New Digs Again

We've just made out 6 th move since we came to England. Last Tuesday the movers packed us up and moved us to Canary Wharf in London. This weekend was busy once again putting things away. This is a picture of the walkway that circles our entire flat so that is where I'm cutting up shelves for one of the closets. You can see the Thames River and the O-2 arena in the background. I guess we are over 300 feet up. It is a 3 bedroom, 3 bath flat which is the same size as our previous flat. We are on the 22 nd floor of this 23 floor building, and we are the entire 22nd floor (upper left). Last week was a killer week as we just returned from Germany late Sunday night and crammed in another move at the same time Julie stepped into a new Regional position in London.

Weihenstephan Brewery

We flew into Munich International Airport on Friday night but stayed in a small town called Freising. This was about a 30 minute train ride into Munich and it allowed us to avoid the large crowds here for Oktoberfest. Freising is the home of the oldest brewery in the world, known as the Weihenstephan. In the year 1040 beer brewing officially began here and is still standing and producing. It began as a monastery where monks perfected the art of brewing beer. We are posing with the wildlife at the entrance to the brewery. We crammed so much into one weekend that we didn't have time to take the full tour. The flight for us was less than 2 hours from Gatwick Airport in South England.

More Oktoberfest

The Nymphenburg Tent. This was our second reservation on the same day from 6:30 to 11:30 PM. Here we once again had a premium table on the upper level. This got a little more wild as the night continued. Here we are with the band and lower level below us. Next is a shot of our table and a great group of friends. The 3rd picture you won't believe. This is the celebrity section below us. About every 10 minutes someone will pop a 12 to 18 hundred euro bottle of champagne to spray the crowd. Up go the umbrellas and everyone gets soaked. The band keeps rocking out the tunes and nobody leaves early. This was a blast! Thanks Stefan....

Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest is the largest Voksfest (Peoples fair), in the world. This is a 17 day festival held in Munich each year and is Germany's most famous event with over 6 million visitors. Munich is the Beer Capitol of the world and was on our 'to-do' list for some time. The fair-grounds are massive with 14 huge tents holding up to 10,000 people each. Each tent is named after one of the different large brewery's. These reservations are incredibly hard to get but our German friends came through for us. These are 3 pictures taken in the "Hippodrom" tent which we had a Saturday reservation from 3 PM to 6 PM. The German girl serving us could sure carry a load of jugs, Oh I mean mugs.

Munich Germany

Munich was our weekend adventure which we are recovering from today. Thanks to our wonderful German friend Stefan, we got a guided tour of the Munich city Center yesterday. Here Stefan and I are eating lunch in the Hofbrauhaus Beer hall. This was built in 1607 as a brewery and is always jammed with tourists. In 1920 Adolf Hitler began organizing the Nazi Party in the basement of this building. Below Julie and I are standing in front of the City Hall.

Goodby Chelan

I'm about 2 weeks behind in the blog entries, but am finally getting caught up. Julie and I again say good by to our summer home. Of course we take with us the memories of our family and friends. It seems we didn't get much visiting time with anyone, but the little time we had was special. The most important change this summer was the invention of the new improved "Spud Gun". With a shot of hairspray in the chamber and a spark, this baby will launch a potato up to 250 yards. These little distractions are essential in our busy life.

Happy Birthday

Happy 80 th birthday Mother. We had a wonderful family get-together to celebrate our Mothers Birthday in Wenatchee Washington. With 8 children, 16 grandchildren, and 1 great-grandchild we had a darn good turn-out. This is Mother on the left with her Brother Roger from Arizona, and her Sister Deloris from Oregon. Below is a shot of Mother with her Brother, Sister, and 7 of us children. She still is on the go everyday although she doesn't drive anymore. She was given this skateboard in case she fell and couldn't get up, she could roll along at ground level. Good Idea!

Chelan Holiday

Here we are in Chelan Washington USA for a 2 week holiday. I decided to sell the boat that has served us so well since 1996. Since we only use the boat a few weeks each year it didn't make sense to have one until we move back from England. We have great memories of many overnight camping trips and countless hours of fishing in this 24 ft. boat. And I can't forget the hundreds of times I pulled the kids and their friends on tubes and water skis. So now our wonderful neighbors loaned us this temporary replacement tube to get us on the water. Here we are soaking up the sun with our best Arizona friends Paul and Mary.