Days fly past ...

... yes they really do at the moment. And that is why we only found time this weekend to fulfill dad's birthday present - his birthday was already one month ago ...
Our (Edith, Richard and mine) present for him was that we would go to Linz and see the exhebitions of the world's best photographs 2006. Linz is only about 1 hour drive east of Salzburg and we left on late morning on Saturday. The exhibition was good, we all enjoyed having a look at the pictures. Some were really amazing and some of course I didn't like at all, especially those that were obviously edited. After visiting the exhibition we went for a nice Austrian lunch and a coffee and cake in one of the best coffee-houses in Austria I know of. In the late afternoon we visited the Botanical garden - well, the glass house of the botanical garden, where they had lots of exotic butterflies flying free. It was beautiful and a great end to a really nice day!

I also want to post a few pictures today of Hanna and her friends. Since last June we are having a "Babyclub" here in Henndorf. 5 mums with kids between 6 months and 1 year and 3 older siblings (between 2 and 3 years) are meeting every 2 weeks at somebody elses place. Obviously that is always a very loud and messy ocasion however it's great fun - not only for the kids!
Also Hanna and I go to an organised Babyclub. Part of that Babyclub is a 1 year old girl called Julia. Julia was born without hands. She is an amazing girl. She crawls, picks up balls and books as well as chains just as well as any other Baby in that group. She is quite an inspiration concerning will and determination!

Have a great day!
Christine

Venice

Late last night we returned from a weekend in Venice. As usual we had a great time and also Hanna seemed to have enjoyed herself. We left Henndorf on Friday early afternoon and arrived in Mestre just in time to have a nice italian dinner. Mestre is an industrial town on the mainland just opposite Venice. After a late breakfast on Saturday we took the train to Venice. It took us about 10 minutes and as trains are leaving every couple of minutes it is very convinient. We spent the day in the old city, just walking around, having coffees and enjoying the relatively warm weather.

Yesterday was the orienteering event and just in time for the start the sun came out. Richard and I both had relatively early start times and still the narrow roads where very crouded in some places and we had to slow down quite a lot. Nevertheless I had a good run and even after studying the map again and again I think I made the correct route choices. I even managed to run quite fast in the beginning - well at least it felt fast - however it felt like I was slowing down the longer the race took. However that was also a result of the way the course was set - the beginning was technically easy and the last 2/3 were very tricky! Of course I was very pleased to learn that I actually won! My first win in Venice! The drive back was not as long as expected but meeting the snow north of the Alps was a bit of a shock after having drunk our coffee in the sun at 4 o'clock in the afternoon :-).

I hope you guys also had a great weekend!
Christine

The last o-event of this season?

... well not quite ... but the second last was run last weekend on the grounds of the sport university of salzburg. To be precise we ran the Salzburg Sprint championships. This event is normally run in 2 races: a first race and a second race which is started only 1 hour later and runners start in chasing start. This sort of sprint race is held since a couple of years now and it is great fun. Additionally there are only 4 categories: men and women up to 16 years and over 16 years. Therefore there are many starters in the "senior" category and also gives the old and young orienteerers an oportunity to compare with the elite. And often the elite runners have to make sure not to be behind the youngsters ....
Results and maps can be seen on the website of the Salzburg Orienteering federation (sorry only in German) - note also the Route Gadged.

However definitely the last o-event of the year for us will be the traditional street o-event in Venice / Italy on the 12th of November. We are hoping for great weather and are sure that we will enjoy the usual delicous italian food and coffee ... However it will be quite a challange to carry Hanna and her pram over all the bridges.

I hate computers

I'm writing this in an effort to stop me from taking my frustrations out on my bloody laptop. I mean it has really given good service over the years, and I honestly cannot complain when it starts to give grief, but man is it frustrating. For about 2 or 3 weeks now I have been having small problems with it, first with the hard drive, and since last week, the network.

