By special request of the Audrey, tonight we are having a "lovely dinner".

It was probably a good thing we only had a few days to spend in London because poor Bailey came down with a fever on the plane ride home...and the rest of us started to follow suit.  Despite a night of horrible, feverish sleep, I won't be kept from enjoying my tea time goodies from London! I will survive!

A Birthday Letter to my Bear

Dear Bailey,

It's hard to remember a time when you weren't here to complete our four-some, child.  After all, you were the size of a poppyseed when Audrey was just 9 months old, so it's easy to imagine you've been here all along.  Now I know why your Papa and I felt the intense need to have you come so quickly on the heels of your big sister.  You two were meant to be twins--best friends, sharing a birthday.  And that's what you do--so unselfishly--you share your birthday with your sister's half-birthday mark and you're all the more joyful to have your best buddy join in the celebration.

You're four years old, kid, (even though you're more keen on being 5 or 6) and like every year before, I can't believe this one has passed so quickly.  You've grown so much in all directions, and you've spent so much of your time loving everyone around you fiercely...which means we can't help but love you equally in return.  You are so full of "extra", Bear.  You feel everything so much more than the rest of us, which means we've struggled through understanding your extra anger at times and even more of your extra anxiety.  But, we've also envied the extra happiness you are able to exude...the extra excitement and the extra joy that help us realize again and again the beauty of this world when it is seen through your eyes.

On the rare occasion that I'm out of the house alone, I inevitably find myself wishing you and your sister were with me so I could point out something just for the pleasure of seeing your reaction.  You make every day joyful, challenging, and entirely blessed.  I feel so privileged to have spent these four years (and ten months) with you. You are a child of great depth and I cannot wait to see you unleash your full force of "extra" onto this world with every passing year.  I'm grateful for every minute of every day that I'm with you, my darling.

Love,

Mama Gigi

London Town: Day One

Shortly before we left Vienna for home leave back in September, we started making plans for Granny and Elizabeth's trip overseas.  We knew they were coming to visit us in Vienna, but we also wanted to take advantage of having family around to travel somewhere new together.  This was a big discussion while we were visiting Washington State, but eventually we settled on visiting London together.  We had debated about going somewhere with a warmer climate, but Elizabeth has several food restrictions we figured would be easier to traverse in a country where English is the official language...and it also conveniently happened to be a place we really wanted to visit.  Once we were back in Vienna, excitement for our upcoming trip fueled a lot of research on my part.  I realized I had almost always taken London simply at face value; add in the random smattering of information I had stumbled upon over the course of my life and you have someone who is interested in the city, but really knows little about it.  I'm not a fan of being a tourist, but, knowing I wouldn't be able to avoid that moniker while we were in London, I decided, instead, to become a well-informed tourist. I spent the following months reading about British history and became truly fascinated by England and, particularly, it's capital city's role in that story. 

 For our visit, we chose to rent a flat between Regent's Park and Euston Station, which conveniently (for this Sherlock fanatic) also happened to be quite close to Baker Street. Our first day in London felt a bit disjointed; we had a very big surprise planned for Bailey's birthday the next day that required picking up train tickets and birthday cake beforehand.  It was understandably strange, having errands to run on our first day in a new city, but I knew getting the ticky-tacky things out of the way in advance would make Bailey's special day more enjoyable.  I think we were all a little disoriented that first day.  I'm finding that traversing unfamiliar public transportation systems can be baffling at first and this led to us just choosing to hitch a ride on a random bus line going in the direction of Victoria Station.  The logic being, that we would be able to see some of the city without having to over-exert ourselves.  It was just coincidence that this bus ride allowed a nice solid chunk of time for both girls to fit in a nap, which they were clearly in great need of.  At Victoria Station, we woke everyone up and bribed some smiles onto their faces with Haribo gummies while John and I grabbed some city maps and decided where we'd be off to next.  

We ended up walking down Victoria Street to Westminster Abbey and Parliament, which were the first really big sights we spied in the city.  We wandered around Parliament Square, admiring the statues for Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill (which I knew, thanks to my reading, is host to a small electric current to keep pigeons from defecating on his bald head).  We then made our way over to the Thames, which was another great source of excitement for me, since this waterway was the entryway used by the Romans when they first settled and created Londinum. This particular spot, though, was where the Anglo-Saxons arrived, forming a settlement called Lundenwic in the 7th Century.  That's a huge concept to let sink into your head while standing at a simple vantage point on the river. Forget the bustling city all around me, this waterway itself has an incredible depth of history to it.

