Awards

While being awfully negligent about our blogging duties we still received some awards from faithful friends.
Socks, Scylla, Charybdis and Fenris as well as Charlie gave us this award:
Here is the meaning and rules of this award:
"This blog invests and believes the PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

Thank you Socks, Scylla, Charybdis, Fenris and Charlie!

Adan and Lego and Mr. Chen and Ollie gave us this one:

Thank you Adan, Lego, Mr. Chen and Ollie!

And as we haven't even notified the recipients of our last awards we won't pass these on right now but instead try to fulfill our duties and finally notify our last recipients if they haven't found out yet by themselves.....

We hopefully will get back to some kind of regular posting soon - the maid did take some awfully cute pictures of us recently!

Forever Soraya

graphic by KC

Our sweet sister-in-law Soraya went to the bridge this morning. Our hearts are heavy and our thoughts are with our extended family.

Off to Limburg Again!

Karl's husband Ruis had asked him if he could come to Limburg again for the weekend as the 4 day official carnival starts Saturday evening in Heel, Ruis hometown. Of course Karl went into the teleporter right away!

Go to Ruis blog to see how they will celebrate the carnival!

And then, after he'd left, I found this note from Luna:

i did a 'sassy' and will be in limburg with karl. don't worry, luna

I never met Anastasia - but I know she and Luna would be best buddies!
I just hope Luna doesn't get into too much trouble over there in Limburg.....
Mrs. OZ

A Valentine Adventure!

Happy Valentine to everybody!
Valentine's Day is the traditional day on which lovers express their love for each other but we decided to stretch the definition a bit and make it a day where we celebrate our closest friendships.
And what better way to do this than with an adventure trip! We booked rooms at the Castello San Marco near Taormina in Sicily and as there were so many of us Opus had to fly us down in the Magic Flying Van in two trips!
Here you see the first group (Stella, Stanley, Asta, Lacie, Charbybdis, Momo, Socks, Scylla) waiting for the arrival of the second (Ruis, Karl, Opus and Sassy), who were working at the Little Production Studios late.

picture by Sassy

We gathered in the impressive entry hall which was all decorated for Valentine!

Charybdis, Scylla, Sassy, Lacie, Opus, Momo, Socks Karl, Ruis, Stanley, Asta
picture by Asta

Then we just relaxed a bit. Here are Momo, Sassy and Asta in their fabulous room.

picture by Asta

And we decided to hang out by the pool for a while.

To ensure a quiet lunch with just the two of us Ruis and I had gotten tickets for all the others for a surprise trip to Mount Etna!

They found Sassy very close to the lava flow high up on Mount Etna and all got back safely in time for a little excursion through Taormina where we joined them again after our romantic lunch just for the two of us!

Here we are all together again at the theater in Taormina.

The evening we spent at the castle, having a wonderful Valentine's Party!

picture by Asta

HAPPY VALENTINE!!!

Guest Post by Dicky Duck

Karl's maid and I are back from our trip to Costa Rica. It was fun!
You can see all the pictures from the trip at my blog, the links to the various slide shows are in the left sidebar.
Here is just one example, me on the canals in Tortuguero:

I also made lots of friends in Costa Rica, this one came with the house where I was staying in the Caribean,

and this mighty tomcat came around for food and petting. A true street cat, all scars and muscles!


I think The Cat Realm gang plans on starting up with the blogging again around Valentines, they are still in Limburg, tending to Taylor who is sick.
Dicky Duck, The Traveling Duck