some projects don't work (152/365d)

more headache - i don't understand why

didn't do much today, rainy and cold. felix had a small but powerful tantrum about not being able to
learn to use the crochet hook instantly.

poem "work" - i tried setting various poems to kind of background music

found a little tiny tripod in the basement, but it turned out it couldn't hold my heavy camera. henry and theodore were overjoyed - and immediately took it over. i balanced my camera on stuff and tried to take a timelapse of centa's orchid opening, and failed... after over an hour of photographs nothing had happened.... as it, it just looked like a photograph

that's about the level of motion that there was for an hour of photo taking

theodore's new car (151/365d)

barbaras kids came over for several hours while barbara and her husband worked on moving their apartment, and everyone all played nicely together including sword fights and basement building and other delightful moments.

theodore made a new car out of scraps, mostly stuff found in the street at various times.

phone contacts gone, had to go through a years worth of messages to figure out who was who...

attempt at capturing the moments

brian had a conference all day, but he took a break to go to spar since that's of course going to be closed for the next few days because of the holiday. we watched the living planet episode about grasses without him.
i had a headache all day. :(

hilarious text message exchange of the day, starting yesterday night.....

Kris:So it seems the US is deteriorating rapidly... Wanna talk about it next week?
Irma: Im not sure i want to..
i mean, i would love to chat/talk
but ...... that subject may be a bit.........
waaaah

<the next morning>

Kris: Haha, naw that's fine, we can just chat too. I'm surprised at myself for how the situation is affecting me despite knowing very little about my own countries
Irma: :) we can do some real talking about the state of the us to......
too.....
Kris: Oh no! Are you breaking up with me?
Irma: State of the United States
Capitalization be damned and capitalism too
Kris: It's hilarious that even on my own topic, I choose to assume the mistake is "the" and not the "US" 😂🙈

embracing imperfection (150/365d)

recorded bob corbet's "music for one lonely viola"....... recorded it 3 times today.... and was never actually satisfied, but finally posted it on youtube with really shaky macro video footage from several days ago. every once in a while a frame stands out as special. but mostly just blurry and shaky. sometimes i just have to embrace imperfection to preserve my sanity.

a still frame

nina came over for a quick coffee right before the kids came home from school. we had bread and honey for breakfast.
nadja came over for real for the first time in months. henry was happy to have a real lesson and show her his new music.

manuela and dorian came over to say goodbye on their way back to darmstadt.

brian had a conference that went late, so i used that time to talk to nick which i haven't in forever. we played around with switching music and audio for music videos....

more bruno chatting (149/365d)

slept in while Brian got everyone ready for school.

when i was up, brian helped me set up for making a video, but then we didn't.

brian's miming of viola playing <3

i made pizza for the kids, since henry and felix had friends over from school. Max and Severin are brothers in each of their classes. and they were a handful. well, they plus my kids were a handful. lots of fighting and playing not nicely. i took them to the park and sat there reading a book while they played tennis and football.

wikipedia for women zoom meeting and i updated the entry for Friedrich Klose, and listened to his unbelievable opera Ilsebill. 

talked to bruno while brian had his all-hands meeting with his new company. bruno and i are both music-nuts in totally different ways. i have 1000 tabs open on my computer and 1000 unfinished projects involving music and recording, and he has thousands of dollars worth of equipment for making electronic music and thousands of dollars worth of scores.

third meditation (148/365d)

homework went super smoothly today - the reward for which was me reading them 4 chapters of indian in the cupboard, which they listened to without a break. it was wonderful to sit outside and read with felix in the garden. and it was wonderful to make lentil salad and have henry say it was one of his favorite foods. and it was delightful to paint theodore's "square meter" - a piece of paper cut exactly to size for school. theodore and i also repaired my rain stick, which had cracked, with hot glue. it is now officially his.

