Week 40

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

It was interesting celebrating Thanksgiving in a different country for the first time. In Germany, it's business as usual. However, in our home it was as American as you can get! Unfortunately, since we don't have any family to spend the day with, I had to make the entire meal myself. No problem though... it was fun! Plus, we got to have the Missionaries over and our German "Grandparents", so we still had a full house.

Thanksgiving Morning

Hanging out

The Feast

The next day we got out all the Christmas decorations. Aiden wasn't feeling good so we just took it easy and spent the weekend decorating. The Germans don't decorate their Christmas trees until Christmas Eve, but we decided to keep that part of Christmas tradition the American way.


Another major highlight of this weekend is that Jeremy and I had a Soprano's party! We've been watching the entire series for the past few months and then celebrated as we watched our last 2 episodes this weekend. I tried to convince Jeremy to dress up like Tony and I would dress up like Carmela for the party, but he wouldn't play. lol! I'm not sure what we are going to do with ourselves now that the show is over.

Week 39

We tried to get into the Christmas spirit this weekend. I know it's early... but to send presents back to the US you have to start early! We went to the Mannheim Holiday Bazaar with high expectations, I guess, because we were a little disappointed. Then we went to see A Christmas Carol and were disappointed again. It was WAY too scary and deep for the kids! It didn't help that at on a really scary part the movie died and then the theater went black. Kids were crying and had to leave. It was like that for almost 20 minutes!!
So... we decided to go to our first Weihnachsmarkt (Christmas Market) of the year. They all start sometime next week but a few started this weekend. We decided to go to the one in Colmar, France.

What a beautiful city!!



The streets are lined with charming cafe's and half-timbered houses, most of which are painted in bright colors instead of the usual white. Small canals run through the town, which once were used by tanners. One area is called "Little Venice" because of the canals and the little bridges that cross them.

Again, however, we were somewhat disappointed though. We got there around 1pm and waited all day for the markets to open. Finally we decided to leave around 5pm and most things still hadn't opened. We still had a great time though. I know we'll be getting our fill of Christmas Markets before it's all said and done!!

One cool thing about Colmar is that it was the home of the great artist and sculptor Federic Auguste Bartholdi, born in 1834. Bartholdi is well known for being the world-renowned designer of the Statue of Liberty.


We walked around a little to get a bearings first. The city was so picturesque!


Everyone was hungry since it was past 1:00 already so we found a little boulangerie and got some Pannini's.

The crew waiting for me to come back with lunch


Mmmmm.....


Meeting some of the locals.

Exploring the city



Stopping for some chocolates


Waiting for the markets to open...


Still waiting...

Warming up with some hot chocolate

Making several trips back to van for potty!!
Whitney stayed dry all weekend and went potty in the potty chair every time we took her. She hasn't done #2 for 2 days though... :(

Jeremy had a hankering for some chestnuts roasted on an open fire to snack on for the ride home...

Overall we had a great day!
Now we know not to go to the markets during the day.
oh well... lesson learned. :)

I wouldn't trade a day like this for anything. I think one great advantage to living here in Europe, as opposed to visiting, is that you can take a short day trip to some small city off the beaten path that you would never have visited otherwise. They aren't main tourist attractions but so surprisingly interesting. These spontaneous little adventures are some of my most favorite and treasured memories.

Week 38

For those of you who follow my blog you will be shocked to hear that I didn't take very many pictures this week. Weird, I know! I guess I will have to blame it on Whitney....

Our lives pretty much revolve around peeing and pooping on the potty. She has done so good! She actually did her first #2 in the toilet this week and she's gone several days without accidents. But... we still can't let our guard down just yet.


The other MAJOR occasion this week was Elder Jenkins birthday party. The boys were soooo excited to celebrate. They decorated his cake all by themselves and made birthday cards and banners to put up all over the house. lol! It's going to be a sad day when he gets transferred. We had the Bishop of our ward and his wife over too for the party.



This weekend Connor was invited to the bowling alley for a birthday party. It's always tricky when one gets invited and the other one doesn't. We invited 2 of Aiden's best friends from school over to play while Connor was gone. That seemed to take his mind away from not being invited to the birthday party. His little friends are really cute and the 3 of them together are so funny.

