European vacation part 2

This posting will wrap up our time in Germany. We toured the castle the first day there, and then Sunday was spent mostly with the local Church of Christ there. The church building is shared by 2 groups, the German speaking group and the English speaking group (which consists mainly of American military families). That morning they had a combined service, and our group led the service that day. Our worship minister, Raymond Schultz led the worship that morning, and the praise team sang 2 songs we had been working on in German (O Sacred Head, and I Need Thee Every Hour). It was really neat to hear how loudly the Germans joined us in our German songs, and by the way, O Sacred Head sounds wonderful in German (although it was quite a pain learning how to pronounce it!) That night, we had a full hour of praise and worship, which was attended by primarily the english speaking group, and it was again a blessing to share our music with others. We were also blessed with the entire experience of worshipping across the world with strangers, using different languages, but all worshipping the same God. Our last day in Germany we went to a nearby town. They had a palace with gardens that were the size of about 58 football fields. It was neverending paths with fountains, sculptures, and bridges at every turn. It was beautiful and we spent the whole day wandering around and admiring everything. In Heidelberg, there was a town square that we spent much of our time just sitting and visiting. In fact, there was one table in the corner of the square that we claimed as ours. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of us at that table, but it holds many happy memories of our time in Germany. Each night we would walk around and look at shops and pick places to eat dinner. They had many street vendors that we gave business to as well: brats, crepes, gelatto ice cream, and more. The pictures really don't do justice, but hopefully will give you a glimpse of our time there.

One of the local hotels. This type of building and greenery out front was the norm. Notice the cobblestone street as well.

This is the bank of the Nekar river that ran through the town. This picture was taken Sunday afternoon. All the locals just came to the river bank and spent the afternoon out with their family and pets. Side note: Germany is VERY pet friendly. It was common to see dogs on the trains, buses, even outdoors on the restaurant patios.

Stairwell in our hotel; the other couple is Cary and Andria Tucker who are good friends of ours who also went on the trip.

This is the riverbank on the other side of the bridge, again just showing the local activity on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

This was taken at the palace gardens. The Tuckers are there, as well as our friends Mark and Destin and their baby Nash. Let me tell you, that baby was amazing on this trip. We carted him around everywhere and he hardly fussed!

Another fountain with sculptures at the palace gardens.

This is at the top of the structure with the view of some more of the gardens behind us. Destin's mom Jonesa is with us, she came to help babysit Nash.

Andria and I are waving from our window at our hotel. Goodbye Germany!

European vacation part 1

There will be several more posts to come, but here are the first pictures and stories from our vacation to Europe. We had an amazing time. We went with a group from church, which included several of our closest friends which made it even better. We loved every part of it, and in a way we really didn't want to come home. These first pictures are from our first day when we arrived. We were in Heidelberg, Germany. If we look tired, it's because we are! We had been awake for over 24 hours at this point, but we had to stay awake so we could quickly readjust to the time change, which we did. We were not prepared for how much we would love Germany. It was so beautiful, and the town was small, and quaint, and friendly, and peaceful. We wished we would have had more than 3 days there, but it was 3 days well spent!

This was our hotel. It was very old, and we had to walk up 4 flights of stairs to get to our room (there was no elevator). But we enjoyed the quaintness of it and felt like we had a better German experience.

This was taken on the bridge in town. If you look on the mountain behind us, you can see the castle. This is one of the only castles in Germany that was not damaged or bombed in WWII.

Closer picture of the castle.

We toured the castle, and this picture was taken standing at the castle wall. The grassy area you see below is actually the moat area.

Note the date, 1779. This was to signify the time that they built the "new" part of the wall. I don't recall the date of the original walls, but I was blown away that the new section was over 200 years old.

Inside the castle, the courtyard area.

There was a wedding reception inside the castle courtyard, so we took a picture. How fun to say part of your wedding took place at a real castle!