renate and otto came over on their way back home to vienna. centa served highly praised elderflower champagne, and we had tea and cake. then renate and i took our time meditating (while the birds were "twerping" as Brian said) behind the rosebush while otto went for a walk and brian took the kids roller blading. it was bath night. and then story time. bed time was too late really, since we have to be up early again for school, but everyone was in a good mood and i hope for the best tomorrow morning.

the new point and shoot offers this choice of frame
henry thinks this is the best thing ever 

Meditation with Renate:
to find the "light in my heart" i dove into my chest and found a dark unlit candle which i lit. it wasn't bright enough, i lit match after match to make it brighter, but it didn't help so i started adding mirrors. first  i doubled the light, then i made an infinity mirror with a mirror set up on the other side. then an infinity mirror top to bottom. then one more mirror, and i sat there and watched from the 6th, empty side of the cube. i started putting more mirrors into the edges and watched the light get more and more, but it couldn't get past the mirrors. i made myself small and started to walk up the walls of a twisted candle. i had to face toward the candle and hold onto the sides to get a good grip. at the top i finally found a flame, which was larger than i was, and i watched the braided wick burn and i tried to warm myself by dipping my hands in the hot wax, but i just got cooled wax which i pulled off with my cast wax fingerprints... one of them fell to the floor and i made myself even smaller, microscopic even, and went in the maze on my own fingerprint. at first i was afraid of getting lost, but then i reminded myself that i knew the layout of my own hand, and that i couldn't get lost. eventually i got to the other side, and found my big candle again. i climbed to the top a second time, made another box of mirrors and this time closed it up and looked at it from the outside - it was like a bright colored cubic net, because the edges of the mirrors let the light from the candle through. i carefully carried the box of light into my chest and put it near my heart.

meditation and buffaloes (147/365d)

somebody threw random dime-romance-novels over our fence today - not in a friendly way, but thrown seemingly randomly and violently over the fence....  just another facet of city life.

meditation with renate in the morning:
i closed my eyes and tried to look into my heart. i didn't know where to look but i followed a long steady b-flat tone shaped like a thread until i found an enormous guggenheim-museum-sized heart, with several workers working on it. it was quite noisy, but after a while i dared to go inside, and tried to relax inside the heart. the saxophone player downstairs would occasionally practice few notes and bring me back to reality and distract. i tried to carry my normal sized heart up a mountain, and kept arriving at false peaks. every time the saxophone player started again, i had to begin again from the bottom. i was stepping in time with the beating heart and had to step carefully over rocks. for a long time i was wearing shoes, but then i decided it would be better to be barefoot. i looked for a waterfall, but the sound of the saxophone kept distracting me. i was startled when Renate said it was time to stop.

Buffaloes in the evening was great, i finally felt i could keep up a bit. i put enough work into it.... i'm getting used to working with the mic, and my sheet music is starting to fit well. i took my camera with me but was very concentrated the whole time, so didn't get a shot of that

meditation in the morning (146/365d)

9:15 appointment in the morning to meditate
Meditation in the morning with Renate:
I enter my own heart and find myself in an ocean, trying to follow a beacon from a submarine. when that has disappeared from sight i try to get myself to the light, but am worried about breaking the surface. i play a game where i follow the light as far as i dare and then dive back down. at some point i kept noticing consciousness returning, so i switched to a simpler place to guide myself. i lay on the rocks in a creek-bed and threw a dark beach ball up-stream and caught it when it got to me. i lay there with my elbow over my head to ward off the sun, and when i didn't need it anymore, let the ball drift off downstream. my two pinky fingers were asleep when i came back from the meditation.

