I'm really not a slacker!

Things have just been a little crazy lately. Work still sucks, but I'm working on it. We still don't own our apartment, but our mortgage guy is saying we will by the end of next week. I'm still thinking end of the month, as I'm not believing anything until I'm actually sitting in an office, signing a piece of paper - this morning we discovered our HVAC system wasn't working, and I'm not going to close until they fix it. Taking that into account, it might be another 3 months, based on the last maintenance issue we had!

Other than that craziness, things have been fun. This past weekend was our annual Labor Day Donauschwaben pilgrimage. This year the Mansfield, OH group hosted, and they did a great job. The Chicago Donau Kids were fabulous and adorable, as usual, and I was very proud of the really little ones, who got a dance move that they'd been having trouble with previously. I think the big shock for one little man was when my mother announced that it was his 7th birthday (Sunday) and made everyone in the pavilion sing to him. He was beaming. :-) All of us in the adult group had a good time, too, and we had a great showing. There was a bit of Rill family drama, which Kristin was probably sad to have missed out on, but what's a trip without a little of that?

As with any other reunion, there were the people we were happy to see again, as well as those we missed. In one case it was considerably more tragic than the standard "had a soccer tournament" or "couldn't get away from college" reasons; one of our friends in the Cincinnati group passed away this past May due to a heart aneurysm. He was 26, and a great big friendly, hard-working and -playing teddy bear. You'd think that a room full of people in a big circle holding each other, swaying and crying to Hillbilly Deluxe would be absurd, but in this case it was very fitting. We'll miss you Kevin...

Our trip back especially fun because of a detour down to Cincinnati to see the Eustlers. We were both very glad to see all 3 of them - I was happy that Nicole was awake the whole time, too. It'd also been a long time since I'd had LaRosa's. Yum. :-)

That's all for today - tomorrow starts German Day weekend!