store up energy for our trip to Budapest tomorrow after all!

Day 25: Zip Line Fix

Nina loves, loves, loves the zip lines here. I wrote recently about how the zip line at the playground near her school just doesn't cut it after having experienced the much faster zip line near Stefan's house. Fortunately, the zip line at the playground near Rauhenstein is quite long and, while not as fast as the one near Stefan's, fast enough. So I took the girls there yesterday. Behold!
Click here for a video. Right click and open in another tab if you don't want to be directed away from the blog.
and here's Maggie!
After about an hour of playing at the playground, the girls and I hiked up to the ruins again. So fun!

We even went to the top of the tower! Fun times!

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Day 23: Neusiedlersee

Saturday was hot hot hot (probably 95 degrees!) so we decided to head to a nearby lake for some family fun. And what fun it was! Well, not the lake, which we didn't actually go in, but the water park right on the lake. We must have gone down the water slide 50 times!
The girls with the slide
Maggie went down on my lap because the water at the bottom was over her head, but Nina went by herself. Nick or I always caught her at the bottom so that she didn't accidentally go under.
It was a very fun slide, but it was also the world's slowest water slide. If you didn't lean into the turns just right, you'd run the risk of coming to a stop! Maggie and I got it down though and by the end, we could zip down in record time. Fun!
There was also a lovely playground:
Note again the short- and long-sleeved swim tops. Once again, we were the only ones. Nick was utterly embarrassed by my swim dress too. I finally caved and took it off after lunch. Still, my tankini top and swim shorts were more coverage than anyone else there. Maybe I'll cave to the pressure and pack a true bikini to Hungary.
Well, we swam for hours and hours, had ice cream at a restaurant on the lake, swam some more, and finally headed home. It was a blast!
Oh, here's the actual lake. It was very pretty!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Day 22: Nina is THIS CLOSE to losing her first tooth

It's so loose!! I know, it's been loose for a while. It got suddenly looser at one point, then stayed at medium loose for months. But today it really catapulted ahead to very, very loose. Not hanging-by-one-thread loose, but gonna-lose-that-tooth-before-she-turns-seven loose. Well, hopefully it's that loose!

Today was a hot, lazy day. I felt nauseous all day, probably because of the migraine I had all night and woke up with. Poor head of mine. So we just laid low, played outside, played inside, and watched a little Simpsons. Not a bad day though.

Yesterday I took the girls to the playground near Nina's school. Nina wanted to go there because it has a zip line (a common feature in Austrian playgrounds). Unfortunately, the awesomely fun and fast zip line near Stefan's house made this zip line seem like child's play. We're spoiled now! I think the zip line at the playground near the castle ruins we hiked to two weeks ago also has a fantastic zip line, and that's closer than Vienna, so we'll have to get back there before too long.

Not tomorrow though! Tomorrow we're going to spend the day at a lake about 45 minutes from here. It's supposed to hit 90 tomorrow, so our timing is perfect.

I'll bring the camera and take pictures this time!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Day 19: You'll never believe this one

Meet Einstein

Einstein is some kind of gecko, and we're gecko-sitting him for a whole month! Fun times. Einstein is really two pets in one, because he eats live crickets, and we have to keep those alive long enough to feed to him. Meet the disgusting crickets!

I took multiple pictures of the crickets to bring you those gems. Sad.

How's it going? Well, the gecko is still alive, but he seems kind of... depressed. He hides in his rocks all day and night, and doesn't seem to be eating much. We just fed him, we'll see if most or all of the crickets are gone in the morning. Hopefully they are, because any that are left have to be removed or else they'll start biting him. Ironic!

Here's a picture of his terrarium. It's in the living room.

Fun. Definitely crossing gecko off the list of potential pets. Not that gecko was ever really on the list.

In more exciting news, I took the girls to one of the baths in Baden today (Baden literally translates to Bath. There are lots of natural thermal springs there, though I don't know if this place was natural thermal spring water or just regular pool water. Does it matter? Definitely was chlorinated.)

