Let's see how far we've come...

We spent a week in the Allgau region of Germany, just over the Austrian border. Overall the weather was good, although it snowed almost every day which meant the visibility wasn't so good on a few of the days. Niklas managed to regain his technique pretty quickly (we started him on skis when he was 3) and by the end of the week even went down a couple of red slopes with us. 

We're heading to Riezlern, Austria.


View Larger Map

Summer vacation is now over (7 glorious weeks!), so here's a quick recap of what we did this summer:

A couple of days after school finished up we headed to the island of Texel which is along the coast of the Netherlands. We were there for 2 weeks last year and really enjoyed it, despite absolutely lousy weather. This year I'm happy to report that the weather was much better and hence our vacation was a lot more enjoyable. We spent 2 weeks on the island this year too; the first week one of my colleagues from work & her family were also staying on the island and then we had some other friends visit on a long weekend which was also really nice.

The island is really nice because it's small, it's covered in bike paths (which means you can get almost anywhere via bike if you're willing to pedal), and it's relatively uncrowded. They have a nice local market once a week where you can get fresh fish, local vegetables, and other goodies.

Some of the highlights of the vacation:

• Niklas and I went on a bike trek - by the end of the day he rode nearly 20 km on his little bike, most of it after a crash in which he took most of the skin off one knee.
• Watching Timothy trying to eat a handful of sand on the beach, promptly spit it out, and then just as quickly grab another handful and try it again.
• Seeing a movie in English - I watched Indiana Jones 4 which was okay but a disappointment compared to the "originals."  George Lucas should stay far away from anything he originally helped create because nowadays everything he touches turns to crap.
• Niklas loves waterslides and is absolutely fearless in the water now that he can swim - I only wish I could be as calm & collected when he jumps in...
• I got to read the first two Dresden Files books, catch up on some podcasts, and even got to work on the Kidz RPG I've been writing.
• Just relaxing.

The only real low point was the fact that I started waking up at night with both hands feeling like they were on fire - I have a feeling my carpal tunnel syndrome is reaching a new stage....

Once we returned from Texel, I spent a couple of days laying some more tiles in the basement (nearly half the floor was finished at that point) and then we headed off for 2 weeks in the USA. I'll talk about that in my next post.