Day 1931. It was Sunday but no time to sleep in. I set an alarm for 7:45 for Randy to get up and make breakfast, and then an alarm for 8:15 for me to get up and get ready. At 8:45 we all left the house.
Thankfully it was not as cold as the past two years that we've done this. We took the subway for a few stops, then had a long walk, and even with the wind, it wasn't that bad. We reached the ship at 9:20, ten minutes before they opened the doors for us to get on. Sammy can't take lines and was getting pretty impatient for the doors to open, while Tammy started whining that she was cold.
At 9:30 am they opened the door; we weren't first but close. This year they only had this one boat ride. Last year there were two and so you could choose your own table. This year they had the one and used both levels and everyone had assigned tables. I must have failed to mention the wheelchair, when I bought the tickets, and so they gave us a different table on the downstairs level so that we didn't have to go up the stairs.
We had a window table, which was nice, but it wasn't all the way to the front, though close enough.
We ordered drinks and made a trip to the bathroom, where we took a picture looking out on the Danube and the skyscrapers. Then the clown who was gonna do a show did a walk-around. When he tried to greet Sammy, he was a little scared. We sat at the table for a while, and Tammy was saying she wasn't feeling well. She put her coat and hat back on and leaned against me. It looked like she was getting sick, but after a while she was all herself again.
Randy and the kids all went to the front for the show after a while, but Randy and Sammy didn't stay there. The clown started, then the captain of the ship came to say a few words. I rolled Sammy to the front to be a part. Then they did the same thing they had done the past two years. A voice over the loudspeakers said that a guest had been left behind, and it was Saint Nicholas. A little boat with him on board circled our ship then docked with us and Saint Nicholas came on board. He did a round around the room before walking to the front. Sammy actually started crying, when he tried to greet him, that's how scared he was.
I left Sammy with Randy and went upstairs to take pictures of the kids getting their goodie bag from Saint Nicholas. They all went forward separately. Tammy was first, then Emmy. Randy then tried to walk to the front with Sammy to get all three in the picture with Saint Nicholas, and on the second try it worked. Only Tammy an Emmy looked up to me, when I took the picture.
We all sat down at our table, and I went to the buffet to get food for everyone. They had Fritattensuppe, a typical Austrian soup, and Schnitzel with fries, followed by a chocolate coconut cake. It took me a while to get everyone their food, especially with the line at the one and only soup pot. When I had finally brought all the food to them, Tammy and Emmy were already done and ready to go get their faces painted. I didn't even get to sit down and eat. Randy and Sammy stayed so they could finish eating, while I went upstairs with them to line up for face-painting.
The line was shorter than it had been earlier. There were two professional ladies working. After a while, Randy and Sammy joined us, while I went to our table to finally get to eat, all by myself. Once I was done eating, I went back upstairs to take their pictures, while they were being painted. Tammy chose "snow" as her theme, while Emmy chose a reindeer after having looked at her picture book. When the lady said to Sammy she couldn't do Mickey Mouse, Sammy got a reindeer done as well.
The show the clown was doing had started just before Tammy was done being painted. She ran to go watch, and Emmy did the same, once he was done. And they were having lots of fun. Sammy wasn't interested and stayed at the table checking out his good bag from Saint Nicholas.
The show ended 15 minutes before we were going to dock back where we had started. The kids came back to the table and all looked through their bags. Tammy was having fun and ran back to the clown's props twice, turning something over that he had done during his show, then running away. The clown played along.
At 12:30 pm we docked in Vienna. We put our coats back on and got off the ship, walking back to the subway, which took nearly half an hour. Then we took the subway home, where we arrived just before 1:15 pm. I was so very tired that I went straight to bed. Randy and the kids surprisingly went downstairs, which gave me the quiet I needed.
After I got back up, I went downstairs to do piano practice with the kids, which went well. Then I returned upstairs and turned my computer on to do some stuff. They all came upstairs at 4:30 pm already and soon asked for food. They were watching some kids Christmas movies, and at 5 I already gave them the first round of their dinner, then cutting up fruit for them. They went into the bathtub earlier than usual, which meant we had plenty of time for advent calendars and stories. After they were all in bed, I went to the kitchen to get myself some food, and later started working on today's pictures.
