Vacation to Europe

Before I start an elaborate account of Molly and Richard's most wonderful wedding at Keswick Hall, I briefly need to mention Finley and my annual trip to England and Austria.
The
entire trip was of course a surprise and neither the English nor
Austrian grandparents knew of our arrival. Steve and I where also
surprise guests at his brother in law's 40 Birthday bash...a 70s theme
party and a really good laugh.
We stayed in Austria for a little over 2 weeks, not long enough to settle into Waldhausen life to an extent on which returning to the States would have caused unbearable heartache.
It was nevertheless eventful
and filled with joy and laughter as well as the occasional tear. I have
come to the conclusion that nothing, at least nothing major, will ever
change there, apart from a few more little citizens every year and
perhaps a new annex for the church...oh and of course the new 'Marktcafe' (great place, lovely service, awesome coffee;-)))
Our stay was predominantly to spend some quality time with my dad before he was to undergo more treatment and for Finley to learn some German words, which we could than add to his existing 35 English and 3 other German words.
We
also discovered once again that Finley should have been born as some
kind of water creature and not as human as he missed no opportunity of
jumping into anything wet.
This is of course no problem in 95 F
Richmond heat, but morning temperatures in our second week in Austria
where at about 4C and it was pretty chilly to say the least.
The first week was fine weather wise, and we took the odd dive into freezing cold lake water until our lips where blue.
Apart from that we had a lovely BBQ at Hans and Simone's energy efficient house,watched Gitti's extremely talented girls on stage in a theater production by no other than the extremely
talented Mom, planted millions of flowers in Ida's hotel balcony window
boxes and took the most amazing sisterly road trip on a virtually empty
tank trough theYspertal valley.
Finley and I returned to Richmond on a very uneventful but relaxing flight on the 27th May only to go off again a couple of days later to Keswick Hall for the wedding of the year;-))))