Renate gave me an aloe vera plant to take home with me, and I biked home still groggy.

i returned home to find everyone fighting, but they stopped when i took them to the bike store to buy them new things, but they couldn't go in because there was a maximum person limit in the store, so the three of them stayed outside and i brought the bikes in one at a time. the guy wasn't very knowledgeable but friendly, and i took the things home and we made little mini bike modifications together.

i took theodore to his elke lesson, and went to buy henry some shirts - the first time i think that i have bought clothes for henry where they actually worked. when we got home, henry greeted us at the gate on his skates.

we practiced piano, and read indian in the cupboard for bedtime.

bruno and i had a long chat, where he noticed the bananas with the cross behind it, and thought it was an artwork, but actually it's just a real fruitbasket.

is it art?

lost and found again(145/365d)

felix and henry and theodore put on an acrobatics show for manuela and centa. - felix hurt himself falling off a beam onto the table. after a minute or two they were back up to their monkey tricks.

acrobatics in a bowtie

emerging to take a bow

Then Manuela showed us the Urwald in St.Peter, which was just an impressive array of strange trees. we then walked from there to schloss lustbuehel. it was a very wonderful and relaxing day. the only thing that could have improved it was less road walking, but the kids handled it quite well, and we kept finding wild strawberries along the way.

in the shade of the sequoia

in the bamboo woods

showing everyone the peacock spider

in the meantime our annoying neighbors cut our elder tree again, way over their line and threw the stuff over the fence into our yard. grr.

My dear papa proposed a math problem chat with the kids, the first problem in the book he chose was quite hard, giving brian, me and grandpapa a longer time solving it than we expected, and needing the use of modulo 47.

theodore and i then went to practice and i showed him some fiddle tricks too, while i was at it.
i playing sleeve shirt wars with the kids, which was kind of fun, we put our arms into our shirts and fight using just the sleeves.

the saga of the missing ring
suddenly i noticed my wedding ring was missing.. i was devastated. somehow i couldn't imagine a scenario where it had gone missing in the urwald or in the bus, yet i hadn't been anywhere else, and our house isn't so big. i retraced the few steps i had had but didn't find anything.
Then felix said that if it had fallen on something soft we wouldn't have heard it, and we had been play fighting on the bed, on which his blanket had been, so i should shake out his blanket. so i did, and there it was. found by logic. i told him i would sleep better. and i will. especially as brian and i are going to have a glass of champagne now to celebrate our triumph over material loss.

which came first, the bird or the egg? (144/365d)

my clever papa sent us a letter detailing the ruler and compass construction of an egg, a puzzle to make birds. we happily followed the directions.

there was still homework from yesterday, so we still had to do that and then (finally!) we watched pulcinella - it was so very funny

we had sushi lunch by popular request, and henry and theodore had a laughing fit.
everyone rolled their own sushi rolls.

i had some one on on time with henry: he stayed home with me for a while... everyone else went hiking to burg-ruine... we put the egg puzzle on a sheet of magnet ... and went rollerblading .....and chatted with spencer

we made up a new bird!

stopping to smell the roses (143/365d)

Happy doorbell ring this morning, and Nina stopped by to smell the roses and have some coffee.
the kids read almost the whole "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" to each other. I was impressed.

the roses need to lean over to be smelled...
mind the thorns!

Henry showed me some rollerblading tricks... sometimes i had to watch between the slits in my fingers,

We wanted to go to Hilmteich but Centa's friend Annick came over with a large portion of her family (she has 6 kids) and so we played with them instead.

Every spare minute of the day I spent using to work more on writing sheet music for the buffaloes...

breaking up with the day (142/365d)

The schedule monster day.
...... Full schedule on a holiday?
Well actually, the kids made the plan (they started planning yesterday)

kid's plan... and centa's subsequent scoring

when I tried to work with them this morning they wanted none of it, so I "broke up with the day"
and just did work on the buffaloes (we're having a rehearsal this coming week) and just cooked for myself. The kids made themselves pizza, played board games, did no homework, fought a bit, played some more and went for a bike ride with Brian. I guess they must have just needed a break from me, or from schedules or from something..... I guess I must have needed it too.

and the moral of the story is .... (141/365d)

we painted rocks before school.... a school project that i had ignored and not done, each kid had to paint 3 rocks for some project that's happening now. i just havent had the energy in the last weeks to prod *more* for school stuff. we were always barely finishing the bare minimum. we were doing plenty of other things, but this rock collecting and painting thing in addition was just one more overwhelming thing for me. my reward for procrastinating was sitting on the floor at 6:30 with poster paint, and doing it for them, trying to do it in a way that they didn't all look like *i* made them... so much for my saying years ago that i would "never" do that.

