making magnets (141/365c)

rerecording ... i got an email asking me to fix up my last recording, so i took a quick trip while they were at the abenteuerspielplatz. the whole first half of the day i was rearranging and cleaning my room. the re-recording was fine, and quick and easy, and no problem. ....

at 7pm when the spielplatz closed, nina came over and we made magnets out of beer bottle tops. we saw some in berlin when we were there last year, and wanted to copy them for a while. first we cut out little papers the size of a quarter with pictures/text on them. then you glue them in pretty beer-bottle tops, and cover them with resin and let them dry for 24 hours. then you stick magnets to them. the kids loved this craft. to be fair, the real step one was letting them collect bottle tops from the street (including one disgusting number filled with 2 different chewing gums, yay) for months and months. they were very very nice to let us have the nicest cleanest roundest ones to craft with. after all, i wasn't always very encouraging of the collecting.

very carefully one drop at a time

i was "helping" too

the two types of solutions shouldn't mix except in the bowl.

recording for michael (140/365c)

First thing was most important: getting Felix's new house key that we had had replaced. The keys here are so expensive. 50 euros for 2 keys. On the way home Henry asked if he could stop by a friend and ask if the friend could come over, so Felix and I waited, and Henry ran in. ... and didn't come out, and didn't come back... and after several minutes, the mom called down and told me Henry was inside playing and hadn't told them that we were outside. Haha, oops. Well me arranged to meet later. We told theodore to quick lock the door so that Felix could unlock the door.

he got a bit frustrated because it was trickier than he thought
but then he stood on a chair and practiced many times
the keys here turn twice around not once around
i don't know why
and they get stuck easily

Henry had his Nadja lesson and I wrote emails and other things. Theodore practiced while he boiled pasta for dinner, trying the Hans Neuner piece, Barcarole, for the first time. Then we played chess and card etc. for a while until the friend came back and we left for the playground. With the kids away I showed and left for my first recording session with Pauli's friend Michi. His songs have poetic texts, with double meanings, and are minimalistic in terms of  underlying harmonies. I didn't know how hard it was going to be to record with everyone watching me, layering my track over what is already there, which would be easy if I knew what I was playing, but Michi had something in his head he wanted to hear, but didn't know always how to tell me what he wanted. turns out the recording session was awesome and exhilarating, although it took several hours more than i had expected.

i found centa at home putting the kids to bed with nina visiting. we stayed up till all hours, and nina even played her first game of pitch with us, which she won by a large margin. leaving, she reminded me that there's still yoga on our list. oh yeah. quick adriene video before sleep.

hierzmann sperre (139/365c)

Ingrid came to pick us up this morning. thankfully not as early as she said, so that i got an extra cup of coffee in.

everyone was in a super mood, and helped pack and prepare. we loaded the car and headed off toward hierzmann sperre which was every bit as beautiful as promised. we had plenty of (way too much!) food and we snacked and swam and played cards and hung out. we went for a mushroom hike (the kids called their "short-cuts" the "adventure route" and the normal trail the "pensionistenpfad" - i was a trifle embarrassed) but turned around when the thunder started to roll. we made it to the car just a bit rain-drop-touched.

posing with all the food for ingrid's facebook

thinking of tante frieda
and what she would say to felix if she saw him sitting on the railing like that

skipping stones

idyllic spot

and the thunder rolls

we had dinner at manfred's, eierschwammerln (none that we had found - we only found a handful) and everyone was so very quiet and laid back and tired. i nearly forgot that it was day two of my 30 days of yoga, good thing nina sent me a gentle reminder via sms, and i could practice at 10:30pm

brand new start of 30 days of yoga (138/365c)

tuesday morning breakfast in the sun. shared some coffee with nina. the kids played card games and tried to figure out the alice through the looking glass chess game puzzle. they kept coming to blows over one thing or another. they didn't figure it out until after i found a place online that explained the british chess notation.

once they figured that one out they took turns to try to figure out the "funniest" checkmate
this one won.

sometimes it's a good day to hide behind a rosebush and drink some coffee while everyone else fights inside

theodore and i played a new bartok duet. henry and i played his graetzer gallop (i on piano) and i practiced a ton of bartok. felix didn't want to learn any new songs.

i prepared a lot of things (food and car-seats (had to pick up from the foerster house) and swim-things) for tomorrow, since we will be out with ingrid cz. all day at hierzmann sperre.

we all have our own style of goodbyes(137/365c)

brian heads to portugal to hike part of el Camino de Santiago with his dad and his brother. brian's just barely back from being gone for nearly two and we weren't quite ready to watch him leave again for another two weeks. We all say goodbye in our own way.