The bath we visited is called the Strand Bad, literally the sand bath, because they trucked in some sand for the kiddies. The sand isn't in the water though, it's more like a giant sand box 10 feet from the water. Fun though. The baths were really just swimming pools, which is kind of a let down. I was hoping for some springs in rocks or something. But they were huge! There were really just three separate pools, but two were utterly enormous, and the smallest one (the kiddie pool) was still a good size, maybe 25 by 40 feet. There were small water slides in the kids pool, plus a bunch of fountains. The water was 0.55 meters deep max, which is just about Maggie's belly button, so she had lots of fun. The water was deeper in the larger pools, which I'd wager ranged in temp from 78 to 95 degrees. Then there were a few big water slides, which Nina was brave enough to try all by herself. I was so proud of her!

I didn't take the camera, sorry. But we stayed about 6 hours and had a blast. Funnily, I'd say we stuck out like sore thumbs there. I wore my typical swimming garb (long-sleeved spf 50 cover-up plus hat, even while in the pools of course), and I'd have drawn less attention if I was topless. Truly. No one bats an eye at a topless mom (not that it was very common, more for sunbathers and for a quick change). They probably thought I was a very conservative Christian or something. Though maybe the ultra-white skin marks me as sun paranoid, who knows. The Austrians certainly sport deep tans. I wonder what the skin cancer rates are around here.

The girls also wore their typical swim garb; bikini bottoms and shirt spf 50 swim tops (short sleeves for Maggie, long for Nina). We were the only ones in swim shirts. Most of the girls under 5 (or 6 or 7) wore just bottoms, so even a bikini top would have been a lot. And barely a hat to be seen!

Regardless of dress though, we had a great time! I think tomorrow we'll lay low and rest. The girls were exhausted by the time we got back!

Monday, July 23, 2012


Anne has a DVD of the movie Madagascar that she got way back when it first came out, when Nina was about 2. It's hystercial. If you've never seen it, it's about 4 animals that escape from the Central Park Zoo and seek out "The Wild." "The Wild" is a big theme in the movie, and they wind up on a boat headed for the Kenya Wildlife Preserve, but fall off the ship and land on Madagascar, where they get to experience The Wild.

Ok, so on Saturday we were at Melk Abbey, waiting for the English guided tour to begin. There was a very, very dark skinned man waiting too, and the girls were wondering if he was American. We asked, and he said no, he was from Africa. Maggie's eyes got big. She walked over to me and whispered in my ear, "Is he from the wild?"

Fortunately no one heard! (I told her that he was probably from a city.)

Day 17: Vienna

Finally yesterday we went to Vienna. This ended up being a less exciting trip than it could have been, but the girls had had their fill of old buildings and tours from Saturday's trip to Melk, plus they were still kind of worn out from that day and a late night, so we just walked around and took it easy. We also didn't take many pictures.

We started by attending the noon mass at St. Stefansdom. Beautiful, gothic-style cathedral in the heart of Vienna's first district. Mass was lovely! In German, but otherwise the same as an American mass. Except for one thing--communion!! It was mayhem! Instead of filing out of the pews one at a time in an orderly fashion, everyone rushed forward at the same time! And there were no lines, just a big parade up to the front! People were coming back through the crowd after getting their communion while everyone else was moving forward. It was crazy. Then at the altar, there were 3 priests handing out communion willy-nilly to the crowd. No order whatsoever. People were nice and all, there was no pushing or anything, but still, it was strange.

After that, we made our way through the pedestrian district to the Hofburg, the winter palace, and played at a statue in the courtyard for a while. Observe:

Then we went to another statue and the girls chased pigeons for about half an hour. They were having a blast.

Finally, we walked over to the apartment of some family friends of Nick and Anne, the Pflamitzers, and saw Diane, Paul, Stefan, and Stefan's girlfriend and her daughter. They fed us a lovely dinner, and we took the kids to a nearby playground where Nick and Stefan used to play.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Day 16: Stift Melk

Today we drove out to Melk Abbey in the town of Melk, about an hour and a half from Baden. Wow was it fabulous!! Here's us in front of it. I'm not sure if you'd call this the front or the back of the Abbey. This is the side on the steep rocky outcrop facing the Danube, and you enter at the other end, so it's kind of the back. But it's the side facing the town and the pretty face of the Abbey, so it's kind of the front. Here, you decide:

The Abbey was founded in 1089 when someone (I mean, Leopold II, Margrave of Austria. Thank you wikipedia!) donated an old castle to the Benedictine Monks. Stift literally translates to "gift," so it's still called the "Melk gift" in German. Talk about undying gratitude!