manuela was here for a morning together, and then we picked up the kids from school and went to two food markets, asian and romanian... we actually didn't take the kids from school. theodore and felix wanted to buy strawberries at the farmers market (but found none there) and henry didn't want to go with them so he went home alone in the other direction.

when we were on our (now essentially daily) inline skating time felix pointed out what he thought were stinkmorcheln (stinkhorn mushroom), but they were actually spitzmorcheln (black morels)! we collected them and took them home to dry a bit...

part of the bounty
another photo by henry

we had thai tea time in the garden (we had been saving some teabags my mama had sent in a letter when she was in thailand for an appropriate sharing day, and that was today.)

felix gathered elderflowers for syrup and centa played cards with theodore henry and felix
some friends from down the street picked up theodore for some games

henry wanted a new ring tone for the shared phone (which will get very little use for the rest of the school year) - his entire bach prelude! so i recorded that for him...

i talked to bruno one more time before recording his piece and sending it to him... it took some effort to get the levels right, and some courage to send a raw recording of myself without any kind of enhancement.

printed memories (140/365d)

the bad news is that i'm very sleep deprived and tired...

the good news is that i had my very first "all alone" time in the morning since what feels like forever ago. i got to edit things on my computer, practice, and read in quiet - nice for a change, although i like some chaos around me sometimes.

brian and i sprayed the ants that have been crawling up the house.
first we noticed them on the plum tree by the window, and i read that mint oil would kill them so i used some essential oil on them last week. the ants hated it for a few hours. then they came back, but i think the tree half died - all the leaves turned brown over the course of a few days. then we noticed there were ants climbing up the house and into some crack near the roof. so brian held the ladder at the bottom and i climbed up, but the angle of the ladder was nearly 90degrees, and the wind was blowing and i think mostly i sprayed ant-poison in my own face and not very directly at the tiny crack. anyways they stopped crawling up there for the morning, and i felt very productive. then i saw the same ant trail on my way out this evening.

in the evening i was cranky (sleep deprived!) so i went out for a walk by myself to deliver a small birthday present to baby vito and they gave me a print-out of a photo taken on sunday...

what's printed gets remembered

on the way back i called michi, and decided to extend my walk by a few more kilometres so that we could walk together. we came back and stood by the gate in the drizzle until it began to rain in earnest. i'm not complaining! i'm completely ready for bed.

not enough sleep for any of us (139/365d)

rude awakening for the first day of school - simply way too early! we walked them all there, they were carrying tons and tons of stuff and left them at the door to get don their masks and get disinfected on their own.

and elke can teach again in person, so i had a lesson, and after school i took theodore to his lesson. while he was there i tried my first solo shopping spree - i took the tram and only went to the post-office and the spar - still getting used to the surrealism of the mask - and more terribly, the heat.


then i made a music video of me improvising to the skype ringtone to honor the slow return of normal...

djembe, skype and me

fairy tale woods (138/365d)

maerchenwald, or fairy tale woods is a really spectacular hike but only about 2km long - it goes through meadows, beach woods, connifer woods, past waterfalls - we were there last year, and have been waiting to take the foerster there. today we went. we had to wear masks for the train ride and we were so happy to take them off when we got out at the station in peggau and breathe the fresh air there. first stop was lunch in the grass, and then we hiked, reading the fairy-tale story along the way.

the foersters entering the enchanted forest

not weary at all at the end of the hike

running back to civilization

walking back to civilization

took our leisurely time to wander back through the town and catch the hourly train to graz

we use up the entire platform here.

then manuela(!) came over, she is in graz for a short trip to clean up some odds and ends left over from the sudden onset pandemic... it was a short visit today, but henry got to show off his inline-skating across the street.

Falkenweg again (137/365d)

Henry and I fixed his little digital camera today, and he was overjoyed. We had to realign the battery compartment. All the photos from today are from him.

