Family fun at Schönbrunn!

You've seen the photos on Facebook already, but they have to go in the blog too. Not only do I provide more details on the blog, but I have done something very exciting. I have ordered a book version of the blog! Merry Christmas to me!

The posts from the very beginning until December 31, 2011, will be printed in a full-color, hard-cover, three hundred and some odd page, 8 by 11 tome. It's supposed to arrive at your house mom and dad by November 13, but I presume the post office will hold it for a day or two until you pick up the mail. Feel free to open it and have a look!

I'm so excited!!! I've always had this vague fear that some kind of natural disaster will strike and blogger will lose my blog history. I would be inconsolable. But now I can sleep easy! Plus, it's just so fun to have a hard copy. I have this dream that my grand children and even great-grandchildren will one day enjoy reading about what our lives were like way back in the early 2000s. A real family heirloom in the making!

But, pressure! Now all of my spelling mistakes are recorded for posterity. Well, kids, you should know the truth. Great-grandma couldn't spell to save her life. Not even with spellcheck underlining the misspelled words. Also, sometimes she had a drink before she blogged. No one is perfect you know.

Enough of that! On to our pictures from the weekend!

Here are the girls and me out in front of Schönbrunn, the summmer palace of the Hapsburgs. The palace, built in the Rococo style, contains 1,441 rooms. Wow! Huge. Mind-boggling even. We saw about 1% of those rooms, which was enough for one day.

We decided to start with the Schönbrunn Chldren's Museum. That didn't include admission to the grounds, the hedge maze, or the lovely Gloriette on the hill, but we thought we'd get to that afterwards if we had time. It turns out we had so much fun that there wasn't time for anything else. No matter, we'll come back another day!

The first thing we did at the Children's museum was dress up. We spent easily an hour trying on all kinds of costumes. So much fun! I was surprised that Maggie was more into it than any of us. She kept calling "Costume change!!" and we'd all try on something new. They had costumes for the adults, too, as Nick is modelling here.

This might be my favorite family photo of all time.

Eventually we moved on. There were about 20 rooms in the children's museum, and each covered a different aspect of life in the palace. This photo was taken in the hair and hygiene room, where Maggie got to play "Stick the leech on the prince." That was really the game! Hysterical. Let me tell you something, it was no fun to live back then. No fun at all.

Here's Nina, styling a wig. One of the glass cases in the room contained a replica of a wig once worn by Marie Antoinette (she was a daughter of Maria Theresa, one of the Hapsburgs). It had a giant French warship on top. Really! Ridiculous. But, you know, they didn't have TV back then or blogs to read, so what else was there to do?

After this we got really hungry and stopped taking pictures, but here's Maggie and Nina playing in the children's apartments. Because they didn't have just rooms, they had apartments. Three rooms for kids under 6, six rooms for kids older. Antechambers, waiting rooms, receiving rooms, living rooms, bedrooms... you know, the basics.

There were more toy rooms with actual toys, several science and education rooms where we learned about what the kids studied back then and what their typical days were like, and a dining room.
Then we did a bit more dress up:

Nick is a little horrified by what a good man I make, but he'll get over it!

Then we got a few snacks and took the train into the first district where we had a birthday dinner at the Augustinerkeller (the place where we had our rehearsal dinner). Nick stayed in Vienna after that to see his friend Philip's band play, and I took the girls home. We were pooped!