From April to July

Below are several posts updating things from April until now. We've been busy this summer with lots of fun activities, some of which I posted about. Luke has done fantastic with his swimming. Between week 1 and week 2 of lessons, it just clicked and he swims all over the pool by himself. He still can't touch anywhere, so he goes from edge of pool to Aaron or I and back and forth between us and the pool sides. He can swim 10-20 feet at a time and tries to come up for air, but hasn't quite got that down yet. He will change directions in the water though, and if we give him a shove down, he'll go down and get dive sticks and bring them back up. It's alot of fun to watch our little fish. I plan on getting some video of it, and I'll try to figure out how to put a video clip on the blog sometime this summer so you can see him swim firsthand. Aaron and I are also getting geared up for our trip to Europe. We leave the last week of July, and we'll be in Germany for 3 days and Paris, France for 5 days. Aaron and I will also take a one day detour to Belgium to visit my aunt and uncle who live there. We are so excited. The boys will get some grandparent time with both sets of grandparents. I know they will have fun too, but I do worry how their behavior will deteriorate over the 10 days Aaron and I are gone. We've never left them for more than 2 days at a time. Luke is old enough to understand, but I fear he will become meltdown central the last few days just because his routine will be out of whack with Aaron and I gone, and him wanting us home again. Ben doesn't have the same concept of time, but he may get increasingly whiny and fussy as time goes on, we'll see. I predict he'll be ok overall, but will be extraordinarily clingy for the first few days when we get back. Fortunately, the grandparents are coming to our house, so the boys will be at home in their own beds at least. Oh well, I'm keeping my worries to a minimum because there's nothing I can do to predict or change how they'll act while we're gone. It will be a great vacation for me and Aaron. We've not had a real vacation, as a family or a couple, since we moved to Fort Worth 8 years ago. We've gone on trips with our extended family for some long weekends at various places, but this will be our first extended vacation in 8 years. I also look forward to taking the boys on a family vacation sometime in the next year. We had planned on doing a big family vacation this year, but when the Europe opportunity came up, that trumped any family vacation plans. So we're thinking maybe Sea World/San Antonio next fall or spring, or something like that. So, get ready, I will have lots of pictures and stories coming up in the next month from our European vacation!

4th of July

We had a busy, and very fun 4th of July. My parents took all the kids and grandkids to Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine for the weekend. It's an indoor water park resort, and there are tons of other stuff to do there as well. We had fun, and there are truly things there for every age. However, Aaron and I are beginning to show our age. We came home so exhausted, more so than the boys even, and believe me they were tired too! I don't actually have many pictures of us in the water park, and that's where we spent most of our time, because I didn't want the camera to get wet. My sister in law got some good pics of the kids playing and if I get around to it I'll post some of those on here. But here are some pics I did get. There are also a few of us watching fireworks after we got home, and doing sparklers in our backyard.


This is their version of Build a Bear. They had various different animals you could pick out and stuff. Luke wanted a white seal. We chose the wolf for Ben. Luke loves his seal, and he would carry it around and pet it and pat it, and even tucked it into bed that night at the hotel. Ben also loves the wolf. He calls it a dog, and when we gave it to him he started barking. It was really funny.

They had an arcade area as well, and Gran bought tokens for all the kids. They had alot of fun playing games, and Ben especially loved getting in the cars/trucks that you could "ride". Above, Luke is pretending to play guitar hero. He had already used up all his tokens at this point.

Although most of the resort is indoor, they do have an outdoor area that's open in the summertime. These were some pics from our outdoor swim time.

Trip to Illinois over Memorial Day

Here are pictures from our trip to Illinois. Yes, I know it's July and this is from May, I have no excuses except it took me that long to get around to downloading pictures from our camera. Anyway, it was a good trip. You'll see several pictures with some of the boys' second cousins, Eli and Elise who are the same age as the boys (Luke and Eli are 10 days apart, and Ben and Elise are 2 or 3 weeks apart).

Ben "playing" the Nintendo Wii, with a grass skirt on.

Chillin in the pool.

Luke and Eli, and they truly are playing the Wii. Luke loved the Wii. And he was actually pretty good at it. He almost beat Aaron legitimately at bowling, and Aaron was trying to win. Santa may have to bring our family a Wii for next Christmas....

Boys playing and mom's retirement

Here are some various shots of the boys playing and of mom's retirement "party". She didn't want a big party or anything, so the kids and their families all got together and came down for a surprise dinner. We cooked her an italian meal, and she was surprised. The food was good, and mom loved having all the kids and grandkids there to celebrate.

I just thought it was funny that ALL the grandkids were playing topless.

Playing with the "moonsand" and having fun.

