Hurricane of Holidays

Happy new year! (where are those mid-90s HTML effects again that make letters blink in colors and dance around?)

Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year's - as Louis CK describes life with kids, it's a hurricane. But one with really good surf. So we went to Bensheim and Heidelberg and Seeshaupt and piled up kids in various apartments around the country.

In Heidelberg Karl got to form an international version of his gang of rascals (have we mentioned that he declared himself the boss of the gang of rascals in kindergarten and kids have to apply for it to become a member? Every morning? And they do and sometimes the girls aren't allowed to be members for the rest of the day? Oh the cruel world of kids).

So he met his match - Tomas (left) now residing in Great Britain and Max (right), residing in Switzerland. We had all assembled in Carolin's and Ivo's old apartment in Heidelberg (just sold) to have a massive dinner of slow cooked duck ragout over pasta prepared by chef F.



The gang tore the place apart. The girls namely Ulla (left), Anna Lynn (on lap) and Thora (right) engaged in civilized conversation.



All can of course be smoothed out with a session of reading.



Works all the time - as demonstrated by Maria, who was our houseguest for New Year's with Paul (left) and Eva Lia (on lap)...



...and Tim, who did some reading of his own.



The calming power of reading can of course only be trumped by ice cream. Which followed another festive dinner prepared by chef F.



Then there was the trip out to Opa Paul.



And the great new blackboard Henri got for Christmas.



I guess there's a lot of details missing and photos of people mentioned, but not shown. But somehow those serene days of festive family gatherings left us as slightly worn like a five day stint at Burning Man including all the mind altering produce the Black Rock Desert has to offer. So we leave you with an incomplete record, just mentioning that of course Carolin and Ivo and Jessica and Markus and Opa Michael and Maria and Milena are somewhere in those pictures, out of frame, but not loved less of course. So once more:

Happy New Year!




(opening image - Müllerstrasse on New Year's)