another reason not to invite a minnesotan...

ITS SNOWING IN LUXEMBOURG.

Upon Jay and my arrival we were prompt to ask, "how often does it snow in Luxembourg?".  In response we got, "meh, about 3-4 times and mostly just a little at night but nothing big."  As it turns out, mom and pop Petermeier arrive in Europe last Saturday and this Saturday, we have SNOW and LOTS of it!  It appears that it is not stopping anytime soon.  Plans are to head to Trier, Germany today but the crazy Canadians and my parents have yet to show up to get me.  

We have been having a wonderful time since they arrived.  My dad has now seen 5 new countries!  Last Saturday and Sunday were spent in Geneve, Sunday night and Monday were in Berne, Switzerland.  We then travelled to Nancy, France in the afternoon and up to Luxembourg on Tuesday afternoon.  In some situations we have had a bit of a language barrier but we are gettin by!  Thursday morning it was off to Brussels we went for a couple of days and back on Friday evening.  Jay was happy to see us return so he could get a big pasta dinner at the Italian place before game day.  Today, Saturday, we have about 1/2 inch of snow and I suspect more soon.  Hopefully the game will still be on so that we can all see Jay play!  

All in all it has been a great trip filled with all sorts of great food!  We are getting really excited to take the train to Paris tomorrow morning for a few days!  Hope all is well back home and we hope you have the pleasure of the snow as well. ha!

Kels & J

(mom, dad, Don, and Margaret!)

As the weekend approaches...

hey guys!

The weekend is approaching and my parents are going to be here with their friends in about 2 days.  I will be taking the train from Luxembourg to Geneve to meet them, and I am excited to see the lake and the mountains again!  We will drive from Geneve to different places in Switzerland and then up through Germany to Luxembourg.  We will do some travels around here during the week, Germany, Belgium, all over Lux.  When the weekend approaches we will go to Jay's game Saturday night and then Sunday morning off to Paris for a few days!  While we are in Paris we will be able to celebrate Don & Margaret's anniversary, what a great place to celebrate!  The 2 weeks should be a wonderful time and I am really looking forward to seeing them.

Hope everyone is doing well at home and the snow/ice is melting in Minnesota!  We have included a picture of the sketch someone did of us in Milan, enjoy!  We look more our shoe size.

Jay and Kels

pics of milano

          
    
        

we will try again tomorrow to load pictures...it seems not be really slow.  sorry.

Milano

Hey guys,

We had a great trip to Milano last weekend and got home late last night.  Jay and I were there for about 3 days and saw just about all there was to see...well at least by foot from our hotel.  We walked everywhere and not once took a taxi-cab, even though it was pouring rain and Jay was too tight to spring for a cab!  haha!  It was fine, Jay says that it helps build my character.  It really was a sight to see the Duomo Church in the Centre of Milan.  I have added some photos to this posting of Jay and I by the Duomo as well as inside there.  

The first day we walked from our hotel to the centre of Milan, took about 10 min, and went to the Duomo first.  We walked around the centre of the city and did some shopping in the area.  What an amazing place to do your shopping, beautiful people all around, beautiful clothes, expensive things, and best of all in my mind GELATO.  For good luck Jay and I rubbed the heals of our shoes on the "genitals of the Taurus Bull".  This is something that some of the people of Milan do everyday, you spin around 3 times for good luck, we thought maybe it would give us the best luck if we ate gelato at the same time!  We did some touring until about 6 pm and then decided that we were getting tired and hungry, so we walked and walked and walked to find something that was open to eat at.  Finally in an alley we found an Italian  restaurant that was open but no guests yet, we forgot that people do not eat until about 9 pm here.  By this time my puppies were screaming and I needed some food.  (Keep in mind that over here last weekend was a Holiday weekend, All Saints Day and All Souls Day...as well and Mondays people take off)  So it was busy around the city but not everything was opened for business.  Jay and I had dinner here and enjoyed some great wine, wonderful bread, pastas, and MANY laughs at our own expense.  I think that the help was happy to see our butts walk out the door.  (We were asleep by 9:30 pm....note we had been up since 4 am and the night before went to bed at 12 am)

Day two...we got an earlier start on the day from all the rest the night before and were to the Duomo by about 10:30 am when things just start getting going in Milan.  We had said the night before how much we really wanted to go up the stairs in the church and so we did.  Up to the VERY top of the Duomo and we got to walk on the very top roof!  It was amazing but kind of a scary walk up.  (My mom would not have liked that walk up AT ALL).  We took some great pictures while we were up there, and will post some on here.  We then walked up the Via Dante and saw more beautiful shops and had some great pizza for lunch and a caprese salad, a favorite of a Miss Lisa K.  Walking further up we got to see the Castle at the middle of the city, it was amazing to see and also know how many countries have ruled in the city.  Jay is a great photographer and took some wonderful photos while we were here, and we also used our tri-pod that Jays dad gave us, it worked great!  Then we walked to the Church of Santa Maria del Gratzie, this is where the famous painting "The Last Supper" by Leonardo DaVinci.  We were unable to see the painting because reservations were booked out to see it for the next TWO WEEKS! WOW!!!  We did see the church itself though.  After this we decided to walk back to the Centre, where we then "got suckered" or thought it may be fun for the guy on the street to draw a picture of us....lets just say we look more our shoe size then our real age!  Its a great picture of us and this guy was a really great sketch artist.  Dinner at a Chinese Restaurant and again maybe too much wine, but lots of fun!

