A bit of this and a bit of that in this post today.
Birthday Wishes
On the 28th was Rebecca’s 15th birthday. 15!!!! Who can believe it? We had a family dinner and gift presentation, with Markus cooking Rebecca’s request for a traditional Canadian turkey dinner. Turkey, mashed potatoes, carrots and stuffing.
Rebecca did well in the ski clothes department and we bought her a mountain pass for the winter. All of her friends ski, so this should be an excellent activity. Rebecca had several gifts as well from Canada from all sides of the family . Very nice, but it did make her a bit homesick. Understandable given how far she is from Victoria. My friend from school, Ana, even remembered and gave her a lovely gift of a Russian stacking doll. So sweet.
With my wildly (yet predictably) unruly family, the pictures of them sitting at the table are crap: Rebecca with a napkin over her face, Lili completely ignoring the camera, eyes closed, mouths full…you get the non-postable picture. So here is a slightly better one of Aunt Susi, Oma Renata and Rebecca modeling her new winter vest:
Fingerprints
This week we also crossed off a few more of the long, bureaucratic tasks to finalizing residency for Rebecca, Annie and me. The one interesting event in the whole process was getting my fingerprints taken at the police station. This is a requirement of the Canadian RCMP office in order to issue an official criminal check for me. As almost no Canadians move to Austria (something like 46 North Americans moved to Innsbruck in 2007), the Politzei were a little unsure how the process worked. After we were taken under wing by an officer who was curious how this would all unfold (obviously a slow day in the policing world), we found a detective who could help us.
After checking the requirements, they determined that we would have to actually take old-school ink fingerprints instead of the digital scans I was expecting. So I was brought into this very stark white back room complete with a chair set up to take mug shots with the prisoner number. Excellent. The detective had to keep asking me to keep my hand relaxed so the prints would work properly. Not sure how someone being arrested would stay relaxed, but oh well. Here are the results, just like on Columbo:
Angels
Staying on the detective theme…On Saturday when I was at the wedding, Markus took the girls to Arzler Alm. On the gondola on the way up I guess they had a Charlie’s Angels moment. Markus didn’t have the camera so snapped this one with the cell phone. I had to include it…can’t believe that this worked out with an often camera-resistant teenager, an energetic 7 year old and a ‘not-quite-sure-what-is-going-on-but-it-looks-like-fun’ toddler. Apparently they had a fantastic time hanging out together. That makes me so happy to know that the family connections are strengthening.
Hilarious!