I literally could've stood there for days, trying to wrap my brain around it all, but duty called!  We had to make it to a bakery on the other side of the city before closing to pick up Bailey's cake.  So, we reluctantly left the waterfront and hopped on the underground station at Westminster...where I proceeded to direct our group to a train going in the wrong direction.  Oh, The Tube!  I'll give it all due respect by acknowledging it was the first underground system in THE WORLD, that there were several different companies developing separate lines at the same time without consulting with each other, and that the compartments are literally as large as they can possibly be given the size of the tunnels, but as a newbie in the city, I had no idea whether I was supposed to be headed East or West while on something called the CIRCLE Line or whether the random stations announced as a train being "in the direction of" were somewhere on the path I wanted.  After a few days, this all became old hat, but at the onset it was maddening.  Eventually, we made it to Kings Cross (and DID NOT go to platform 9 3/4, because...well...we'd see much better tomorrow) where we picked up B's cake and some bonus pastries just because they were there.  

Dessert before dinner is my favorite, so it worked out well that we had time to eat our pastries before deciding on a snazzy Mexican restaurant just down the street from our flat for dinner.  Liz and Granny ended up splitting a crazy, monstrous meal that came with twelve ramekins full of fajita fillings, while John and I played it safe.  Full disclaimer: It might seem strange to seek out food that isn't indigenous when visiting a place for the first time, but I have to say that the resounding consensus about food in London is that the best is something 'foreign'--people who came from lands that actually appreciate flavor. In all seriousness, British food, recently, seems to be making something of a comeback, but it can't be denied that the incredible number of immigrants living there have been rocking the food scene for quite some time.  I know how hard it is to find authentic Mexican food in Austria (more than impossible), so stumbling upon a place that hit it out of the park in our little neighborhood in London was a miracle in our book.    
            

Granny and Liz take Vienna

Granny and Elizabeth's trip to Vienna was a perfectly-timed exciting distraction for us.  Having just come down off our holiday high and not quite ready to start our preparations for moving back to the States, a countdown to an incredible family vacation was just the thing.

As luck would have it, the two weary travelers arrived at 8am in Vienna, and in the spirit of embracing the new time zone, we all headed out into the city together.  First item on our list was a trip to Mr. Happy Happy's overflowing, sparkling shop, where we joined him for tea and he gave our guests a proper Indian welcome to the city.  I love the open observations Mr. Happy Happy makes about people; when informed that Marlene was John's grandmother, he responded with such incredulous delight that a woman with such fine skin could be a grandmother (much less a great one!). As we sat down to tea and got to talking (while the girls ran circles and hid in the dressing room), he told us that Elizabeth has a good heart--a mother's heart for her family.  And he explained how John, the girls, and I are all his family too.  You can understand why we love the man so much: "When you are happy, the whole Universe is happy!".  We certainly had a happy start to our days together in Vienna.  

Simplicity was really the order of the day to allow for exhaustion, so we wandered down Wiedener Hauptstrasse and slowly introduced Granny and Liz to our "neighborhood" church: Karlskirche.  This has become such a common area for us to frequent, it apparently takes new eyes to fully appreciate the majesty of the structure that sits in our park/playground/main transportation hub.  Karlskirche is an extension of our home--and the park that surrounds might as well be our back yard. So, we walked through the underground, grabbing snacks and pastries along the way to the #1 tram line--the lazy man's way to view the city.  From our vantage point on the old red bim, we passed the Opera House, the Burggarten, Museums, Parliament and city hall.  We even hooked around the Ring to get a look at the not-so-majestic Danube Canal...and that was that.  A few-hour Cliffsnotes intro to the city that is our home.  