To explain, we have 2 computers at home running a network that goes over the router to the internet. Since Christine has started work again, she has moved into Hanna's room for the moment to use as her office, and I have put my desktop there for her to use. However, she doesn't want cables lying all over the place, so I bought a new high speed wireless card for the desktop.

As I said, I have been having intermittent hard disk problems, mainly because I'm running out of disk space. For work I have been installing some new software, and downloading lots of files to read and go through, and it has slowly started to cause problems, so I thought I would do a major clean up before mucking about with the network. Man what a mission, and a huge mistake. This is one of the things I hate about windows - software is so easy to install, but so darned hard to get rid of it.

I had to get a special program to help me clean up the mess. So I de-installed a huge amount of programs, deleted loads of data and did a disk defrag - and what did this accomplish? Well I have about 9 GB free space, but the harddrive has been reduced in size by 10 GB and I will need to replace it soon - I have done a back up, and I hope it doesn't crash on me soon as I don't have the cash to buy a new HD just at the moment.

So got the HD more or less working, and installed the wireless card. Now before doing this, every thing in the network worked, be it over cable, but it worked. Once the card was installed on the DESKTOP computer, nothing more worked on either PC. I couldn't even get to the internet. At first I thought it was because my provider had banned me for being over the limit (and I am way over the limit this month) but then I discovered that the laptop kept dropping the wireless signal.

On the other side, I re-installed the wireless card on the desktop without problems, and it could connect to the web without problem. So the problem lay with the laptop. Back to the drawing boards. After major frustrations I got the same advice from a friend and a work colleague, de-install Norton Anti Virus. So back to de-installing. Nortons - gone! Still no work. Install new virus program. Now I was able to at least get to the internet and have a stable connection, but I couldn't get the computers to talk to each other.

So back to the drawing book. In the end I had to re-install all the IBM software, and this took forever, especially since all the software had to be downloaded first. Download a new version, install, reboot (this takes between 5 and 8 minutes each time on my laptop) and so on! And then it was finished, yesterday afternoon, every thing was working perfect, I could get internet, the computers were talking to each other, the network printer was working....ah bliss...

Until today that is! I should never have turned the darned things off! So Thursday dawns bright and early and we (eager to get to work) sit down at the PC's and start working. Screams Christine, "can I print?" Answers Richard, "of course :)" What I meant was.. of course NOT. So another morning spent trying to fix network problems. This time it was the Windows firewall and the browser function. Oh well, now it all works, and I'm almost smiling again.

What did I learn? Well, a huge amount about Networks, how they hang together and how to fix them. How much I enjoy working from home, but how difficult it can be when you have a computer problem and there is no specialist or technician to run to for help. How this can all go on your time. I have been living breathing and eating networks and PC problems since Monday morning. Additionally this has caused me to neglect work and so I guess I'll be working on the weekends again to catch up - ho hum!

I hope all are well and NOT having computer problems - sorry Mike for my mistake - sorry the rest for the boring post - keep well!

Teaching and Orienteering

Well, since a week I am back at work. Although I have been working for a while before Hanna was born, work now is something quite new for me, as I started to teach. As I have a half time position I am at school only twice a week - on Mondays and Wednesdays. I think it is great - preparation and correction work I can do at home and therefore can still spend a lot of time with Hanna. I teach accounting and business administration in form 1 and 2, which means 15 and 16 year olds. The one class has 35 pupils and teaching such a big croud of 15 year old teenagers is quite a challange but so far they have been great.

Last weekend we have been to Tirol to run the Austrian Relay Championships in Imst and an Austrian Ranking competiontion in Haiming. Both maps were great and both physically and technically very demanding. At the relay champs I ran in the 2nd womens team for Henndorf together with 2 juniors. I ran the first leg and handed over in 2nd position quite a while behind our first team. The 2 girls, Anna and Elisa, did a great job and we ended up in 3rd place. Congratulation to them on running so well in that demanding area.
On Sunday the Austrian Ranking event was run in Haiming another very technical area. I started in W21 short and rolled up the field from behind :-) as lots of the competitiors had big problems. I had a good run with only a few minor mistakes. With only 2 more ranking events to come at the beginning of October I lead the ranking with only 7 points ahead of my clubmate Julia. It will be an exciting finish - especially as one of the last events is a night event, which I really dont' like ...

