Wild Lilly

I know growing up with an older brother makes you stronger, but our little Lilly is really tough these days. She can climb up by herself and goes down any slide she can find. Fearless!

I was out of words briefly (shocked!) when I saw her land - but then she just got right up and climbed up the stairs again. What a girl! And no scratches or bruises.

Schifffahrtstag

One of the few words in German that have 3 fs in a row: Schifffahrt! Crazy language :-)
Last Sunday was the official boat day at the nearby lake Bodensee. As the weather was not really nice and Lilly is not into sitting still these days, we took only Finn on the 1 Euro boat ride on the lake. It was fun and took us to Switzerland and Germany and back to Austria.

Now we are just waiting for the nice weather to show up so we can take my dad's boat out and go swimming.

Day after the wedding

After Marc and Rachel's wedding party we decided to stay overnight in Schroecken as driving home at 3am would not have been a good idea. My parents agreed to keep the kids for the night and told us to take advantage of it. So when we got up in the morning and saw the beautiful day outside,

we had a big breakfast and geared up to get on the slopes. The weather was awesome, the snow nice and we had some fun hours skiing at Salober.

They even have some interesting art in ski resort.

And we took one last picture of the crew with the frames.

Wedding

I am a little late with posting this, but better late than never. At the end of March our friend Marc and his wife Rachel held a wedding party in Schroecken. They had already gotten married in Singapore last year and were having their party/ reception at their ski resort for all their European friends and family. Marc and I had studied together in Innsbruck and we once shared an apartment together with our friend Maria. We always joked that our apartment was actually for 5 as our friend Michael was always hanging out with us and Maria's boyfriend Stefan was there every night too. Those were fun times and we still have lots of crazy stories to tell....

Weddings in Austria are full of traditions and they usually involve the people attending the party. We decided to pick a few things for them and started weekly planning meetings at the beginning of March.

We had great plans to decorate their room with lots of ballons - which in theory sounded really fun, but at the end the execution was not that easy and they also have a baby girl (the idea was to have the whole room full so they would have had to pop all the ballons before they could have gotten into bed). At the end we agreed on "being nice" and decorated their bed with roses and prepared a snack/ breakfast table for the day after. Unfortunately only Rachel got to enjoy it as Marc did not get to bed until breakfast :-)

Our next idea was to create our own photo booth. We prepared an album for people to put in their pictures and write a note for the couple. We brought several frames to take pictures with and as the party was a theme/ costume party we did not need any other props. Marc's family also happened to have a great new digital polaroid camera with lots of film.
Everybody had fun taking pictures and Marc and Rachel really loved the album. Especially the next day when you could see all the people in the pictures getting happier and happier the later it got.

The food was delicious and I ate it all!

For midnight we had prepared our last surprise for the happy couple. We had taken a famous apres ski song and rewritten the lyrics to fit for Marc and Rachel. Michael our "Austrian Alpen Elvis" had brought his guitar and we lined up to sing the song for them. I have to admit, we are not the best singers, but the wedding couple liked our effort and the other guests joined us in singing.
We deserved a big glass of champagne after that!

Happy couple Marc and Rachel with Anya!

The theme of the party was A. Ben was an American Cowboy and I was an Ampel (traffic light).

And we spent the night in a rustic hostel Jaegerheim.

Nachbarskinder

We live in a small village on a street with only 4 houses. I think we are lucky to have several children in the houses next to us. We spend a lot of time outside with them playing, running around, watching the cows, jumping on the trampoline, playing in the sandbox. Here are some cute pictures of Finn and Lilly and their friends.

Dinner with Franziska und Guenter

We had made plans to go for dinner with my cousin Franziska and her husband Guenter. We had planed to go to Rotes Haus, a very traditional and well known Austrian restaurant at the Marktplatz in Dornbirn. Ben and I had wanted to go there for quite some time and were looking forward to it. But in the morning when we got up Ben decided that he had had Austrian food for 7 weeks now and that he would much rather have American food :-)
We checked with Franzi and Guenter to see if that was ok for them and met that night at the BBQ Longhorn Restaurant in Dornbirn.

