silvester (21/365d)

a few scattered walks throughout the day in various configurations....

cardgames in various configurations...

meals in various configurations..... 

and then staying up till midnight.... trying to do a puzzle, which ended up just being mama, papa, brian and me ...

farewell to the slovenians (20/365c)

mama is so sick that when we got to frieda's house, she and papa were out at the hospital getting a strong dose of migraine medication. we figured out frieda's morning routine with katrina, and mary and martin and agnes left for slovenia again ..... we had a very quiet evening, and mama eventually joined us although  she wasn't completely up for much more than watching us play bridge

frieda watching henry with "henry the vacuum-cleaner"

playing partners, grandpapa and grossmutter and felix

MANCHESTER (with no camera, oh well) (18/365d)

MANCHESTER (with no camera, oh well)

We went on an awesome train trip with Grandpapa to the city of Manchester, where the city was grey and worcester-ey. The kids who have been preparing to busk (in any city but our home-town) chickened out. 

we went to a wonderful museum, had asian food and generally had a wonderful time out in the fresh air.

christmas concert for auntie frieda and crackers (19/365d)

mama has a horrible headache, and stayed away for much of the day, unfortunately.

we made a tiny christmas concert for auntie frieda and had crackers that mary and martin had bought as a surprise at m&s. 

edward and mary practicing

henry watching

papa explaining the family tree

game night

trionimoes 

game of chess from a christmas cracker

irma and henry get right to playing

although all the pieces look the same to irma

photo bomb

performers, grandpapa and felix

audience

everyday stuff (17/365d)

Brian and I had to go shopping. I absolutely HATE sainsbury.... but at least I found some maitake mushrooms...

Mostly today we just kept ourselves happy and comfortable, hanging out in Frieda's living room and playing cards and reading books.

mary and agnes

 frieda

grandpapa helping felix

travel day (16/365d)

leaving so early in the morning is no fun, but mary and martin left even earlier. and i woke up even earlier. at 4am. maybe i was just nervous. brian takes care of all logistics with finesse so i shouldn't have to be nervous. regardless, all travel stuff went off without a hitch and we arrived in manchester at tante frieda's in time for a together meal of leftovers and had fun finding enough chairs to put around the table. we played the piano (desperately needing a tune.. g-major is nearly impossible) and sang ... many many verses of good-king wenceslas.

found our airbnb home to a be a charming clone of aunt frieda's house, as well as a charming clone of everybody else in heald green's house as well. only in our airbnb mirrors were taped to their frames, the flooring was rolled on without being properly fashioned and there were missing lightbulbs in fixtures that actually didn't work anyways. but there is a REAL coffee machine, which makes up for everything, because nearly anything is better than instant coffee.

edward and i found the tesco express and bought coffee and ...... potato chips. there were so many meat flavors.... stupid meat flavors, because, really, how does chicken tikki masala taste different than tikki masala? stayed up late chatting and trying "cranberry and brie" flavor... which was oddly not terrible, but not great, and yet we finished the bag.

christmas day (15/365d)

played morning mass in the dom, nearly didn't wake up early enough. just hopped on the bike and got there as everyone was tuning. i was very sleepy but the cold church woke me up eventually.

barely enough time to take a breath at home before i was back at the dom for the next service. centa and theodore and brian went to that one. towards the end they came upstairs to us and watched the end from there. when i got home centa had made all the eggnoodles possible and i made the truffel sauce to go with it, which was very yummy. i like our "new" tradition.

egg-noodles in the making 

everybody works together

i forgot to make stollen yesterday, so there was none. but then again, nobody asked for it either. dinner was truffles

twas the night before christmas (14/365d)

brian and martin played magicians while the rest of us watched (or played) the christmas pageant.

we celebrated with a wonderful meal until the bell rang and we found brian lighting the candles downstairs. 

around the table:

henry and agnes

theodore and felix

mary and martin

not pictured: centa, brian and me...

henry and agnes with silly faces

downstairs the tree and the mood were both very beautiful. 

we sang songs and made predictions for which candles would last longest. we were all wrong - one stealth candle burned low and hidden until all the other ones had long gone out. there were plenty of presents even without my having bought anything. martin liked his book of limericks (the one thing i made, because the one i want cannot be bought because it doesn't exist)

agnes waiting for the candle to go out

martin reading limmericks

trying to capture the singing by candlelight is an impossible task

centa with her niece and nephews

the three boys

cousins round the tree

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo (13/365d)

i'm officially a buffalo! met the guys, and practiced and they liked me. so yay, i can start practicing some more tunes.

we had ourselves a nice little united intonations christmas party in the evening.... brian took photos for the dress rehearsal of the pageant. i thought about doing some last minute shopping but .... NO. we don't need anything. really not.

maria and josef (theodore)

at home we found the entrance to our staircase blocked with a tower of kapla blocks by mary and agnes. agnes had just fallen asleep. at some point we knocked it down trying to step over it, and got to put 1000 blocks away *quietly* so as not to wake the childrens.

