Thankful To Be A Grand Person

 

Thanks to this little girl, I became a grand-person (also known as Nahn Nahn) in February 2005.  She is now in kindergarten.  She attends an IB Spanish Bilingual School where she is honing her Spanish language skills.  Thanks to Mom and Dad, she's been immersed in Spanish since she was a baby.  And Mom and Dad are not of Latin descent.  They just wanted their kids to be fluent in a second language. 

Back to this picture.  This is GrandPerson's Day at Makayla's school.  We were invited for treats and to help with a special book making project.  Pop Pop was there, too.  He was taking the pictures.

Then in November 2006, along came this dear little one.  As you can see, she has a fashion sense that is definitely hers alone.  What you don't see are the cowboy boots that finished off the ensemble. Doesn't her name, Violet, just fit her perfectly?

 And here we are............The Sorenson girls. The taller one on the right is the darlingest dauhter in law a mother of sons could ask for (also known as Lissa).  We love each other desperately.  We play, chat, shop, and have as much fun together as we can.  We love being "the girls" of the family.  And we love our guys Pop Pop (the other grand-person) and Daddy (also known as Jon, son of Pop Pop and Nahn Nahn). 

Let's Try Another One (or two)

Isn't the monastery at Melk lovely?  That day was so glorious that it would have been hard to take a bad picture of it.  So let's move on down the Danube.  Next up......Vienna, Austria. 

The cathedral in Vienna is undergoing restoration.  Actually almost every cathedral, church, chapel, etc. we saw was undergoing some sort of restoration.  Years of pollution (and sometimes neglect) have taken their toll.  Vienna's clever way of dealing with it is to put up canvases that hide the work that is being done behind.  On the canvas to the right, you see a photograph of what it is supposed to look like without scaffolding.  

 Yeah!  The second picture uploaded.  One cannot go to Vienna without a visit to a coffee house.  Demel is one of the oldest and well known.  Besides enjoying our decadent coffee, we were able to buy candied violets for darling grand-daughter, Violet.....how appropriate.   

One, Just One Photo

Blogger and I don't get along when it comes to including pictures in my blogs.  I don't think it is Blogger's fault.  I think it is the fault of my server.  The slowness and the glitches  (having to constantly restart the router) don't inspire me to blog.  So today I am not going to "upset" my computer.  I am going to pick out one picture from our recent trip to Eastern Europe and write a little about it.  That's it.  Only one for now. 

The Monastery at Melk, Austria

     

There was so much to see....so much contrast in geography and buildings.  This monastery was among my favorite sites.  It's a living breathing working place with a high school for 900 students who commute.  It's chapel was over the top Baroque but here and there were examples of modern art.  From the terrace you could see the lovely little town of Melk.  We had beautiful weather for our visit and we enjoyed a leisurely walk down from the monastery back to our ship.