It was enlarged, at one point burned and rebuilt, and then underwent a major renovation in the 1700s. The popular style in the early 1700s was Baroque, so that's why the chapel is so ornate. The tour guide said that they'd hoped to just give the original chapel a Baroque face-lift in the 1700s, but the structure was too weak, so it was cheaper to just tear it down and rebuild. Here's the chapel:

Off to bake some cookies, I'll finish this blog post later!

Back! I'm going to continue this here instead of starting a new post so keep the Melk visit all in one post.

Here's a video of the inside of the chapel.

There happened to be a wedding going on, so that was a live choir singing. Very beautiful! We weren't allowed any further into the chapel during the wedding, but we came back later after the tour (the chapel isn't a part of the tour, they want to keep it more of a sacred space than a tourist spot, but we were welcome to wander around it on our own afterward. No more choir though). I tried to keep my hand as steady as possible, but I was pretty zoomed in there for a while, so it's a little shaky.

The chapel was beautiful, and like most major churches, there were some people buried there. It's weird, but I'm used to that. What I'm not used to is bones being displayed like it's Disney's Pirates of the Carribean ride. WEIRD! I didn't even want to take a picture because I thought it would creep the girls out so much, but here's a pic from the great internet:

Yes, let's just encase the bones in a body stocking, dress them up, and pose them. The best part is, one of the old Austrian ruling families (probably a Hapsburg, but you know me and names) gave these bones as a gift and told the monks that they were the bones of a saint. Which saint? They didn't know. Any proof of that claim? Of course not! But if the empress gives you bones and tells you they come from a saint, you put them up on the wall there, even though they're probably really just the bones of some poor peasant. The royal worship that went on here several hundred years ago apparently rivalled even the situation in the UK.

More on that theme, the tour we took (which didn't begin until 2:55 pm, giving us 2 hours to wander around on our own before) began in the Imperial Hall. Why is there a wing of the monestary called the Imperial Hall, I didn't wonder, but should have. I'll tell you why. They reserved an entire wing of the Monestary for the visiting emperor and empress (Maria Theresa and her husband, I forget his name) and their entourage of like, 200, even though they only visited once. Ever! The rooms were not used after that. They just sat there, waiting, in case royalty came back. God forbid they be sullied by commoners!!

Here's a photo of the marble hall, used for entertaining and I don't remember what else. It's not really marble, just painted to look like it. The ceiling was beautiful, painted by someone famous, I don't remember who. I could look it up on wikipedia, but this post is already taking me forever.

Finally, here's another video of the exterior of the Abbey. You can right-click on the you tube links and open them in another tab if you don't want to be directed away from the blog. I don't know how to change my settings so that it automatically does that. One day if I have extra time I'll see if I can figure it out.

After the tour, which was in English, people were thanking our tour guide for doing such a wonderful job. Dear Maggie sighed loudly and said, "UGGH. It was SOOOOO boring!" Embarrassing! Fortunately, she just laughed. You can't please everyone!

And here's the girls, 5 minutes after we got in the car to go home.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Day 14: Some more playgrounds, and the kids get a bed

Hooray! We got this bed for free too! Some friends of the people who let us stay in their apartment the last time we were here were getting rid of it. It's very nice! I didn't get to see it taken apart so I had to make some guesses putting it back together, but it was a pretty basic IKEA bed, so I don't think I messed anything up too badly. Nina is such a great help, too! She tightened all of the bolts for us, and helped Nick and me roll out the slats. They gave us the mattress, too. It's a double, so it's just fine for the two of them. Nina did say she'd like 2 separate beds, but I told her when we're back in Maine we can pull their beds apart and give them each their own. She's ok with that.