dinner with manfred and ingrid(12/366d)

went to see brian sing a mass this morningmorning, left the kids playing, everyone else asleep

once i arrived at home, i didn't stop cooking until the evening when agnes and felix and i went for walk, and stopped at brigitta's house to drop off some lebkuchen, and the two little ones got to pet the bunny.

brian and mary went to konigskinder. came back more than an hour after manfred and ingrid got here. waah... we had to wait for dinner, and spent the time preparing some music to sing all together, which we then could pretend we were sight reading.

martin saves the photo day again!

mary caught the accordion bug...

checking the mirror for form

mary arrives (11/366d)

mary and agnes arrived in the morning, and i tried to take care of my minorly beleidigt wrist, so everyone else had to lift things for me and chop things for me. centa was the chopping hero.

one thing i did do was write a new piece, an experimental duo for viola and cello, that was ready in the evening, so we tried it out before we left for the opera-house.

advent in the oper with the all of us, front row tickets with michi and her kids. our children sang gorgeously. martin has the picture i took on his phone.

brian didn't let me take a photo.
i just couldn't help it though.

martin arrives (10/366d)

last day of school before our too-short winter break... cleaned up a lot in anticipation of martin's arrival. mary and agnes come tomorrow. we took all the kids to a long-promised show, prokofiev's cinderella ballet which was just mega wonderful. felix wanted to go home in the break, and put on his jacket, but when they started up, his eyes widened and he took his jacket back off. theodore and henry saw friends of theirs from chorus who were also there, and it was cute to watch them discuss the ballet like adults.

completely stolen photo from online

sleighride x3 for klaus (9/366d)

a perfectly wonderful morning, other than i had a terrible headache through two back-to-back children's concerts in an auditorium with 250 children packed in there.
a delightful (still warm from this morning when i cooked it) pumpkin soup for dinner.
then we packed all the kids off to bring them to the salonorchestra concert, for which they had sold a total of 4 tickets in advance, and they were nervous nobody would be there. concert was WAY terrific, and just 2 songs (the last song, and an encore) too long for felix...

everyone admires this kind of sleeping ability
i think it's genetic and they get it from me.

going to darmstadt to work on the darm (8/366d)

took everyone to thomas' concert at the odilien, and we did our homework there. afterwards late night with manuela, saying goodbye after the recreation concert (at which there was a terrible squeaky buzzing sound all the way through the first half, and we didn't stay for the second half. instead we walked around graz at night and it was very sad but also very nice.

best hangover cure (7/366c)

for a tiny hangover the best cure is a laugenprezel brought by nina. and some late morning coffee, and a walk.

felix left the house before 7, so he could get a pokemon card from a friend (my kids don't have any to trade, but sometimes they get one at a time as very seriously-taken presents) he just announced he wasn't waiting for his brothers, grinned, shrugged his shoulders and said goodbye.

brian was in vienna for work all day, and it was such wonderfully warm weather - pretty much springtime. tuesday is free of all extracurricular activities, so we played some games, and played lots of music. i continued to read from the other wise man, and cried a little bit.

blurry to hide the contents of the card hands...
partners pitch

OPUS! (6/366d)

picked up all the kids from asp this morning, and we went to the farmers market together, as a family.

was extra on time to the sound check today, only to wait for nearly 2 hours for them to sound check everyone else before they checked the orchestra. dinner was down in the cantina, where i was second in line and they were already "all out" of vegetarian food.... opus concert tonight, with wolfgang ambros and some other "famous" (to everyone else in austria, but i was hearing about them for the first time) people.. opera house was full

such a fun concert tonight, felt like a rockstar and came home after 2am.

viola in the snow for "schifoan"

3rd sunday of advent, but i don't feel like i have arrived even in december yet (5/366c)

fun morning! this is how it looked:

reading and games and then we danced to uncle martin's audio advent calendar entry

we got things ready for gingerbread cutting and decorating. manuela and dorian joined us, and centa too...

decorating with toothpicks - the best tool but it takes a long time

centa nearly out of the camera's way.

..and in the middle of everything i got the (always) dreaded gig call "where are you?" ... i thought rehearsal at the opera (opus21) was at 3, but it was at 1, and so, dorian drove me as aggressively as possible there, though he was slightly hindered in his driving aggression by a number of red lights. 20 minutes late, and annoyed but the music is rock and easy and fun.

i went home for the 2 hour break, which i thought would be pointless but it was perfect. we lit the 3rd candle for advent, sang so many carols with centa, and i got to read a chapter with henry ... he did most of the reading. back to rehearsal, where it was WAY too loud - the drummer was supposedly playing "extra quiet"...

home again at 9pm, and i hear henry making crying-kind of sounds, unable to sleep, and seemingly not wanting to sleep, so i snuggled him a bit, until he finally relaxed and let himself into dreamland.