I just had to post this

To All of you who believe Hanna doesn't do her own posting :)

Here you go, caught in the act!

Dad.

Aren't I cute ?

hugs and kisses to all,
Hanna.

Where does the time go...

Things have been moving along very quickly over the last 2 weeks. My "unofficial" job has been largely about reading and trying software out, which I am beginning to get to grips with. The job itself is quite interesting and I was in Germany last week to meet up with one or two colleagues and to get to grips with the new project we will be doing. It seems very ambious and I'm looking forward to it.

At the same time I was in Germany, Christine was finding out that she has got a new job. It all happened very quickly and I'll leave her to tell you about it :) Now the hard part starts - handling Hanna while Mom is working, although she only has 7 lessons a week, and on 3 days only - so all in all a great deal.

Hanna has been her normal self. Although Christine thinks she does a normal amount of screaming, I'm not so sure. She screams an awful lot, she starts immediately once left alone, or getting tired, so she really needs 24/7 looking after, which can get VERY stressful. Other than that she's a joy, seems to be growing every day, not only in size, but also in intelligence and cuteness.

So what else have we been up to? Well we decided that we would skip the OL this weekend as it was just too far to travel. I mean 4 to 5 hours driving on Sat and Sun for two races, without family OK, but with Hanna - FORGET it! However as it turned out we still ended up driving half way across Austria.

Our good friend Eva, who has just finished her 2nd degree, was celebrating her 30th birthday and we had decided to go to Wien (Vienna) earlier in the week. Added to this, during the last week, and thru LinkedIn, I have re-established contact with Björn Weindorfer, who now lives with his wife Sally and kids Ingrid and Eric in Mödling (close to Wien). Björn is an old school friend and Uni buddy who I haven't seen probably since those times. We were able to arrange a time for us to meet up again and we were really looking forward to it.

So I arrived back in Salzburg at lunch on Friday from Germany, however we were not able to leave immediately as Christine had to go to the teachers conference at 16h00. We ended up leaving at 18h00 and although I tried to push the pace, my navigational skills left me completely in Wien and we droaroundund for almost 60 minutes before we found the party location. It was great to see Alex and Eva and all our Wien friends again, and the party was great. We managed to get into bed at around 1 o'clock.

We were awake quite late on Saturday and after saying good bye to Alex and Eva, found out that my OL skills were still in Salzburg as we drove around trying to get out of Wien. AND THEN we got lost on the way to Björn as well, so we ended up being really late :( It was great to meet up with him again and meet his family. We had a fantastic brunch up in the hills around Mödling and spent quite a few hours just catching up - we look forward to their visit, hopefully later this year.

We then headed back to Henndorf and had a quite evening at home. Today I was out at the Wallerseelauf to support the boys and Veronika (see report sportblog) and afterwards we had a great braai with Gitte and Arthur. The weather was fantastic!!

And so that my family and friends, is my news,
Richard.

How to keep daddy dancing

Hi all you babies out there who read our blog,

I have a great tip for keeping dad on his toes. He has this drink that he likes to drink called "Red Bull" which apparently puts hairs on his chest - I haven't found any yet - but it tastes quite good and once you have a sip, it's like, well, not sure really, but definitely like something good and afterwards you have energy and don't need sleep.




Oh, and another thing, I was in the swimming pool the other - it was great - but the water wasn't really deep, so I couldn't do any lenghts, maybe next time. Check out my swimming partner, quite the beer stomach don't you think? He could even give dad competition.

So as you can see on this picture, I have quite the competive spirit. I have even been trying out my new SI stick. It's never too early to start training dad says (although he never trains anymore), so I got Oma to help me with my punching technique - quite the look don't you think!










Now, I also wanted to show off my new gear from Aunty Claire. Thanks, it's great and nice and cool on hot summer days. Well I'm off, have a nice evening, I have to finish before Mom and Dad come back from taking the dog for a walk :)

Hanna.

