Nine Years Old!

Anika had a really fun birthday party this Saturday. We had her party held at Schonbrunn Palace. They have a kid's museum about the royal family, more focused on how Maria Theresia and Joseph, and their children were as kids.

The party-kids dressed up in fancy gowns and cloaks (Pascal) then took a tour of the museum. Finally we went to the party room to have cake (Sacher Torte) and juice. A beautiful room looking out on the Palace gardens. Ani and her friends had a great time. They even sang songs from Udo Jurgens - a very smaltzy, sappy German singer, with lots of older women fans (Anika's teacher is teaching the class some of his songs - no one knows why).

The party was great!

Anika's 1st 'Nastics Meet

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Anika competed in her first gymnastics meet today. There were ten or more teams from around Vienna, more than 100 competitors. Anika was nervous, and half of her didn't want to go, but she went - and did very well!

Ani placed in the middle of 30 girls in her age group. Everyone is proud of her performance. Ani's team did well too, with one in Ani's age group winning first place. Anika placed seventh on the mini-trampoline - nice and high, legs straight, and stuck the landing - too bad the video is so poor. Her floor and beam routine looked pretty good, although she left out a couple of tricks on each. Aw well, it's her first meet.

Hurrah for Anika!

Proud, Tired Joseph

By Francesco di Christofano (1485-1525) painted around 1515. I love this picture. I especially love the depiction of Joseph, especially because he usually gets second billing when it come to pictures of the holy family. Joseph looks tired here (see his messed up hair) but proud of his family. That's the baby Jesus to the right, playing with his hair while sitting on Mary's lap. My finger painting here isn't the whole painting - it cuts out most of Jesus and all of Mary. But then this is the part of the painting that I like. I spent almost 4 hours doing this painting.

In the same room with me was a guy painting (oil painting) a copy of Rapheal's famous triangular composed painting of Mary, the baby Jesus, and the baby John the Baptist. It's a really, really, really great painting, and in every art history textbook. The painting is like maybe one of the top ten paintings in human history!!

Below is an image of the painting I copied, and then a movie of the finger painting.