Birthdays and other exciting and harrowing events.

Well, today is Michael's birthday , and as you can see, he is back in Germany- or we are in the Congo! I have on a hat too ,but I took the picture. We had big plans for he weekend. Michael was supposed to get to Germany on Friday Morning to begin his 4 week vacation, but then this happened http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/03/22/Congo.reut/index.html
and he was unable to get to the airport and was confined to quarters. Our plans to go to friends in the Netherlands and our tickets for a function went right out the window.

Thursday evening I pretty much had decided to go anyway . Friday morning , Patrick woke up with a stomach ache and I decided not to go. Friday midday, Alexander came home from school and asked "Are we going?" As Patrick was feeling better - we jammed some stuff into the car, grabbed the dog and went. The between the lines here is a lot of telephone calls with Anja- tears and stomping about, on my part, a trip to the Dr. for Patrick and Michael not knowing exactly when he would be able to get on a plane.

Friday evening , I went with my friends to our "event" . It is a big charity function- I have been most years for about the last 12. Years ago ,I was on the committee that organizes this event and it is always a highlight in my year. It is a fun evening with food and drink from different countries, a casino, music and dancing and a huge tombola . But.. I prefer to go with my husband. I still had a nice time and Saturday Morning, Anja and Ciara and I went to Aachen to do a little stashing ,that is the other picture , and to hit Starbucks.
Buy the time we got home, Michael had called and said that it looked pretty good to get to the airport that evening and we could pick him up from the airport in Dusseldorf, on Sunday - that's today- his birthday. We manged to greet him at the airport with the dog, a candle in a Starbuck's muffin , paper hats etc... The main thing is he is home , safe and sound. Right now he is asleep on the sofa- OUR sofa in OUR house. You understand.

For those that come for knitting /stitching content- my new stash came from Junghans Wolle in Aachen. The greenish yarn is Opal cotton- I might actually have this already, the other yarn is Regia bamboo, there are some 2mm Addi circs , some beads to try beaded knitting, a book about knitting mittens and gloves- I may branch out, some very short knitting needles- for knitting the fingers, some blank memory cards- to make your own, and the blue box thing is a stretcher stitching frame thingy for stitching projects. I have no idea if the stretcher thingy will work ,but the box was torn and they were selling it for 2.50 , so into the basket it went. You can hardly go wrong for 2.50.
I also managed to get a great massage yesterday- so , although it started out badly , the weekend has turned out pretty well!