Then, after Brian had gone for our grocery shopping we agreed as a family to go back to Falkenweg and this time go all the way to the summit (I'm sure it has a name, but we don't know it)

a dead lizard... they all found it beautiful

summit! repeat of yesterday's photo

this time we had money for strawberries
and this time we found TONS of strawberries on the way up.
and even cherries.

everyone was in such a good mood, but we came home pretty tired. unfortunately we missed the chance to play bridge with grandpapa. After bath night we finally reached Mary to wish her a happy birthday from yesterday.

i felt very panicky about working on some sheet music for the buffaloes, because we actually HAVE a gig in august, and I can't play a lot of the stuff yet....

Falkenweg (136/365d)

Ronja came over again for homework and it worked out better this time. The bread Henry had made yesterday was very popular.

We packed for a bike ride and hike, and walked her home. Jackie had to lend us water bottles because no-one had packed them despite us having all *thought* about them... plus we can't find water along the way - because of corona virus, all the drinking fountains are shut off.

The first thing that happened was that it started to rain, and we came to a place to stop along the river and assess the situation. 4 in favor of riding on. 1 in favor of going home. So we went on. The drizzling came and went again - we were riding into the wind and into the sun.

We came to the place selling strawberries. We had been anticipating that - but nobody had packed any money.  Brian found a 10cent coin on the road, but that wasn't going to fix that problem. He promised to buy us some for breakfast tomorrow morning.

Then we hiked up "Falkenweg" which was very pretty and Henry took a photo of us all at the top.

he set the timer and placed the camera on the edge of a fire pit
i wonder if he's related to me?

On the way down, Theodore spotted a wild strawberry, so we collected those while we could, and Felix was very happy to point out the "only bad thing was that we forgot money to buy strawberries, but it didn't matter, because we found some anyways." We had to be very careful to pick our way among the very many Burgundy snails that were all over the path.

At home there were some minor tantrums, and then a fun bedtime where I read chapter after chapter of the schule der magischen tiere - a fun thing to do - a book i've never read and know nothing about other than we have a "mcdonald's" edition.

Now, as I write it the rain finally started in earnest - it is pouring out!

everything close up (135/365d)

slept late and even after all the extra sleep i was a bit bowled over when the first thing i had to do was go roller blading again... i did a bit too much skating today, my feet hurt! - but henry loves it and that's what counts, and he lets the other kids try too........

homework took too much time, but i promised when they finished we could invite henry's friend niklas over. henry was elated and we even picked him up on skates.

i took macro "videos" and talked to ingrid over the fence

out by the fence watching the ants go by
and noticing a stray strawberry plant

theodore and i didn't make our way through 20minutes straight for the couch to 5k - he said his feet hurt and i wasn't too excited about it either.

felix and brian went to dm, felix on henry's inline skates and that wasn't the greatest experience for him, he fell more times than he wanted to.

we sang "komm lieber mai" for a whatsapp video for singschule - it turned out quite nicely - homework was immediately approved

brian had a meeting for his new job (yaaay) at 10pm (ewww) while i chatted with centa about books and music

read up about wassenaer, a most fascinating guy, but would be better if i could *access a library*

henry made the dough for bread, and i got around to baking it very late at night.

A miserable happy birthday (134/365d)

It was just a truly wonderful birthday celebration... unfortunately, it started with a series of mishaps. Henry cried for a long time because of a misunderstanding, during which time we kind of forgot that organ lessons were starting on zoom, so i had to interrupt my comforting time to fix that. then i went to bake a cake, and didn't have the ingredients so i went to the spar (my first time in weeks... months?) and bought them. back home and asked when henry wanted for dinner, and first we didn't have the equipment (my blender is busted and i can't make hummus) and for choice two we didn't have the ingredients again so brian went to get them. by the time dinner was ready brian had to go back to work.. when he got done with work, we found that the place we wanted to go strawberry picking doesn't let you pick strawberries.