So, let's see... what have we done since Sunday. Hmmm... On Monday we... uh... I'm having trouble remembering Monday! Maybe we just played in the apartment and outside. On Tuesday I took the girls to the park with the ducks, and this time we remembered our stale bread (which was so hard and stale that it took all my muscles to cut it up!), and then we played at the playground there.

Today the girls and I walked to a playground that's right next to Maggie's school. It's just a 10 or 15 minute walk from here, very convenient. Then we came home and Nina went back outside to play with her new friends!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Day 10: Kurpark

The Kurpark is the park next to the casino in Baden. Lovely little park! There's a nice, short hike up to Beethoven's Temple:

from which there is a lovely view of Baden:

Then, if you continue up, there are goats to feed!

After that, we caught a bit of a free concert in the park, and hit small playground there. Plus, the girls each got a scoop of hibiscus-rose ice cream. It was delicious! Not too perfume-y like Indian rose water desserts can be. A bit lemony and just right.

Mom, this one is for you: Maggie may have called you old last month, but today she noted to Oma that her "skin doesn't fit well." Then she tugged on it, repeating that it's too loose for her! Her own skin, she said, "fits just right. Well, a little loose, so she has room to grow. But not like Oma's!"

Fortunately, Anne just laughed.

Opa didn't get any comments on his age. In fact, Maggie noted that Papa is greyer than he is. And, Opa's hair looks softer than Papa's. Papa's is spiky.

Opa is so happy to be with his grandchildren! Mom, if you could see his beaming smile when they come over, you'd be so happy. Don't miss them too much, and know that Opa and Anne (even though she now bears the brunt of Maggie's opinions!) are loving their turn with the girls!

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Day 9: Burgruine Rauhenstein

We walked to some ruins nearby this morning. What a beautiful old castle! The walk itself was very, very short, just a couple hundred feet, but steep. I was going to say "hike," but it was too short to be called a hike, so I'll stick with walk. The ruins aren't right outside of the apartment either, we had to drive about 10 minutes to the spot, but that was no trouble. There was another great playground at the parking lot too, so we got to play there for a while before and after the castle.

Here are some pictures!

What a neat place this was. The castle must have really been beautiful in its day. It's pretty much totally in ruins now, but you can see where they've patched it with concrete and stabilized it with cables and bars, so I don't think it's going to crumble and further any time soon.

It was really built up on the sheer side of the hill (I can't really call it a mountain!). It was built in the 12th century I think, and I just can't imagine how they pulled it off way back then. I get scared just looking at it!

These are the wooden stairs to the tower. I suppose the tall tower, which is on the left there in that top photo, was for keeping lookout and whatnot. Definitely not living quarters.

This photo was taken from the top of the tower, looking down the stairs to the bottom. Obviously these stairs were built fairly recently, but boy were they scary! All of the other flights hugged the walls, but for some insane reason, this last flight went right through the center, catwalk-style. SCARY!! I thought of you Aunt Marilyn! If you were there with us, I think I would have skipped it. But I didn't want to be the only one to miss out, so I pushed through. It was definitely at my limits though!

Here is looking down on the castle from the big tower.

The castle, or what's left of it, was mostly made of stone and I guess whatever they used for concrete back in the day. There was still a little bit of wood left, shockingly, where the beams that made up the floors entered the walls, and here and there at a window. There were also lots of old bricks in there, and some kind of concrete or plaster coating on some of the walls. It must have been 3 stories high, and you could still see some old fireplaces and poke your head up a chimney.

Here's a video we made on the inside.

Vanessa, here's a link to a German wikipedia article on the castle:

According to Nick, this says that the castle was built by and primarily inhabited by robber-knights. It was sacked and rebuilt numerous times, abandoned eventually, and de-roofed when Austria initiated a roof tax in the 1700s, which taxed buildings according to the area of their roofs. Apparently this is why so many old castles don't have roofs on them. And here I thought they'd just collapsed! Efforts to restore it began in the 1800s, when Baden started to become popular with tourists.

Friday, July 13, 2012

A video blog from the girls!

Nina said she wanted to start her own web show and call it Laugh Out Loud. So I told her she could video blog. Here you go! The girls are discussing their schools, which we walked to this morning.

