Late Fall to Early Summer...

The past few months have been pretty eventful and I have been terrible at keeping in touch. My main excuse is that I started a full-time job at Nokia Gate 5, working on their maps and navigation application. That started in February and unfortunately prevented us from going skiing this year. We plan to make up for that next year.

Winter was long and cold, with lots of snow and ice. We got out to do some ice skating and some sledding, and we generally enjoyed the nasty weather. We had one particularly memorable weekend with Iris in Dessau, where we built a snow fort in her back garden. We also took Vigo's friend Leander out for a weekend and walked on the iced-over pond as much as we dared and slid down Weinberg with no sleds.



Vigo had a stay-up-all-night theme party for his birthday this year. He invited three boys and they stayed up ALL NIGHT. I finally made them lay down at about 6:30 AM, though they protested mightily at the unfairness.

In April, we made a huge trip to the US. We were in Somerville, Western Mass, San Francisco, and Mendacino. Erik's sister Birgit had a beautiful wedding near Mendacino, which was the main impetus for the trip. It is always really great for Vigo to reconnect with his friends in Somerville. He also got to see Emiko and Tabor in San Francisco.



Vigo and his friend Kiran started a small business this Spring. They built themselves a stand and stood out on the corner hawking hot cocoa and cookies. They came back from their first experience with the realization that they should have coffee because grown ups are the ones with the money, and they want coffee.

Next time they had coffee and lemonade. They made 10 euros each.



We had a scare in May, when Vigo fell out of a tree on the school playground. He fell about three meters onto his head, but escaped without any injuries. He did have to stay two days in the hospital, though. He had just been complaining that nothing exciting ever happens to him. No more complaints of that now.



School let out a couple weeks ago and I have taken a vacation from work to spend my days hanging out with my family. So far, we have spent some days at the lake and some days at the park. We bought an inflatable boat, which we call Leviathan. We don't have any plans to go anywhere yet. I might try to get away for the weekend. Iris has told us about a great river float going on this weekend and I could see us in our little boat...