Some have lots of stories to tell
or need to snuggle till the very last minute

some would rather wave from the window

we wave goodbye

after we said goodbye the day turned a bit cold and rainy, so we made the best of it by doing indoor things like reading. 

always with a book

fixing a broken neck with rubber bands (and glue) (136/365c)

kale from our garden for dinner and fresh omelettes with bread felix made (and very good fluffy rolls they were too!) and dutch wine brian brought had brought back.

theodore and henry got back from their weekend, very tired, i helped unpack and noticed the guitar clanking.

nothing a little wood glue won't fix
it was broken when kris gave it to us!
now it's fixed to be even better than before... kind of

their weekend included taking part in a political / climate change demonstration at the train station. hm. and kayaking and rowing and climbing.

a klettersteig to remember (135/365c)

manuela picked a perfectly glorious klettersteig, and drove nearly all the way there herself. dorian drove the rest of the way.

after 45 minutes hiking through a gorgeous woods we began our climb which was absolutely divine and breathtaking. i got bit by an ant on the way up which was a bit mean of the ant, honestly - i couldn't really defend myself. it was a big ant, and the bite HURT!

a small part of the view from the top

we started on the way down after a nice snack at the top, and took the way around to look at the devil's bridge which was totally worth it.

reading the description

the real thing: the devil's bridge

also on the path we collected so many edelreizkers (saffron milk caps) and nearly drowned like rats in the huge sudden downpour 100m from the car.

at home i could barely stop eating all the mushrooms. brian helped clean them patiently, since i didn't have a proper knife with me to clean them properly while we were out unfortunately. 

a twice times pizza day (134/365c)

theodore and henry pack themselves to go sleep at the abenteuerspielplatz for the weekend. we ask what they want to eat, and they say pizza, so that's what we make. while we were eating, henry grins broadly and says "we're going to have pizza twice today. we get pizza tonight at the abenteuerspielplatz."

henry gets dinner.... wood fired pizza from fritz

fritz making individual pizzas for dozens of hungry teenagers
his spatula is a machete

theodore heading up to bed

a "super boring" lecture ... ok, maybe for people under 10 (133/365c)

Manuela told us about a lecture at a museum that she was going to with another friend, and so we all went. it was a political lecture about nationalism in art and culture not at all related to the art in the gallery, and after 2 minutes felix said he was bored. so brian left. the rest of us sat through the whole thing. it was interesting but i was also nervous about whether the other kids would show their boredom. also i didn't feel comfortable contributing to any discussion. so we left as soon as he finished speaking. manuela took a family photo of us outside on the stairs.

the five of us

no need to check how it came out
she knows her way around any camera

and then we took her home with us for an evening in the garden with goat cheese and figs and wine. 

Hey la hey la yay Brian's back! (132/365c)

Yay Brian's home! No matter how much I wanted to listen to all his stories about iceland I just couldn't put down a Moon and Sixpence

i wonder where he gets it from?

some funny secret

as soon as i finished my book brian picked it up, and curses of curses, he couldn't put it down either ;)

we let him sleep in a bit while we hung out with ingrid next door and got more grapes. the afternoon was full - i had a doctor's appointment and brian had an interview. and we had plenty of catching up to do too.

a dreadful nuisance is teeth (131/365c)

yay emergency dentist appointment because i chipped a tooth. left everyone at the foersters, and the tooth was all filed and smooth in a half an hour. such great service here. the foersters also had an appointment so we switched off on kid watching (except for the baby who is so tiny and just went with them). ronja made a competition, which boy could make the "coolest" vehicle out of lego.

i don't think i would be able to decide ;)

and at home, i patted myself on the back with all the compliments for having the idea to get out both a book and the audio book so that henry could read "big" books by himself. he's already finished two magic tree house books this way.

i hope he is learning to love reading!

tonight brian will return at midnight and i'm so excited to see him again!

it's basically fig season again! (130/365c)

went to the library in the morning to return some very overdue books. i hadn't read (or started, really) the moon and sixpence and i owed a lot of money so i figured i'd keep it a bit longer and actually read it. we walked around the city and theodore showed us all kinds of more stuff around graz.
we ended up on the schlossberg and collected figs. we ate our fill and brought home a ton more. yum.

the view from k&o
of "our" fig tree

we stopped at the abenteuerspielplatz for the last 15 minutes, because we were passing by and kathi walked home with us and we stood and talked in the doorway for another 45 minutes.

"one last time" before we go home

some of the not perfectly ripe figs i rolled in sugar and baked (which made them perfectly delicious and smokey but the kids hated them. oh well)

watching them throw makes me want to throw too (129/365c)

we planned to go to the pottery market today, and we did make it there, just at the very end, which proved to be quite fun because we got to see a pottery competition. any of the exhibitors could compete and for some reason the men went first and then the women. there were plenty of sexist comments, unfortunately, but watching was mesmerizing. the rules? 3kg of clay, throw for 3 minutes.  measure the result and the tallest hollow structure wins. we ate peaches that we foraged on the way there, and watched as (thankfully!!) a woman won the competition (she stayed cool and calm and threw deliberately and slowly despite some heckling (to be fair the heckled the guys too, but not so sexistly))

discarded

we went to the park afterwards and i

reclaimed i thought it was so pretty and promised felix i'd throw it in the next fire we made
edited to add: we did throw it into a fire later, and it exploded instantly into several pieces. oh well)

we met henriette and her family in the park and she talked to me for nearly an hour about how she knows so many violists she just works so much better with and with whom she understands herself so much better menschlich. ok.

