We just keep celebrating Dan's birthday. He finally got his birthday cake (peanut butter caramel cheesecake to be exact). He also got to finish opening the final gifts from his mom and my mom and dad. I asked him how the cake was, but he mumbled something as he shoved more bites in! 
The things I see here never cease to amaze me. From 1300 year old churches, to fine art galleries, to fairytale castles, to free beer samples at 9:00 in the morning at the grocery store. Yep, you guessed it, right next to the cookie free samples at the local market. We couldn't believe it! I wonder if they sold any or if people just came by for the samples. We took Dakota with us that morning, and we headed to the Brunnenmarkt as well. It was just as busy as always and we were able to find the chicken thighs that we like. (We also picked up Baklava and some other treats, but don't tell the kids--we had them eaten by the time we got home.) Since I haven't seen much of Dan lately and we have Dakota here, Dan and I took full advantage and we went to dinner on Saturday night. The problem was, we were both so tired that we didn't feel like going very far. We walked a couple of blocks from our house and found an Italian restaurant that we hadn't yet tried. We had a nice dinner, kid free!! We loved it! The food was pretty good too.
Dakota and I tackled the house cleaning and laundry during the day. We had good, sunny, warm weather and we got to go out and read on the patio a couple of days. Too bad Dan was on another trip to Belgium this week. I don't think he got to relax as much as we did!
Dyllan and Deagan had their year end concerts this week. Dakota and I got to watch them. They both did so well. Dyllan practiced her cello a little, and the singing was great! Last year, they put the different grade level concerts one right after the other. This year, for some reason, they put Dyllan's starting at 8:45, lasting about an hour, and Deagan's didn't start until 11:00. Dakota and I looked at the artwork on display, and did all kinds of things to try to keep a baby entertained for several hours of the morning so that we could enjoy both concerts.
Friday night was "Der Lange Nacht der Kirche" (Long night of the churches). This is a neat event where several of the churches around town have their doors open to the public and they also entice people to come to their churches by having musical performances and other neat activities. There is a program listing all the events at all the churches on this one night, and the program is about an inch thick. We decided to go to the Stephel (St. Stevens Cathedral). The cathedral was completely open to the public and we got to go through the catacombs and climb the bell tower for free! The catacombs were very interesting. It would have been neat to have an English tour of the place so that we knew what we were looking at. As far as we could tell, we just saw a ton of skeletons. They had several rooms in the catacombs that were just piled high with bones. One room had a ladder going down into the room. They just threw bodies in and piled them up. You can no longer see the bottom of the room or the bottom of the ladder. There was also one room where there were three skeletons laid out. You could still see parts of clothing and other remains on these three people. I don't know who they were, but they must have been important in order to get their own room and to be neatly laid out instead of just thrown on the piles.
According to Dakota, the bell tower had at least 342 steps all winding in spiral to the top. The view from the top was great! However, there were a ton of people in there since it was free and the climb up and down took some time and was pretty hot and smelly.
We took Dakota and a couple of Dan's co-workers to Figl Muller to have the authentic Wiener Schnitzel. Then, of course, afterward, we had to go for ice cream. I'm glad we had walked and sweated enough in our 684 total stairs to justify all the extra calories!!
Saturday, we had a freak storm come through Vienna. There was thunder, lightning, hail and rain. This city is not used to getting hail, and there was a lot of it. After the storm, people were out taking pictures of all the hail stones lying on the ground. Dan and I were giving a friend a ride home when the rain started. The rain was so heavy that traffic had to really slow down. Once we got closer to home, the roads had already started to flood in the low areas. We still needed groceries, so we went shopping. Rather than park in the lower garage, Dan opted to park in the upper one. After returning from shopping, we realized that we were stuck in the garage. Although we were on the higher level, the road out of the garage was in a low spot that had about 3 feet of standing water. We ended up following several cars going down the entrance and were able to get out of the garage. Then, to get home took us about 30-40 minutes to go approximately 5 blocks. The roads were all flooded around us. 
By that time, the rain had stopped, but the gutters were all full. People had brooms in their hands, wading through the water, trying to get the gutters clear so that the water could drain off the street. The fire department was out helping as well. Back at home, Dakota told us that the water had come within a couple of inches of the doors. The grass was completely underwater. The pool was full to the brim, and the water turned green from all the leaves that had been pelted and broken into the water. It was an exciting storm!
Before the storm, the kids were able to get their first swim of the season in. The water was cool, but felt nice on such a hot day (so they said. Deagan still turned blue.) Because of the storm, we missed grilling on Saturday and we decided to have our first S'mores of the season on Sunday. Marshmallows are sometimes hard to find here. They also have more of a sugary coating making the marshmallows burn a little easier. Also, because of the sugary coating, the sugar melts first, then the marshmallow begins to roast. This makes the marshmallows here much hotter than the ones at home. No one seems to care though, we had no trouble downing several!! The summer has officially started . . .
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