Sporty Talk

Hi,

For those of you interested in my Sporty opinions and doings on, check out sportgathers.blogspot.com! If you want to become a contributer, then just send me an email and I'll add your name to the list!

Greets,
Richard.

Family matters

Well, we headed out to Karnten on Monday of last week for a little family visit / reunion with our German side of the family. I must say the weather was very nice, the accomodation (thanks Oma and Opa Müller) was great and it was very relaxing at the swimming area. Aisha caused a big stir, not by being the only dog, but by being the nightmare from Hell for the kid's of Elizabeth and Ingo (Julia and Felix) - it was a real shame as we then had to keep her chained up the whole time - which is not great for her or me :(

Additionally we had some bad news about poor old Michelle, who is thankfully recovering now and back at work - we are very relieved to hear that she is back up and about. I guess that was very distracting for me and I wasn't very good company on Tuesday - sorry to all! We did have a great walk on an old castle though - it was fantastic - enjoyed by us all.

Last week also saw a concerted effort on my part to finding a new job, which resulted in one interview yesterday and many ideas about jobs over the next few months. The interview yesterday went really well, and the job seems to be fixed, we are just waiting on the go-ahead from the local organisations that are providing the grant that would be paying for me :) I hope it comes through soon though as I would prefer a permenant situation. I'm rather looking forward to working with this company (www.meditrainment.com) as I believe that we could really work well together, and the company could grow in the next few years. Unfortunately the job is in Innsbruck and although I can do most of the work from home, I will need to be there quite often so a bit of travel will be required and maybe a move sometime in the future - we will have to see what that brings.

So now you have my news - up to date,
Keep in touch,
Richard.

P.S: I have updated Mike's website - his business is going really well (way to go Mike) - please feel free to check out the website and offer comments or ideas to make it better.

www.2waytravel.com

Carrots are for bunnies, not babies!

"What, lunch is ready?"

Can you believe it, I was lying peacefully on my play blanket when Dad came to get me for "Lunch". Up until now lunch (well eating in general) had been a fairly straight forward exercise for me I must admit, so I was looking forward to grabbing hold of that soft pink thing that Mom carries round with her, and giving it a good old suck. In fact as I was actually really hungry, I was even doing a bit of a slobber, which of course, is nothing unusual, but today I had to wait extra long.

Everybody seemed so excited, the camera was out and Mom was running around like a manic, saying something about hot / cold and using microwaves (hmm, another word I need to find out about). This did strike me as a bit odd, as normally Mom is doing the holding (not Dad), and she is always sitting, so I wasn't in a panic, but I was getting a bit worried. I didn't like the way things were unfolding. Additionally, I was getting even more hungry.

"What the heck ???????"

And then it happened - imagine my surprise when "bang" Dad stuck some funny weird tasting goo in my mouth! Well I never! What a cheek. Being of course a well brought up girl, I thought it best to swallow before protesting my ill treatment, but as soon as I had swallowed, and got my mouth open to protest, Dad whacked in another lot of goo. It was very undignified, but I felt I needed to say something soon, so hoping to get the jump on him, I just spat it out, got ready to protest again, and bang, there was another lot of goo in my mouth.

Hanna : No more, pleaseeeeeee

Dad : Just one more spoon

Mom : What a mess.

I was beside myself, well actually, Mom was beside me and taken photo's, so I couldn't talk to her about it, Opa was laughing and not much help, Dad had this weird concentrated look on his face and wasn't listening, not even Aisha seemed to be concerned, actually she seemed quite interested in what was going on. So I had one option, and I used it - scream - high volume - long time.

"Waaaaaaaaaaa"

It took five times of goo before I could get a word out, and then Dad seemed to relent, gave me a bit of the clean up with the gob wiper and handed me to Mom (thank the stars) and I was mercifully given the pink thing to suck on - which I did with huge gulps.