The next day was Saturday--one of our favorite days of the week.  Saturdays mean pancakes and bacon...and this Saturday there was an extra side of family for the girls to pounce on in joyful glee.  It was such an exciting weekend to be ushering in--two days, out on the streets, showing off downtown Vienna to Granny and Liz.  First, it was into the heart of the city we went--to Stephansdom--then down Graben and Kohlmarkt, eventually stopping at Cafe Central for some traditional Austrian lunch. We took everyone up to the viewing platform to look down on the colored tiles on the roof of Stephansdom and then the next day we were down at the oldest part of Vienna's remaining city wall.  We stopped by the Rathaus, but not without visiting the playground as well.  (This was, after all, an authentic Audrey and Bailey-led tour.) Past the Rathaus, it's an easy walk up the ramps of Parliament, through the Volksgarten where the roses were all still covered in burlap, and then up the painted steps of the Albertina.  From there, we took a wurstl break in the garden of the Hofburg Palace, drinking beer and champagne and eating sausage and giant pretzels.  We were simply following the well-trod paths our feet had traveled a hundred times before.  

Granny and Elizabeth's time in Vienna was relatively short, so, mostly, we stuck with the traditional sights in the following days, heading to The Demel for cocoa and cake, The Belevedere Gardens, Salm Braue for Schnitzel, and of course nearly a whole day spent at Schoenbrunn.  (Where we actually managed to drag the girls through the grand tour of rooms).

In a slightly less touristy vein, Granny and Liz were both interested in seeing where John works and wanted to check out the UN Complex, so John took us all on a bit of a tour...which is really not incredibly overwhelming, considering the place was built in the 1970's. (It turns out brown and orange were not nearly as timeless as it was once believed) In comparison to the rest of Vienna's overwhelmingly ornate decor, the VIC seems to pale in comparison.  It's probably fortunate, then, that this place is primarily meant to be a place where work gets done. And in the end, there's something to be said for gaining a deeper understanding of a place by actually walking it's halls.  We downed some lunch in the cafeteria there before hopping back on the train into the city.  

On our way home, we took a slight detour to see Vienna's iconic ferris wheel: The Riesenrad.  This is one attraction I had never been able to get the girls interested in (If screaming and running from the ticket building counts as disinterest), but for some reason both Audrey and Bailey had very recently begun to show an interest in ferris wheels.  And that's how we found ourselves, all together, perched on a bench in one of those ancient, red, boxy cars, circling slowly around to view Vienna in all it's glory.  It was a breakthrough of sorts.  The girls loved it; Bailey couldn't stop chatting about everything she could see and in that moment, two little ferris-wheel-enthusiasts were born.  

It was fortunate, then, that we were shortly going to be making our way to London: home of the London Eye.  And it really was that quickly that we were all packing our bags and getting ready to leave the flat on another adventure...but not first without a mini-birthday party for The Bear.  There were a few early birthday presents from family and even a bit of pre-celebratory cake. That night, Bailey was so excited her birthday was nearing and that the next day would bring her LONDON, well, I could hardly get her pajamas on for all the bouncing, laughter and hyperventilation. It was a right and proper preface for the amount of excitement the next days of adventure would bring us.

Got myself some souvenirs at Mr. Happy Happy's shop today!

I might not work there, but owning the apron is close enough for me. 

Today's tea time is brought to you by: Scotland!

Well, that escalated quickly.

Grandma G sent off a package back in December that didn't make it until today, but that means it's SECOND CHRISTMAS!!! 

Bailey is teaching her fox how to make spaetzle.  She's actually getting really good at making stuff in the kitchen; cracking eggs like a boss!

John has gone "round the bend", as they say.  He made himself cry at the dinner table when we started discussing how Audrey would one day be six years old.  

Aaaaand as a balance, here's Audrey acting completely normal.  

 

When I asked her what she wanted to do during her break from school work, Audrey says: "I want to read my Octonaut books!"

Everyone in the US is freezing...and we're over here like: "Wanna go to the playground? No, you don't need to wear a hat."  Best Winter ever.  

Bailey invented tea on a stick today.  She's on a roll today.  Now she's banging a rolling pin and a wooden 'stick of butter' together, muttering "Make. Fire. Make. Fire."

Bailey is wearing a pretty epic outfit today: plaid, polka dots, a bear shirt and a Grandma G original headband!

Bailey says: "Ooooh!  I like that! I want that at my house!!"

This is the main street in our district--just around the corner from our flat. We spent the day today wandering around the first district as we so often do. We noticed that as we headed out, our neighborhood was still littered with confetti and firework brick-a-brack, but the closer we got to the city center, the cleaner things got.  I'm seriously impressed by the amount of work these people get done between midnight and dawn.  The Austrians know how to do some things well...and I guess cleaning up after thousands of drunk people is undisputedly one of those things.