we walked home and theodore showed us all kinds of cool little things about details in the center of graz (a topic his school has been working on for the whole year) and we picked up groceries at the train station (the only place that's open)

school supplies (128/365c)

buying school supplies for 3 kids all at once using lists made by three different teachers in three different styles is no easy task. there's a lot of organization involved in figuring out what we can keep from last year, what we already have, what we can hand down etc. it took nearly 2 hours and over 100euros to buy everything we "needed" and then we had to slowly go through everything and organize who got what and separate things into bags. unbelievably, the process took all day.

we're supposed to carry all that?

we rewarded ourselves with a movie, we finished duck soup (which we had started at kris' last evening here) 

chess (127/365c)

when theodore and henry got home from their last chess class today they wanted to do no more things other than play more chess.

i think felix will learn quickly....

with the nice heavy pieces that my papa sent once in the mail
and the blockbox top that peter and rainer and papa made nearly NINE years ago

in my best garbo voice: no mushrooms? (126/365c)

today is a national holiday, so there is no chess, and nothing is open and i spent all morning playing 2 masses. afterwards pauli came over and we took the tram to rettenbachklamm, where we had a wonderful long walk, but found no mushrooms.

I don't think there are any mushrooms up there
but we have snacks with us

A new dance?

on the tram ride back we "read" (tried to understand) comics from a book by a cartoonist named Chaval ("Guten Morgen") and we were laughing tons while felix explained very funnily WHY each one was funny.

When we got back, Pauli and I played through that shostakovich piece once and through spiegel im spiegel once before he went home.

theodore makes dinner (125/365c)

After chess class, they came home ravenous, and I was uninspired. No problem, Theodore just took over in the kitchen and made us all an enormous fruit salad. We certainly aren't running out of fruit, Ingrid brought over an amazon packing box full of grapes, of which we ate many, and the rest I will make into grape jelly somehow. We also have lots of farmers market fruit and very ripe bananas from the turkish market.

preparing

finished

after dinner we played with my camera and the black and white settings.

Felix and Henry pose

Theodore makes eye contact

forgot to go to the party :( (124/365c)

today started very slowly, we are all still tired

theodore and henry had chess again, and felix and i spent the time hanging out there idyllically picking wild fruit we found and reading in the grass. i noticed a few missed calls from andi so i called him back, a bit lazily, only to realize that we were currently forgetting/missing zorah's birthday party. felix completely melted he was so sad. i felt bad. we collected some wild fruit, made a pretty package with a basket and some flowers, wrote a card, and went straight there making it just as everyone was leaving.

we had a nice 20 minutes there, catching up, and then theodore and henry stepped right into a wasps nest and each got two (they were lucky) stings. at the beginning of the party the foersters had announced to everyone about the wasp nest, and not to go in that corner, but we had missed that speech, and nobody thought about it when we got there. we went home with some special cream from them and there was a lot of snuggling this evening.

first day of chess (123/365c)

Drove back out super early in the morning. Centa had packed the car with the kids the night before which made getting out this morning super early. I just had to get out of my straw mattress at the right time and everything worked out fine. We dropped Centa off in Villach, drove to the airport, dropped off the car, and finally made it to home, just in time to turn around and take Theodore and Henry to their first day of a week-long Chess game. 

I think i was the most tired - driving is exhausting. I call every hour of driving a negative hour of sleep. I had taken them for ice-cream yesterday, but the nearby hotel (it took a long time to get there because we got in a "cow traffic jam") didn't have any "real" icecream (just the junk on a stick, but for all the money) so i promised i would take them today. so i did.

ugg cell phone camera is terrible
we took a selfie so that we could inform martin and mary that we arrived safely
and that we finally found ice cream

A grey day in Slovenia (122/365c)

I woke up refreshed from my night in the straw. it was actually quite comfortable and restful, and it was so unbelievably dark.

My tiny mountain hut in Pokljuka

I got the top bunk, i almost stepped on the ax handle in the dark.

It was a grey day, threatening thunderstorms, so we decided to stay close to the hut, and what a beautiful day it was, even though it was grey! Anyways, we found plenty of ways to amuse ourselves. All the possible permutations of people, and so much music and walking in the woods.
it was a formless day but duly capture-able with photos. - so i am posting a lot of them.

Writing postcards to grandparents to the sounds of country music

Mary has really taken the old Gruene Gasse guitar to more places than anyone

Two against one at PYLOS

One minute after a solar powered shower and already we need more music

The day passed so quickly unfortunately. Before we knew how it happened it was nearly dinner and fire time.

I spy two lovebirds

Agnes and Henry collecting fire wood

I made pizza in the wood fired oven, and it came out pretty perfect.
Freshly found mushrooms on the side.

Felix running back with a full basket of mushrooms

Whittling

various forms of contemplation

finders keepers

one more form of contemplation.
(at some point he just needed some alone time)

the great bubble war of 2019

One more quick card game before it gets dark

Mary telling the "underpants story" to a captive audience

full faced above the valley stood the moon
like a what?