In the meantime I have found out that the goo is carrots (who cares - still tastes horrible) and now I have to have at least 10 (spoonfuls) of this stuff before I get offered the pink thing. If I had a choice, I'd take the pink thing any day :)

So love to you all, my fingers are tired, it's way past my bedtime, and surprise surprise - I'm hungry,
Hanna.

Back home

Well, since a couple of days we are back home from our holiday in Sweden. We had gread 2 1/2 weeks - and are back relaxed and recovered and ready for new challanges.

We decided on quite short notice that we would go on holiday - we had time, the weather seemed to be great all over Europe and we wanted to see friends again, that we haven't seen for a long time. The decision on where to go was quite easy, as we always love to go back to Sweden. We didn't have an exact plan on where to go and no real time scedule - we wanted to be on the road for 2 - 3 weeks, camp and see a couple of old friends. So we packed our camping kit, Hanna and her pram and of course Aisha into the car (which was packed to the top) and left on Monday the 24th of July.

We wanted to make the 23:00 ferry in Rostock (Germany) to cross over to Trelleborg in Sweden and as we didn't know what it would be like for Hanna to spend the whole day in her car seat, we left early in the morning. We made it to Rostock with bags of time, booked onto the ferry and cooked our first meal on the camping stove. The ferry arrived in Trelleborg at 6 o'clock in the morning and as both of us hadn't sleept very much or very well, we decided to drive a bit and then look for a nice campsite along the way before heading on to Stockholm.

The next day we went on to Stockholm where we stayed with Ann, Eric and Miia in Järfälla. It was wonderful to see them again. We went into the citycentre and Richard visited his most favourite book store - a SciFi bookstore with a great selection of only english books. Ann and I left him there for 1 hour hoping he wouldn't spend too much money. We also did a bit of orienteering and Richard had nerverecking 30 minutes of looking after Hanna and a screaming Miia while I and Ann went for a run :-).
We left Ann and Eric on Friday and went on to visit family friends in Täby, which is also a small village close to Stockholm. Gunilla, Hakan and Lotta made us very welcome and invited us to stay for one night, which we gladly took on. That evening was a terrible thunderstorm and we have to admit we were quite glad that we didn't have to spend the night in a tent. Next afternoon we moved on and found a really nice campsite in Sala. We stayed there for 2 nights, taking things very easy - we enjoyed the nice summer weather, swimming and having a barbecue. After that we went on to Borlange, where we met up with Ulf and Carina, who are old orienteering friends. Of course Richard went out to do some orienteering training, however we also did some sightseeing. On Wednesday we were on the road again - we went on to Leksand, Mora and Orsa and after seeing bears, wolfs and lynxs at the bearpark we decided it was time to slowly start our trip back.We spent a couple more days on campsites here and there and then went to watch the TioMila for juniors where also a couple of Austrian junior teams took part. The TioMila is a relay orienteering competition which starts late in the evening and ends early in the morning! Weird orienteerers I know ... :-) The Austrians did quite well, however it was quite sad that one of the teams was disqualified because one competitor missed out one of the controls.

Our last stop in Swede was just north of Malmö on a campsite right on the sea and beach - very special and different to what we were used to. Until then all campsites we stayed on where situated on a lake and close to a forest. To give our last day in Sweden a swedish touch we cooked swedish meatballs for dinner - delicious!
Next day we crossed the bridge over the sea to Denmark and went as fast as we could through Denmark to Kiel in Germany where we visited Christian and Beate and their 2 kids Konrad and Annika. Annika is only 3 days older than Hanna - so those two had a chance to exchange their experiences so far with their parents :-).

After 2 weeks and a bit our holiday was coming to an end and we left Kiel on Tuesday morning and made it back home just in time to watch the men's 10.000m final at the European Athletic Championships!

We want to thank all of our friends in Sweden and Germany for making us so welcome and therefore we have to tell you that we will definitely be back at some stage in the future :-)!

Have a great day!
Christine

In Sweden on holiday...

We are camping in Sweden, more to follow later....
Richard.