Day three....up again to make a plan for the day.  Jay had his 6 croissants at breakfast from the hotel and we were off in the rain to see a few things we had not seen.  Jay bought an umbrella from the "guy on the corner" and thankfully it made it the rest of the day.  The Saint Ambriaggo Church is the one we saw right away in the morning and it was Jay's favorite.  We lit a candle in this church it was quite beautiful and also had a gorgeous courtyard, where we got one of the best pictures of the trip.  After this we walked some bit further to another church and courtyard.  This day amounted in wet shoes, tired feet, soaking suitcases, and thinking we took the wrong tour bus to the airport.  Even though the whole day was spent in the rain we still had a great time together.  

Love

Kels & J

Pics

     


              

Trier

Hello Everyone,

Well the past week has been a good one.  Jay's team is doing ok, and they FINALLY got their first win this week in a Cup Game!  Jay had 41 points in the game and a bunch of rebounds (oh and he was 12/13 on the free throws...my mom would be proud!)  Here are some links below you can check out stats and game reviews at....

http://www.basketnews.lu/

and

http://www.flbb.lu/

The last home game (non-Cup game) did not go so well for the Heffingen squad and they lost by about 10 or so points.  Jay had a pretty good game but the team struggled to get him the ball and that resulted in less points on the board.  Jay did come to play and made all his free throws that night!  This Sunday we play Musel Pikes and they are undefeated this season so far...should be a tough game but that is when the Heffingen squad performs best!

As for us we have been doing a little more planning and exploring.  We are headed to Milan, Italy next weekend after Jay's game and going to enjoy a little vacation!  Both of us are very excited...maybe a little bit has to do with the delicious gelato we will be intaking!  Thursday of this week we went to Trier to see what it was all about....this time we ACTUALLY made it there and did not get lost!  

Trier is the oldest city in Germany, dating back to 16 B.C.  It was a gorgeous city that you had to drive down into.  We got to see the Palace and Colosseum and the old churches as well.  The City Centre is cobble stone and beautiful, has obviously been updated to include all the shopping a tourist could possibly want! haha!  We were able to get Jay's birthday present I promised to buy, a NEW coat!  Afterwards we ate at Jay Jay's restaurant in the Square, delicious food.  

The week prior to Jay's birthday I am going to visit our friend Allison who lives in Liege, also where Jay's old teammate Sebastian is from!  I will take the train straight to Liege and it will take only about 2 hours!  I will even be able to be back in time for his game on Saturday and his 27th birthday is the next day!

Another exciting thing is that my parents will be here that next week for about two weeks, so Jay and I will be quite busy this next month!  And we are excited about that!!! Hope everyone is well back home and we will post pictures.  I am also creating a "highlight" tape of Jay's games when I record video on my camera....so look forward to that.

Lots of Love from Luxembourg

Kelsey & J

Ps.  Jay and I got some packages this week from my grandma Montavon.....which was AMAZING!!!  There was 3 tubs of Peanut Butter and we are very excited about that!!  Thanks again grandma!!!

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and so we went back!

We decided earlier this week that it may be fun to head into Trier, Germany for an afternoon/evening on Monday.  Today when we started that little "adventure" we thought maybe we would take a shortcut to get to the highway faster....not so much and we ended up taking the longest way possible to Junglinster (this is where the grocery store is and such) that you could ever take!  At this point we were unsure that we wanted to try and get to Trier, so we headed back into Luxembourg City.  This was a great decision because it was a great afternoon and we were able to see all the stuff we did not get to the last time!  

Jay and I went into two very beautiful churches, one was the St. Michael Church and the other was Notre Dame.  At the Notre Dame we were able to light a candle for all of our loved ones.  This is a gorgeous city and there are many old buildings and castles all over the city, as mentioned before it used to be a fortress.  Jay is great at picture taking so we will post a few of those for you!  We are also hoping to go on a little "vacation" in a couple of weekends somewhere fun, not quite sure where that may be...but Jay is working on the plans.  My mom and dad and their friends will be here in about a month and we are getting really excited to see them!

Before Jay gets on to talk about the game I wanted to be sure to let everyone know that Jay's sister Jillian and her husband John welcomed another beautiful girl into the world on Friday October 10.  Clara Helen Tenwinkel was 8 lbs 11 oz and mom and baby are doing great and both at home!  Grandma Anderson is out there enjoying sometime with Jillian and the family, also helping Hannah become a wonderful big sister I am sure!! Jay is a very proud uncle of THREE nieces now!! :)  Congratulations to John and Jillian Tenwinkel!

Jay's weekly recap:

Hello everyone!!  First of all if you read the blog Kels and I would appreciate some comments... even if you want to say how boring and dorky we are or how funny my uniforms look.  Any thing would be nice just as evidence that people are actually reading this thing.  We would also probably write more if we knew people were reading.  Anyway, things have been good since I last blogged.  Practice went good during the week and we played a game on Sunday.  It was our first road game but the travel here is never too bad.  15 minutes and we were in Ettelbruck to play Etzella.  They were picked to be one of the top teams this season and we were of course pick to finish last.  But we played a great game and personally I played much better.  We were up most of the game but ended up losing in the final seconds.  We were down one and I got fouled with about 20 seconds left in the game.  And...  I missed both free throws and we lose by 3.  Sad, I know.  I have no idea why I am not making free throws but my luck has got to turn around soon.  Even though we lost, the team played well and I didnt do too bad besides the free throws. (32 points and 16 rebounds)  Hopefully we can play well this weekend and get our first win of the season at home.  Shout out to my new niece Clara!!  The name is growing on me and she is pretty cute with those freaky long toes.  Later   -  J