Winter has come to Nußloch! The first snow of the season came with hurricane-force winds of 119 kph (74 mph). The kids built a snow gnome in the garden.

We went and visited the Breuberg in Hessia with Anke and Ralf. The owners of this castle went to war with the owners of the Otzberg, where Anke and Ralf live. The Otzbergers fooled the Breubergers into believing that they had enough food to survive the siege by choking the pig once per day. From the squeals of the pig, the Otzbergers soon believed that they were slaughtering one pig a day. That is hardly what one does when one is worried about conserving one's supplies in a siege. To this day, the Breubergers call the people from around the Otzberg, "pig chokers."

A summer of activities! The kids were in the paper a couple times:

Another birthday! Andrea celebrates with a Sachertorte and a Jogurttorte. She and Anke went on a shopping trip, while I manned the household for the day. Dinner out will have to wait. I returned too late from Grenadier to really go out.

Halloween was pretty low-key this year. Ursula went on a night-time walk with us. Kathryn met with some of her friends and had some actual success at trick-or-treating. I carved a sad-looking pumpkin.

We also went to the Viking exhibit in Speyer with the Plumleys and had a very nice time.

Last weekend we went into Walldorf and took a look at the last meeting of the Walldorf Aero Club. The event was a lighting of the hot-air balloons and some night sky diving. The balloons never left the ground, but the sky divers did drop out of the night.