We had our first snow today!!  It wasn't much and it certainly didn't settle but along with the dark evenings it's a sign that winter is on its way.

We have just got back from England where we caught up with lots of friends and family and celebrated Catherine's birthday.  Catherine and Jessica flew over first and had ten days with Wendy and Derek while Michael was in Hamburg and then Michael, Nicky and Irfan and family and various members of the extended family arrived for the party.  It was lovely to see so many family members and friends during the visit, it was just a shame that the time that we spent with everybody was so short.  Thank you so much for all the charity donations, to date you have raised 230 pounds for ME research(www.justgiving.com/Catherine-Friess).

Jessica is now seventeen months old and we are so enjoying her at this age.  She has been walking since she was 13 months and is now into climbing!  Having mastered gross motor skills she is now concentrating on developing her language skills.  She understands almost everything that we say in both languages and her first word was 'bye' followed by 'woof woof'.  She can now say 'cheese', 'tschuss', 'star', 'ja', 'ball', 'bear', 'boo (shoe)', 'da', 'des da', 'quack quack'and 'baa baa'.  She loves animals and enjoyed the long weekend that we spent on a farm near Lake Constance in September.  She is very easy going, inquisitive and friendly and loves being outside.  She can spend hours on the swing and loves riding her trike.  We go to two English playgroups and a German one and we still meet regularly with our friends from the baby group.   There are three little boys in our street who are the same age so there is always someone to play with :o)

We are still hoping that Flybe will start flying from Southampton to Stuttgart but have just found out that BMI fly from Heathrow to Stuttgart which gives you another option should you want to come and visit us.  We'd love to see you .

We hope that you are all happy and healthy and look forward to seeing you soon!

Catherine, Michael and Jessica

9/11/09