Refreshed!

Our souls are feeling refreshed as we have had a chance to visit people and places so near and dear to both our hearts. And it has been so wonderful to introduce our friends to our beloved little Miriam. 

We visited our dear friends Andy and Conny in Bad Goisern and they took us to Gosausee.

And we made a surprise visit to Ramsau to introduce Miriam to Hans Peter Plut (and to his Green Stove):

It was so nice to see him again! Jerry lived with him and worked on his farm for several months during his time here. We had a nice visit reminiscing about the time Jerry broke his tractor and other funny stories.

We are so thankful for our visit with Familie Czizek, my Austrian family from the time I worked as a nanny. I lived with them for several months and when I came home to Canada, Anja came with me and lived with my parents for 6 months, so these girls are very special to me. Traudi, Anja and Nina were so good to Miriam and it was such a joy to see her with them. They even bought her a present: an Austrian Dirndl! She enjoyed wearing her Dirndl as we basked in the sunshine at a mountain hut in Katschberg. Anja, Nina and their mom always make sure Jerry is well fed whenever he visits their house (he would often visit me on his days off when we were living here). Over the course of 5 hours they fed him Kaiserschmarrn, leek soup, goulash with potatoes, pizza and chocolate cake with whipped cream. Let's just say he was very happy (and very full!). You can see now why he would make the drive over Obertauern to visit when I lived there.

We also enjoyed so much getting to spend time with our good friends Tanja and Joel and their precious little Arthur while we stayed at their house:

This is the view from Joel and Tanja's deck:

And the picture doesn't even begin to do it justice. It was amazing.

Tanja also took us to the Farmers Market in Schladming and we spent some time walking around town to see some familiar sights:

Miriam had her first taste of Bosna in Schladming (and she came back for more!):

And Jerry let Miriam drive the rental car:

Just kidding :)

Joel and Tanja also took us to the Alpenrauschfest (Alpen Rose Festival) on Reiteralm and then we hiked to Spiegelsee (Mirror Lake). We were happy to take in a multi-denominational outdoor church service as a part of the festival that morning complete with traditional Austrian music and an inspiring sermon by the pastor of the Evangelische Kirche in Schladming.

Don't Arthur and Miriam look cute together?? We are so grateful for our friendship with Joel and Tanja and we're very glad we made the stop in Austria to see them.

We also ran into (or surprise visited!) several people we know from our days at Tauernhof and it was great to talk with them about our trip to Romania. Because they know us and they know all about the Torchbearers Centre in Romania and many of the staff (they are affiliated) they were able to give us some sound advice and asked some good questions. We are thankful for these brief visits as well.

We've had a couple "what are we doing???" parenting moments this week (usually at 2am when Miriam wants to play instead of sleep), but for the most part things have gone smoothly. We're heading to the airport in Salzburg at 4am for our flight to Bucharest, Romania. From there we'll make our way to the train station and take a train from Bucharest to Brasnov where we will meet a staff member from the Torchbearers Centre.

We'll update the blog as WiFi is available. As they say in Austria, "tschuss!"