-Summertime is hard on knees. The twins each have some major cuts and bruises on their knees from multiple spills during walking, hiking and running. In addition, Ted has cuts on his elbows and several puncture wounds on his forehead from falling in the gravel at the Augustiner. Even Mom has bruises on her leg.
-Chris was able to help Carrie start using the cloud for viewing photos. Of course, this was technical support that wasn’t asked for, an especially delicate situation that requires a strong trust relationship. To achieve this Chris has visited Carrie and her family 7 times over the last 14 years, and during this trip he mentioned each day the advantages of using a cloud based app for viewing photos over downloading each of them with a web browser plus Airdrop. Finally on the night before we left Carrie let Chris install the Smugmug app on her phone so that she could see images from this trip and previous trips. It might be too strong a statement to say this was a breakthrough, but it certainly felt like solid progress. Fortunately we are scheduled to see Carrie and her family again in August in Utah, which will provide an opportunity for additional counseling and encouragement.
-Ted and Gwen quickly became attached to Carrie, Sophie and Anna. About a day into the trip Gwen referred to Carrie as The Other Mom and asked for her name. Ted is almost always the first of our children who is out of bed in the morning, and by the end of the trip he was having long conversations with Carrie in the kitchen in the morning. Sometimes he would even sit in her lap.
–Ted: “I remember your house but now I don’t remember my house.” He was also comfortable enough around Carrie to tell her that her head was too small for her body, which she rectified by letting her hair down from its ponytail.
–Gwen asked around 10am one day: “Carrie are your girls already at school?”
–Carrie made dinner for everyone each night, and Ted and Gwen seemed to eat seconds of whatever she cooked. Amazing! Carried joked that her girls would do the same with food cooked by other Moms.
–Sophie and Anna shared their Barbie collection with Gwen and spent lots of time with her. They also spent a lot of time playing board games with Ted and Gwen.

Funny quotes from the kids:
-Everett, after someone spoke to him at lunch and he didn’t respond: “I’m lost in my knödel,” referring to the delicious knödels that Carrie made for everyone lunch.
-Ted one morning soon after we arrived: “It smells like fresh cow!”