Click here!

I'm annoyed that Blogger doesn't host videos any more. Now I have to put them all on you tube... grr!

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Days 5 and 6

Sorry I didn't get to blog last night. Maggie didn't wake up until 10 am and therefore didn't go to bed until about 11:30 pm. I guess this is a good time to fill you all in on the jet lag situation!

Sleepy girls at 10 am

For the first few nights, the girls were going to bed at around 8 or 9 at night (excuse me; 20:00 or 21:00. While the 24-hour clock is useful, it's one of those things I find annoying about Europe. There are more, but we'll get there). "Yay," Nick and I would think. "That's a great bedtime!" But then, they'd wake up at 11:30 or so, just as we were going to bed, and be up until maybe 2 am. Not fun! But, I was jet-lagged too, so I didn't mind them being up. Besides, we were all hungry. One thing I've noticed about jet-lag is that my sleep cycle recovers more quickly than my stomach. That is, I find myself not hungry for breakfast, when that's usually my biggest meal, and very hungry in the evenings, when I'm usually not hungry at all. That evens out after a few days though.

On top of the jet-lag and hunger, there was thunder and it was very hot. Anne got us one of those stand-up air conditioner units which was very helpful, but we didn't use it on the first day because it was missing the piece to block the open part of the window you have to open to exhaust the heat. On the second day I just closed the window down on the pipe enough to keep it in place and stuffed a curtain in the gap. Good enough! Maggie was so, so happy when I did. She laid down on the mattress on the floor that we were all sleeping on and said, "Ahhhh!" with a giant smile on her face.

Fortunately, the girls started sleeping through the night two nights ago. Unfortunately, I was either still jet-lagged or still struggling with the bit of insomnia that started about a month ago. I didn't have a clock in the room with me, but I was easily up until 2 am. And so, Maggie slept until 10 this morning because she didn't go to bed until 11 last night, and I wasn't able to wake her up because I was still asleep.

More good news is that we went to IKEA yesterday and got the slats for my bed, so that's set up now. The girls are sleeping peacefully there right now. They're sleeping there because they still don't have beds. But they have something much better than beds!

Makeup tables!

Nina's been wanting one like grandma's for weeks, so I thought, why not? I want her to be excited about our place here, and I put them together out of a bunch of inexpensive IKEA odds and ends--5 Euros for each end table, 5 for each stool, and 4 for both of the mirrors (actually there were 4 in the pack, maybe I'll find a use for the other 2). The lights were the most expensive, but you can't not have lights at your makeup table! They're so cool that I might have to take them and an outlet converter back to the US with us.

The plan was to continue on to an indoor playground after IKEA, but it was big, we were tired and still jet-lagged, and Nina didn't feel great (poor kid had diarrhea for a few days after we got here. She just gets everything!), so we told them about the makeup tables and they were happy to go home.

Instead, we took them to the indoor playground today. Bogi it's called, our other favorite indoor playground, Farbi, is only open on rainy days in the summer.

Bogi was fantastic. It's huge, with multiple bounce houses, 8 trampolines in a giant padded trampoline room, this crazy fun play structure, all kinds of slides, a ball pit, and more. The girls were in heaven. And Nick was able to come along and work because they had WiFi!

I'd elaborate, but it's almost midnight and I'm tired. However, I can't fail to mention that this wonderful indoor play area was not air conditioned. I mean, really? It was HOT. Poor Nina was flushed a bright red the whole time we were there. Austria, if you wish to bill yourself as a first world country, you need 1) air conditioning and 2) ice. Until these items are provided on a somewhat regular basis, you will not break second world status. I don't make the rules here, I only enforce them.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Days 3 and 4

Yesterday we took the girls to a playground at a nearby park called Doblhoff park. The park’s about a 15 or 20 minute walk from here, and yesterday was too hot and the girls were too tired to make it (more on our night’s sleep later), so Oma drove us. What a fun park!

The octopus (quadropus?) see-saw/spin around thing is the girls’ favorite. I think I’ll email the above picture to the new Boothbay town manager and suggest he replace that old, broken stand-up “see-saw” thing with one of these. Fun for all ages!