but then things got better. centa, me and the three boys read "how boots befooled the king" (one of the wonder clock plays) and we organized a treasure hunt while henry was out with brian on a walk (delivering birthday cupcakes to the foersters) and he found all the presents and we sang and we had cake which was very good.

pecans from america
violets from our garden (candied by centa)
who could ask for anything more?

found it right away!

cutting the heart cake to pieces.... 

during the treasure hunt and during the cake eating grandpapa's present kept disappearing. henry had to keep finding it. the last time we told henry to *open it quick* before it disappears again!

the game quoridor from grandpapa
it couldn't be sent regular post because of the quarantine

then we tried out the roller skates right away!

the blind and the barefoot leading the beginner

and then i went roller-blading with each of them in turn (taking more time to don and doff the equipment than actually using it)

and henry got to talk with uncle ludwig and tante lala and show them his loot and i got to talk to manuela while brian fell asleep reading to the kids.

porcelain (133/365d)

ronja came over in the morning to do schoolwork - that was fine until jackie came to join us for dinner and she melted down and they had to leave, which was sad as i had just finished making chickpea curry for 10 and now we were only 6.

kids organized cd-shelves for felix (didn't take the desk upstairs - cleaned the shelves themselves and moved them upstairs all on their own)

we head the doorbell around 4 as i was getting motivated to walk into town, and it was nina who kindly agreed to walk with me although she had just come from there. ... two stores for henry's presents - my first stores in 2 months. first mask wearing in public... it gets hot super fast!

and speaking of "hot" ... it's really hot. and since we are one of the ice saints, and once a day somebody reminds me that we are in the week of the eisheiligen......

read the jungle book together

i ran with theodore getting back just in time for meeting bruno - a guy who loves music and loves oru quintet, and i "met" him for the first time, and he wants me to make a viola track for him for the a piece he calls porcelain - he asked me what i knew about porcelain and i told him i can see my hand through it and he exclaimed "yes! exactly! you understand perfectly!"

you can see my hand through it!

talked to alex for 2 hours - also hadn't talked to her in forever. we had a lot of catch-up to do, but mostly we just talked about books we'd read recently.

a plain out happy day. (132/365d)

henry was delightfully and joyously happy the whole day - morning till night...

unfortunately, we didn't see centa all day, due to a headache, which i'm not sure we were quiet enough for....

we had some spontaneous visitors - irmtraud dropped off plants, and stayed for coffee.

while i was talking to pauli telling me he was around the corner and could he drop by, jackie wrote a message saying *she* was around the corner and was going to stop by. ronja had baked a strudel for henry's upcoming birthday. it was quite fun to hang out together, although the grouping was unusual. we planned a movie night with white russians at the foersters for tonight, but our kids stayed up past 10, and then i was too tired, so brian and i just stayed home and continued our tristram shandy reading with red wine

so funny!

mother's day (131/365d)

they let me sleep quite late, since they were out in the tent their second night. - that was very generous of them, since, apparently, they were awakened at 5am by somebody throwing their glass recycling into the containers across the street. this is how i found them at 9:30am....

discovering how to do 3d "magic eye"

the food was yummy today!
we made the world's prettiest sushi, and it was quite tasty too!

with vegan "lox" made from salt roasted carrots
and with purple rice
and fresh asparagus from the garden
(and cucumber from the spar)

i made masks till i was ready to cry, using old handkerchiefs that belonged to omama and opapa.

retro tools put to modern use

while i sewed brian started our next family read-aloud project: the jungle book. at first, the younger set was uninterested in even starting, but by the end of the first chapter they were hooked.
with 10 masks finished, i declared myself finished, and i took a reading break while brian took the three on a 6k bike ride while he ran.

then we made ourselves a mother's day concert, although it was rather late.

i had bread to bake, so brian and i start a read-aloud project of our own... tristram shandy

anarchy! (130/365d)

Organ lesson, almost forgot about it, being all lazy on saturday and all

the kids played a lot of cards: first teaching teaching centa pinochle and then bridge with grandpapa