catching up on sleep (4/366d)

woke up unbelievably late, after 9:30, and brian and i rushed out the door to get to asp on time to pick up the children. they had slept about 5 hours, and were a bit cranky, but we heard that they were the best of all possible kids while they were there. my favorite was a felix story. they had a few races around the circuit, and since the age of the kids is 8-18 and felix was a bit smaller and only 6, he lost every time. some of the other kids hadn't won at all either. so fritz decided to change things around... he set a timer for 1 minute and 12 seconds. (normally the pace is between 40-60seconds) and whoever got the closest to 1 minute and 12 seconds would win. Felix got back in EXACTLY 1 minute and 12 seconds. everybody else was very surprised, and speculated that he was very lucky, and he answered that "i just kept count in my head, it was easy" ... i believe him, too!

we farmer's marketed, and got some wicks to roll christmas tree candles. i took henry to buy a little nick book (der kleine nick spielt fussball)... and we read it after the candle making

but do they burn at both ends?

then it was NAP time, for real, since thedore and henry are singing a PREMIERE tonight at the opera. I myself have been looking forward to an evening with Brigitta seeing a concert in Deutschlandsberg of Hindemith and Roentgen Viola sonatas with kefer and schirmer, but the concert was cancelled and was not rescheduled, so we just got a glass of wine instead. centa went to the premiere, which she said was great, but she cannot reveal all the things the kids do on stage, because i am supposed to be surprised. fair enough.

official premiere photo. henry front row, standing
thedore second row, directly behind the standing girl

an evening out (3/365d)

walked a very very tired henry to school this morning. he left nearly a quarter of an hour after everyone else, and got there as the bell rang. it's so very nice, and such a luxury, to have some one-on-one time, walking through the city, even though we were in a rush, and he was tired, he had so much to say and it was so fun.

a very useful conversation with the director of school about felix. he probably won't "have" to skip a grade... he is very learning advanced, but very young, and they have some really good ideas, the best being what they call the "revolving door." ... i'm very curious how the change will feel in january.

theodore's nativity scene
the fence took him the longest.

strange feeling today, after lots of practicing and homework and reading we took the childruns to the playground, and left them there... the annual end of year sleepover in the party room with sleeping bags and card games. all three of them! brian and i went out for a walk in the "snow" (slushy drizzle) and got wet feet. dried my socks on the heater while we had dinner out, and then we saw olena play a show with her band the woody machine at cafe kaiserfeld, in the "governer's room" completely surrounded by steel-mounted pictures (some very good, some very not) of (kind of old) arnold schwarzenegger. 

first snow (2/365d)

pauli and i went to das gramm for coffee and he texted me later that he liked what i had said:

"buy these anti-capitalism stickers now, and please place them in the designated anarchist areas"

... well, something like that.

i got home just in time to find henry practicing while brian worked.

 father and son

 just a quick bite to eat and then we got to go to felix's first piano recital, where he played very nicely.

watching proudly from the back of the hall.

theodore and henry left right away to get to their last dress rehearsal for königskinder, and felix and brian and i went to the christmas party at school (that theodore and henry were a bit sad about missing) ... 

my actual view of the party

afterwards were snacks and stuff, but no room, and i didn't have time anyways. i went to nina's work, where there was a wikipedia editing for women class, and we enjoyed doing some minor edits before i raced to get to united intonations rehearsal. on the way home it was lightly snowing, and i returned home to find everyone asleep, and the bio-müll taken out, and some passerby with big hands had left a hand print on it.

i think snow is so pretty

cheers to new beginnings (1/365d)

won't get caught up .... so counting the losses and starting over. i am a bit disappointed, but hey.. now i'm back. a picture every day again, and a bit of context to go with it.

a rose is a rose is a rose
they gave each musician one after the concert

i just now finished reading the Tailor of Gloucester for the second time, the first time was to felix at his bed time. the second time at theodore and henry's bedtime when they got home from rehearsal for konigskinder, (premiere in 3 days)

felix made up math problems for brian and me.
in a gold pen.
he got extra math homework at school and he upped the ante right away

i hadn't seen them all day, i got up after they had left for school and had gone to rehearsal and concert before they got back. the concert was at the Sigmund Freud clinic for neurological disorders. mostly it was just us professional musicians playing*, but they also had some patients sing songs and they all sang ok.

one patient came to me at the end saying she wanted to thank me for singing, but didn't have anything to give me, and could she sing a song? it was a bit of a susan-boyle-on-tv moment, she sang SO beautifully, so incredibly beautifully. the hallway was suddenly filled with a full voice perfectly on pitch with a sad song about heartache and loss but sung clearly and without pathos. everyone came out of the side room where the reception was to see who was singing and she shrank away and said she didn't want to sing for anybody.

* one of the pieces we played was Pueri, concinite by Johann Ritter von Herbeck - a piece (and composer!) i had never heard of. supposedly he was on the jury when bruckner applied for his vienna church job and said "Er hätte uns prüfen sollen!" ... the piece was immediately stuck in my head