The other draw at the park is the ducks. We forgot to bring the rolls that I just couldn’t throw away on the airplane, but they’re not even stale yet, so I’m sure we’ll be able to bring them the next time we go.

You can’t tell how hot it is in these pictures, but this weekend was a scorcher! High 80s or 90 I guess, the highest I saw was 30, which is 86 Fahrenheit, but the humidity was high too. Opa’s not phased by the heat, he says this is nothing compared to when he was in Baghdad (as a tourist, he didn’t fight there or anything). It felt hotter in the sun, and it may have been. The forecast was for the low 90s.

The nights have been cooler, but unfortunately there have been a lot of thundershowers. And they’ve been loud, too. Just when the girls fall asleep it seems like they get nice and loud. Maggie slept through some loud booms last night, but Nina woke up. It passed pretty quickly though.

Then today we went to open a bank account. Oh my gosh, you’d think we were buying a car or getting a mortgage or something. It took hours! The Austrians are not a speedy people. At one point we were told to come back in 2 hours. I can’t remember why. So Nick went to register all of us as citizens of Baden, but their computers were down, so we went to get a cup of coffee and some topftentorte (it’s like cheesecake, except topfen is more like ricotta than cream cheese, so it has a slightly grainier texture) for the girls. Delicious! It felt very European to sip our mélange (similar to cappuccino, but with a higher espresso to milk ratio. Or at least, that’s what I think the difference is) in the outdoor café.

Then we walked around the pedestrian district of Baden some more, ran through the casino park, and went back to the bank. Now the cable people are here hooking us up with TV and internet. Big day!

Saturday, July 7, 2012

We've arrived in Baden!

Whew! The trip wasn't bad. Our flight out of JFK was an hour delayed, so we didn't end up taking off until 10 pm. The girls were excited about the airplane and dinner, so they didn't fall right asleep as I had hoped. But they were so tired! Maggie was eating her buttered roll when I looked over and saw her start to nod off while chewing. It was so cute! I asked her if she'd like to eat her dinner after a nap and she said yes, then immediately leaned against my arm and fell asleep.

We had a row of 4 to ourselves, so we put the girls in the middle and they managed to stretch out some and I think have a decently comfortable rest. Poor little Nina did have some ear pain, but I don't think it was too bad. She chewed gum and yawned and swallowed, and I think that helped. It wasn't so bad that she cried anyway, so that was good.

Then we changed planes in Dusseldorf and had a quick flight to Vienna. A cab met us at the airport, and the girls conked out again in the car. Then they were up until about 10 or 11, awake again from 1 am to maybe 2:30, and then didn't wake up until 11 this morning! Neither did I, or I would have woken the girls up earlier. But, oh well, it'll be another late night tonight I guess, then we can start getting them back on to a more normal routine.

Most importantly, the girls are thrilled to be here! Nina is already catching on to German like you wouldn't believe! She can read everything of course, and many signs are in English and German, so she's learning stuff without anyone teaching her. Even she's not nervous any more about picking up the German and is excited to start school. Maggie is still young enough that she doesn't feel self-conscious about speaking in German, and was excited to say "danke" to the flight attendants. So that just leaves me!

Ok, Anne has made us some lunch, so more from me later!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The sleepover at grandma's was a success!

The girls watched one of the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movies and then some of Bigfoot and some Abominable Snowman movie (probably on ScyFy or something like that), and had a fantastic time. Much sugar was eaten. And Nick and I had fun too! The ceremony was just beautiful and the food was delicious.

And now, this is our last night in Maine! Unbelievable. I think we're ready... Nick's suitcase is too heavy, so he'll have to purge a few things, but that's minor. We'll spend tomorrow night at Erik and Isabelle's, and then we leave on Thursday night! Oh my!

We've been staying at Mom and Dad's since Saturday. The girls love it. It's warm, so we've been swimming every day, and today Maggie tried swimming without a life jacket. She's not ready to swim by herself, but she held on to a noodle and kicked, and I held her up while she practiced the doggy paddle. She was disappointed that she couldn't immediately swim on her own and moaned, "I'm a failure!"