For he is a jolly good fellow ...

Last weekend we went to London for a long weekend. The reason for that was that John, Richard's dad, was celebrating his 70th birthday. We left on Wednesday evening and were a bit unfortunate as our plane was 3 hours late! We arrived at London Stansted at 1:30 in the morning and then still had to drive to Sutton in the south of London, where Claire and her husband Gavin live. Poor Claire had to wait for us and was a bit miffed not to get very much sleep on her first day off since weeks! Richard and I didn't mind too much, as young parents we are used to not sleeping long hours at the moment :-). Despite a few worries Hanna was great on the flight. Well, I have to point out, that it was already her sleeping time and therefore she fell asleep at Salzburg Airport and only woke up for her "midnight snack" at 4 o'clock, when we were already at Clair & Gavins house.

On Thursday, John's actual birthday, we had a very nice family dinner - delicous salad for starters, roast lamb for main course and an Austrian Chocolate Birthday cake for desert!
Friday we spent visiting family and Michelle invited us for dinner at her flat! Saturday was the day of the big party. Claire and Michelle did a great organisational job - they invited 35 friends a family members from all over Europe. The weather cleared up exactly at the right time, so the garden party was in no danger and we were actually glad that Clair's friend brought a big tent, which we had to use as sun protection! The spit braii lunch was wonderful and the chocolate mouse will probably always be remembered! Not only Richard and I had a great time, also Hanna enjoyed herself enormously. She was passed around, I only had her, when it was time to feed and although I was trying hard, she didn't want to sleep the whole afternoon. In the evening she was buggered and had a good night sleep!
Unfortunately we had to fly back already on Sunday afternoon. We had a great time and we are sorry that it was so short - well, time always passes very fast when you enjoy yourself!
Thanks again to everybody who made that weekend such a great one! Hope to see you all again very soon!

In the last couple of days I was quite busy as Hanna was pretty bored spending her days only with us 2 :-)!

Have a great day!
Christine

Change in Lifestyle

I guess as a man gets older he needs to try new things as often as possible. Tried the own business thing, and obviously it didn't work out quite as I planned. I am still trying, however my focus has shifted now, and whereas before Christine and I could scrap by on what she earned, what I earned and our savings, once Hanna came along things have changed. The meager income I was eeking out of the WSI business was just not enough when you have 4 mouths to feed and so I started looking around in a change of job. Nothing really concrete mind you, just checking the papers and doing a bit of surfing every now and then.

So if you leave things to handle themselves, something is always bound to pop up! And so it was that I arrived home rather late from lectures (teaching english, not University) on Thursday 18th of May and sat down in front of the computer to check my mails, when my a old friend of Chris called on Skype! He had an opportunity that he wanted me to check out and could I meet him for lunch the next day - sure no problem for me I say!

I met him for lunch on Friday where he explained what his company (Research Studios Austria) was doing, and offered me a position doing something I have been doing at WSI, only this time with a stable income. I wasn't really sure but he dragged me back to the office to have a meeting with the boss. And the boss was as good as Chris's word - the job was mine if I wanted it. Catch was that I had to start on the 1st of June. I said I would think about it over the weekend.

We had the follow up meeting on Monday, where I agreed to start on the 1st June, but only 50 % job as I still had to finish many Berlitz Lectures and didn't want to leave them in a tight spot. Anyway, once I said "Yes" the ball hit full momentum. Such as, the boss phoned then Wednesday 24th and asked if I could fly to Kuwait on Friday the 26th - hhmmm, this was moving fast and would be seriously inconvenient as Mom was arriving Friday, Lucie and Thomas were getting married on Sat and the Austrian Mountain Racing Championships were on Sunday, were I was running as part of our team!

Although seriously inconvenient, but wanting to impress, Christine and I decided that I should go, and so I spent Fri and Sat in Kuwait, and many hours in the plane and airport. After that I have been working there in a part time capacity, although I am doing very many hours - even with the lectures from Berlitz.