My cousin and her husband are US fans and they were as happy as Ben was when we got there. It felt like a restaurant in the US, they had US beer and the food was pretty authentic as well. We started with nachos and smoked corn soup, which was delicous.  Then Franzi had Fajitas, I had a Quesadilla and the boys had meat - lots of it. Overall the meal was a success and we decided to come back once a month for dinner.

And we concluded the evening at the Turkish lounge around the corner. Franziska and I had some yummy drinks and the boys tried the Turkish coffee. A successful multicultural evening!

Birthday Brunch

Last Saturday was the birthday of my niece Alissia - Happy Birthday again big girl. We love you very much and always enjoy when you come to visit! xoxo
As she turned 11 and is "grown up" now she went to the movies the afternoon before with her girl friends and invited her family to brunch the next day. And I have to say, it was delicious. My sister prepared a wonderful meal and we enjoyed eating and hanging out for several hours. Here are some pictures of the delicious food:

• Greek Salad
• Different fresh breads
• Several Aufstriche = spreads
• Hardboiled eggs, pickles
• Plate of different hams, cheeses
• Fresh fruit
• "Schinkengipfel" - my favorite
• Beautiful Birthday cake

Dancing

Now that I have figured out how to upload my videos (I know, it is pretty easy), I decided to post another one of Finn and Lilly. They both really enjoy music and love to dance. Especially Lilly starts to move as soon as she hears some music anywhere. The other day my dad showed us some of his favorite links on youtube and they were all fun music videos. Lilly just had a blast dancing the whole time.
Here is one of Finn and Lilly with one of their toys. I usually do not like toys that make noise but they both just adore this one and it is fun to watch them dance. Enjoy!

Hiking up Karren

Even though the weather is not the best these days, we wanted to get outside and do something active. My dad works here: Karren Seilbahn Dornbirn. It is a nice cable car that goes up a mountain at the edge of the city Dornbirn which is about 25 minutes from our house. Ben decided he wanted to hike up the mountain and ride the cable car down. We have not done this in a while so I thought it was a great idea...
Lilly still has a runny nose and we left her at home with my mom and my niece Alissia. For Finn we packed a great backpack carrier that my parents have.
Ben agreed to carry Finn first and we set off. There are several ways to hike up, but we picked the fastest or also the most straight way. Which basically leads straight up the mountain. What were we thinking? It just goes straight up and is crazy steep.
Somewhere in the middle we switched and I took Finn. I would like to say that Misty would be proud of me. This was some serious workout and I was really happy once we were at the top after 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Finn had a great time and always enjoys riding the cable car or Baehnle as he calls it.
We will do this more often to get ready for some serious hiking in the Alps this summer.

Austrian Babyshower

One of the things that I really liked in the US were my baby showers. Although it was a little weird to me to tell people what they should buy us (register) and I had to get used to that, I in the end really liked it. And I enjoyed the events and the idea behind it: to get together to celebrate the mom to be and the baby that will soon be part of the family. I was lucky to have several showers and sprinkles for both of my children and I would like to thank everybody involved one more time for all their effort and support. It was really special, because all my family was far away during that time. Thank you!