This is a great story. I'm getting ready one morning and Luke says, "Mommy come look. Tarzan is Jesus." I went and looked and this is what I found. He got a little wooden decorative cross off the piano, and placed his Tarzan toy on it just like Jesus being crucified. It was actually quite realistic considering Tarzan has long hair and wears a loincloth and all. I thought it was too sweet; I love his imagination and that he thinks and talks about Jesus and God the way he does. The other picture of him holding Tarzan up was "Jesus when he came to life again" as Luke said.

Ben watching cartoons on our bed. This was one of the first times he actually was paying attention to the TV and I just thought the thumb and how he holds his little lovey elephant was sweet.

Been a while

OK, well it's been quite a while since I've been on here. I've been quite the slacker. Honestly, I've just gotten busy doing other stuff. For the past month, I've had a terrible obsession with the Twilight book series. All I did for about 3 weeks off and on was read. Ask Aaron. It was making him crazy. Now I'm trying to play catchup on the house which needs desperate cleaning from the month of neglect it got. Then we've also been busy with Luke's soccer. We've all enjoyed it, but we're ready for it to be over now. Only one more week.... And then we also had our trip to Illinois to see Aaron's family. It's always a good trip and we enjoy seeing the family. When I get around to it and quit being lazy, I'll put some pictures on here from our trip. Now I'm in the middle of swimming lessons for Luke. He's doing very well and can swim by himself for short distances, but I have a hard time getting him to do it outside of swim lessons. He's not tall enough to touch in the pool, and he's become quite dependent on his arm floaties so he can just jump in and swim all over the pool by himself. The problem is, he keeps his head above water when wearing the floats, and as soon as they come off he totally forgets how to swim because he lifts his head and then the body sinks- he's nowhere near good enough to try to actually swim with his head up. So I try to make him go without the floats, but he gets tired quickly and it's not quite as much fun, so he ends up pouting and just getting out of the water entirely. So, I don't know how well the swimming independently will stick with him for the summer, we'll see. But overall we have a fun and busy summer planned. 4th of July weekend we'll go with my family to Great Wolf Lodge which is an indoor water park here in the metroplex, and then in July, Aaron and I are off to Europe!! We'll be in Germany and France for a total of 10 days, and we plan a one day excursion to Belgium to see my aunt and uncle. Anyway, so overall our summer is pretty full but should be fun. I'll try to catch up more here now that I don't have a book obsession keeping me occupied until late hours every night......

Soccer and the Zoo

Here are pictures from Luke's first two soccer games. It's alot of fun to go and cheer all the kids on, and it's not nearly as chaotic as I expected it to be. They are actually making improvements from week to week as well, so it's fun watching them learn the game. The league has this tunnel that all the kids run out of before each game, it has smoke and everything, and the parents line up and cheer. It's all very exciting. You see Luke with 2 of his buddies from church that are on his team. There are actually 2 other friends from church that are on his team too (5 of the 8 go to Altamesa!), but they weren't there yet, so I only had pictures of these 3 boys. They were so excited to be all dressed up in their soccer gear.

Next are the zoo pics. I have a zoo membership, so I go with the boys fairly often. I never think to take pictures though, so one day last week when it was so beautiful, I actually took my camera. We hadn't been to the zoo in a while because of winter, and we stayed a long time, much longer than usual (we usually just go for 1-2 hours), and had a great time. Despite their expressions in the pictures, they were really good and we enjoyed the day. Luke is pouting in the picture with the lions in the background because he didn't want me to take his picture. The lion on the ground is actually a lion cub, the lion had 4 cubs and they were all out that day; as you can see, they're not small cubs anymore, but they are definitely not the size of mama lion (unfortunately, I cut the top off too much, so you don't get a good view of mama lion lying on the rocks with another cub). The kangaroo, well, Luke just thought he needed to be on his back for the picture, so that's what he did. I couldn't get Ben to stand still long enough to get him in the shot. The others are in the penguin exhibit. It's indoors so it's kind of dark (and no, the water is not that green in person), and there is a glass that separates from the penguins, but they swim right up to the glass so you get to see them upclose. I got too much glare off the glass, so you can't see the penguins there real well. Ben did not want to sit still, he wanted me to hold him, so that's why he's crying in all the pictures. They played hard, as seen by the last picture. That's how we arrived home, and it's only about a 10-15 minute drive from the zoo to our house, they were pooped!