So that is the story about how I got into RSA. I expect that it will be a excellent job, quite similar to Consol, with lots of travel around the world. Not quite sure how I will fit this in with having a new baby, but we will just have to try it and see. Next week I'm off to Kuwait again, and I'll try to drop in a post before then.

huh - what's this doing here in Salzburg ...

Hi,

really long time, no post - sorry things have been hectic for a while, but I'm finally getting life a bit sorted and have found the time to put out a quick post. I'll be posting some more information about what I have been up to soon, but here is a funny story for you!

I have been helping a friend with his computer setup since the beginning of the year. Like myself, he is an avid runner, and because he found himself with some free time during the first half of this year, and I hadn't stopped talking about how great the 2 Oceans was as a race - he decided to give it a bash and traveled to SA during Easter to take part.

Needless to say he had a really great time, cut very short (unfortunately) by the untimely death of Nic (much more unfortunately) and did a great time of around 4hrs 40 min on the minimum of training - I was most impressed.

And here comes the strange part, I go to his place to install some new software, and look at what I find as one of his favourite pictures.....
What the heck..... 3 buddies all in the same picture (Dion, can you please send this link to Stefan and Roger) - And it's a really good picture too! Where's the cart Dion?

Man, small world!
oh well, keep healthy,
Richard.

Photos

Finally some photos from last weekend:

Alison doing a great grandma job bathing Hanna.

Hanna having a sleep on mummy's lap.

The Gathercoles going for a walk - no sun, long pants, however no rain :-)

Grandmas and Grandpas

Finally, this last week Hanna got to meet her South African grandparents. Alison flew in on the 26th of May and John on the 1st of June and they stayed with us until the 6th of June. I must say it was great to have grandparents around 24/7 - didn't matter whether I quickly went for a walk with Aisha or was cooking supper - there was always somebody to look after Hanna. She certainly enjoyed their company and thanked them with lots of smiles! Unfortunately the weather was terrible in the last 2 weeks so we were bound to be lazy and to shop :-). However we used the few hours were it actually didn't rain for outdoor activities :-):
John and Richard ran a 10km road race on the 4th of June. The course was very flat and runs along the river Salzach. John ran a new PB and Richard lost the internal competition between the 2 Müller sisters' boyfriend / husband ;-). If you are interested in detailed results have a look at http://www.lac-salzburg.at/dult06.htm.
On Monday, which was a public holiday here in Austria, we went to an open air museum to look at farms and craftsmen. We enjoyed walking through the park and looking at the 200 - 300 year old buildings. Have a closer look at http://www.freilichtmuseum.com/index.php?sitelang=en.

Well, that was it for now!
Hope you have a great day!
Christine

Long time, no ...

Yes, it has been a long time since we posted photos or stories on our blog. Sorry - however to our excuse we have Hanna, who always keeps us on our feet and if she doesn't we are all fast asleep :-).

Lots of things have been going on in the last couple of weeks. First of all, Claire, Gavin, Michelle and George came to visit us. We had a great time, although it was very short, and Hanna certainly enjoyed to be the centre of attention for 3 days! She wasn't crying at all on this weekend as there was always somebody to pick her up and hold her in his / her arms. She also enjoyed sitting around the table with us, although she wasn't allowed to tast any food, beer or wine :-).

Around that time I also tried out what it was like to run again. I was a bit scared of what it would
be like, but in the end was surprised that I actually managed to jog for 30 minutes without any problems. Okay, it was VERY slow, however I never had to stop or walk. We also went to an orienteering event in the south of Austria, where I won the 2nd day in my category (W21 Short ;-)) and maybe even would have won the 1st day if I wouldn't have been 8 minutes too late for my start :-). Unfortunately there were no babysitters around when I needed them :-).

Last weekend Richard organised a road running event in a nearby village together with the tourism board of that village. The event was a great success. In total there were over 200 kids taking part in the kids-relay and over 110 adults in the main event. The weather was great and most of the runners enjoyed the hilly course!

That was in short what we have been up to in the last couple of weeks!

Have a great day!
Christine