So when I got to Austria I decided to bring this tradition with me. I decided to host a baby shower for my friend Maria who was due April 19th with her second baby.
And here were my preparations:

• I first checked with Maria if she would like to have something like this and she loved the idea.
• I then made a list of guests with her and contacted them. As we were running short on time I just called them all, explained what I had in mind and asked them to be part of it. All except one were able to come! 
• I made a reservation at the Panorama Restaurant for Saturday morning brunch for the 9 of us. As most of us have children, an evening event was a little difficult - morning seemed better. And I decided against hosting at my house as we are still in the process of moving in.
• I asked my mother in law to buy me some decorations in the US (thanks Barbara) and to send them over here with my cousin who happened to visit her at the end of March. They were super cute and the staff at the restaurant put them up for us the night before.
• I prepared a little speech for the beginning and I searched for some games (guess the belly size, come up with baby names, etc.). I also gathered some funny prizes for the winners (Reba CD for example - thanks Trina).
• And I wrote out some "presents" on little cards for everybody to give to Maria. As we did not know what she was having and as people usually come and visit after the baby is born in Austria and might bring a little outfit or something small then, presents were not really part of the shower. But I decided to come up with my own version of MamaCare for her! I wrote out 8 little favors like "I will come and watch the kids one day so you can take a shower", "I will come and cook for you one day", "I will come and play with Vinzenz one day so you can enjoy some alone time with the baby", etc. Then everyone had to pick one card, read it out loud, write in their name and hand them to Maria. 

Overall the morning was a big success. We all got out to spend some quality time without our little ones, enjoyed some good fun and had some good laughter. Maria can hopefully use all her vouchers to get some sanity in the coming months!

And I am glad we did have the shower last week, because baby Silvester was born on Thursday morning. Welcome little man!

Lilly Jump

I posted this a while back on Facebook, but I thought I would put it on here as well. Lilly is doing great. She is amazing to watch and I think since we got here she even developed faster than before. She runs around outside all day long with Finn and the other kids and is trying everything they do. Here is a cute video of her jumping which she loves to do:

Easter Activity #7

I was really looking forward to dressing my kids up for Easter. My mother had found some of my old dresses and got them washed. We had tried them on and Lilly looked adorable in them. One of my favorite ones which I had worn for a photoshoot when I was little was getting small on Lilly, but with a pair of white leggings she would have looked great. BUT the weather did not agree with my idea and we had to put on some warmer clothes for the day. So we went with a cute knitted dress from Oma Lotte for Lilly and Finn was wearing his Austrian pants with his hat. They still looked nice.

Easter Activities #6

This is an unusual Easter Activity - building a snowman. This year it snowed like crazy on Easter Sunday. So instead of putting on the cute Easter dress and suit we put on our snow suits, gloves and hats and headed outside to build a snowman. I tried to convince Finn to build a snowbunny, but he requested a snowman :-)
Unfortunately we also had to postpone our Easter egg hunt. I think we might have it in honor of Alissia's birthday next week.

Easter Activities #5

An Austrian Tradition is to bake Easter Lambs and Easter Bunnies. Finn and Lilly were lucky to spend some time with Oma on the weekend and bake some cakes. They turned out great and the kids enjoyed it. Lilly loved eating the batter most :-)

Easter Activities #4

Finn and Lilly got their Easter bags from Amy and Ampy a little early and we had great fun opening them. Although Lilly was most interested in the bag itself.
Thank you for our presents!

Easter Activities #3

One tradition in our household is to color hard boiled eggs and this year Finn was helping. I was not sure how the eggs were going to turn out as they were all brown eggs. We get our eggs now from the farm so you never know what you will get - white or brown shell. And last week just happened to be all brown shells. That did not stop us from coloring them. Amy (Ben's mom) had sent Finn and Lilly an egg coloring kit and we took it outside one morning to color the eggs. Finn had a great time and Lilly wanted to help too, but unfortunately for this one she was too little. She was not happy about that as she wants to be part of everything.
The only problem now is that they might not last until Easter Sunday as Finn loves to eat hardboiled eggs for breakfast. We will see...

Easter Activities #2

Also at Finn's new school they did some easter activities. We had to blow out eggs and send them to school with the kids. I was a little skeptical because Finn is still very little to handle fragile things but they were optimistic and so I decided to wait and see what was going to happen. But I also blew out a few more eggs just in case :-)
And last week he came home with this beautiful art project. I am proud of my little man!