... brian brought back tons of stuff from the farmer's market but dinner was kids-made pizza, which is just fine.

i did get a run in with theodore, where we saw this little gem captured by brian on *his* run...

more dangerous than any virus
are the blind followers

catching-up (129/365d)

sloooow homework.

then theodore had an online lesson with elke

teacher's image reflected over student's shoulder.

and my lesson just kind of turned into a chat and catch-up session.

looking at fabuli, phoning himself to catch-up with himself

tonight the menfolk are all tenting outside, which makes the evening a very quiet one. got a chance to catch up with nick.

everyone was late the whole day (128/365d)

we waiting till after renate came over in the morning to leave for our hike to kesselfallklamm. being in the car was very disorienting for me - the first time since january - and i haven't even been in a bus or a tram in weeks and weeks. plus i don't really like the passenger seat either sometimes. i went barefoot out of solidarity with theodore who had forgotten his shoes (which caused him to throw quite the annoyed tantrum in the car) and we all brought books and games along, and spent the day among the caves, playing in the water underneath the raised walkway

highlights of our hike was seeing a snake eat a frog....and playing baseball with pinecones

three on a bridge

the BEST part of the hike

Abstract art on the way home....

brigitta came over in the evening and we shared stories and red wine until nearly midnight... and although the evening had turned a bit chilly, we didn't notice until we got up to say good bye.

keep prrracticing, prrracticing (127/365d)

i got the practicing bug, and it's pretty bad. i did nothing else today

reger, first thing in the morning

the kids talked to agnes after they did their homework. and felix even got a one-on-one session with agnes for a top-secret magic card-trick learning.

brian took them for a bike ride. i practiced even more.

they did scratch (while i practiced) ... every once in a while, henry would open the door a crack and poke his head through and tell me i was "TOO LOUD"... then brian read them bedtime stories while i practiced more. and now i think i should stop before i hurt myself.

game started (126/365d)

today was another cranky morning - i think we need to go to sleep earlier. the mood improved a bit after a sushi lunch.

i was totally motivated after watching a video about the brain science behind practicing, and could NOT stop practicing!

and henry was motivated to program a new game on scratch following a tutorial

the bird flapping into the end of the game...
...henry made the game over-screen himself

baking with amanda (125/365d)

Groggy morning. Nice to have a quiet cuppa tea/cofee on the bench with brian before heading to the foersters to pick up the kids

they were a bit cranky from lack of sleep but we got home and did homework.
nice reading time outside with felix, i even fell asleep in the sun (and didn't even get a sunburn!)

after early bath and bedtime amanda and i baked. and chatted and snacked on cookies... until midnight.

Baking with baby

The product: flourless chocolate cookies
they required a LOT of milk.

at the foersters (124/365d)

we were all excited to finally get to VISIT somebody again! "in real" as felix says.

already at 10:30 Ronja was here to "pick up" our kids, and by 11am they were all out of the house, leaving me to have an hour of practicing and a tiny bit of time alone to pack up stuff for grilling.

then Brian did a great job grilling, and we did just what we always do with the Foersters, just hang out, chill and chat.

yay!

the clock says 10:45pm

it got later and later. the kids had pajamas and toothbrushes with them, which they dutifully used at 7pm, but at 10pm they were downstairs again, eating chocolate pudding and watching our game of carcassone. evenutally, after midnight, brian and i got to walk home alone under the stars.

it's such a luxury to be outside in the sun-rain! (123/365d)

early morning pinochle, then farmers market and zoom organ lesson.

masked bandits returning from robbing the farmers market

rustled up all the family, and took them all to hilmteich... just really beautiful day out... biked there together with brian running fast beside us the whole way.

mini reading break

galloping ahead

watching fish and ducklings and insects 

there were a lot of people out, but many of them were discouraged by the occasional raindrops (which of course, we love!)

got back and talked to grandpapa for a bit.

and theodore and i went for our run while brian baked pizza, which we then enjoyed with our feature film, the 1938 Robin Hood: the final culmination of our long-term reading project.