Never a dull moment....

I don't even know where to start - so much has happened again within the last months.

Well, the biggest events had been Dad's move back to Alton, the auction of his belongings and my daughter Michaela's promotion.

In October two of David's brothers came to our house to go together with Dad through all his stuff to categorize everything. This was supposed to give David and me some more room in our own house. At this point it was already clear that Dad would move back to Alton to give him the option to meet again with friends and to have some company that he missed here very much. He got a two bedroom appartment in a very nice retirement community. Knowing this sorting out of his belongings and making decisions about what to keep, what would have to go to auction and what would find it's way into charity or the dumpster made that whole process a bit easier.

We moved Dad and his stuff with a big truck and the help of David's eldest brother at beginning of November. Everything was mostly said and done in one single day. Dad can live now his life as he wants and the same applies to David and me.

One week later the auction took place at our house. I have only seen pictures - I was in Austria at that time, but I will come back to this a bit later. Woow, this must have been an incredible day! Everything was sold and I guess Dad was very content with the outcome of that whole event. A lot of people showed up at our house and bids got higher and higher. Good for Dad!

Our house looks way emptier, now that mostly all of Dad's furniture is gone and David and I worked on the layout of our own furniture. I think we found a good solution, at least it feels cozy and home for us again and we enjoy our house very much.

The babies are very happy that they pretty much have the run of the whole house now, as the upstairs bedrooms are empty now and function as playgrounds for them.

As I mentioned before I took a one week trip to Austria to surprise Michaela on the day of her promotion to a doctor med.univ. at the University of Graz/Austria. It was in fact a surprise for her and everything turned out wonderful, made me forget the horrible 33 hour trip from St.Louis to Vienna (delay of more than 5 hours, broken airplanes,.....). I enjoyed that week very much, but after that I was ready to get back home to my wonderful husband and to the babies. As much as I enjoyed to be back in Austria, I also missed my hubby and our six little babies. I really wish that David would have been there with me.

The promotion was very nice and I was so proud of my "little girl". She really worked very hard for that doctor title and a few days after the promotion she got already a job at a hospital near her home. Awesome!

I also saw my son and my grandkids again which was wonderful a a lot of fun. We also took a look at Wolfi's new built house. This will be a very nice home for him and his family and will give them finally the space they need so urgently. Wolfi said that they will most likely celebrate Christmas Eve there and plan to move into the house in January 2008.

Christmas time is here again and I got busy with all kinds of crafting and painting for Christmas gifts, the Jingle Market in Breese and an Art show in Carlyle. Well, I just came back from the Art show that also featured an art competition. I had entered two ceramic pieces into the competition and both got promoted - one piece got 2nd place, the other one an honorable mention. I am very proud! People obviously like my work.

We are very much looking forward to Christmas, it's a great time here! I have already put up some Christmas lights on the house,our tree is already standing - well, more or less, as the kittens love to climb into it and then branches get bent and ornaments are everywhere spread out in the house. We are lucky if the tree is still standing every morning! hahaha It's getting better now with every new day and thankfully we have "kittenproof" ornaments hanging on the tree. However, it looks very nice and fancy - just the way I like it. I also put up some other Christmas decorations around the house and I think it looks nice and gives a bit of that Christmas feeling

Speaking of the babies - they are doing fine; full of energy and still growing - the boys are as big as Cutie, our (now) 1.5 year old, only Angela (the little girl) is still tiny, but she is healthy and obviously feels very good. We have a lot of joy with this little shits, they are just adorable!

Life is good again!