The biggest event this weekend was the ward primary program. It was the best one I've ever been to and it was all in German!! About a month ago the primary teacher wrote a scripture in German on a peice of paper and asked us to help the kids memorize it for the program. It was hard because we didn't even know if we were telling the boys the right way to say things. The week before the program different people from church came over to practice saying it with the boys while I was at work. They were also asked to memorize the first verse of "I'm a Child of God" in English.
The day of the program the boys were so excited. There was so much hype and preparation for this program compared to any others in the past. Half of the time we forgot or didn't even know about the primary program until we got there! The beginning of the program all the kids and the leaders were on the stand. All of the sudden one of the leaders just stood up and sang the first first of "I'm a Child of God" in Greek (she went on her mission to Greece), then 2 girls stood up and sang the same verse in French, then the Bishop's wife stood up and sang it in Chinese, then all by themselves little Connor and Aiden stood up and sang it in English.. without music or anyone helping them, then the other 2 primary kids stood up and sang it in German. It was such a spiritual and powerful moment to hear that song in all the different languages and knowing that no matter who you are, how old you are, or what language you speak we really ARE all children of God!
Then it was time for them to say their verses in the microphone. Aiden needed a little help but everyone was very impressed with his pronunciation... they said he speaks better German than I do (which isn't too hard to do). Then Connor got up there and read the whole verse all by himself. I was so proud of them knowing how much work and effort they put into that. I wanted to record Connor reading his verse later that night but we couldn't find the paper. I was so sad! Then Connor said he didn't even need the paper and he remembered how to say it. And he did!! AMAZING!!!

Week 37

This week wasn't too eventful... it barely justifies a blog post, but I couldn't just skip a week!


I thought I would write about the traffic here... A Stau is a Traffic Jam on the Autobahn. One day this week I was driving to Stuttgart. I left my house at 6am to avoid traffic. At 7:20am, I was 3.5 miles from my exit into Stuttgart, when traffic completely stopped. 6 cars ahead of me a Semi-Truck over turned and was completely blocking the entire Autobahn. After an hour the firemen came around to each car and instructed everyone to turn their engines off and not to smoke. It was a really cold day and was raining hard all morning. Around 9am I finally found someone walking by that spoke English... he had talked to the firemen who said it would be a minimum of 3 more hours!!! Finally a little after 11am they realized that it was going to take longer than that so the firemen and policemen went to the very back of the line and directed each car, one by one, to back up and turn around going the opposite way on the autobahn. When they got to me I could barely drive because I was shivering so bad from freezing the last 5 hours and also because all the windows were fogged up so I couldn't see. There were 5 rows of cars on a 3-lane autobahn so we were all jammed in tight. Everyone was yelling at me in German and blowing their whistles. It was really scary! Finally 5 1/2 hours later I got to my office and could use the bathroom!!!! I spent 30 minutes there and then just had to turn around and drive back.


The boys were out of school half day on Thursday and all day Friday. It's been getting cold here too so they were all going crazy from being inside for so long. Friday night we decided to go out for pizza and some bowling. We had so much fun!!





Jeremy took his game very serious! ha ha!! He was even true to the Mavs and wore his Maverik shirt. :) As you can see he won:

Whitney has been so funny lately whenever we tell her not to smile. She will be busy doing something else and as soon as we don't "don't smile" she just gets the biggest smile ever! She'll look right at you smiling but acts like she thinks she's not smiling. It's too cute!


Like I said... it's been getting cold here. The highs have been in the low to mid 40's and rainy. So, we've been spending more time indoors. I caught the kids playing really cute this weekend.

Week 36

HALLOWEEN

Another great Halloween!! The day before we had a test run and went to a costume party at the library. The boys were a little too old... it was more for Whitney's age. All the girls were princesses, fairies, lady bugs, etc... Whitney was Elmo. She wore the same costume that Connor and Aiden both have worn before. She was definitely the most popular kid at the library. All the other kids were literally lining up to wait for their chance to hug Elmo. Whitney was a good sport about it. Some of the kids were scared of Elmo. So Whitney would just hold her arms out and say "Come On". Too cute!


FINALLY... the real thing!! Here are my scary little boys...

My little pirate actually fell asleep before we even started Trick or Treating!!

We went and picked up 2 little German kids from our church. They had never heard of Trick or Treating before so we definitely wanted to show them how fun it was!! The little girl speaks a little English but the boy doesn't speak any English at all! No one seemed to care.

It was my brilliant idea to kick off the night by watching Where The Wild Things Are...


I thought the movie was TERRIBLE!!! It was such a mistake to go there. The little German boy cried through half of it. It was NOT a kids movie. I was really embarrassed for taking them and could not wait to get out of there!

Finally it was over and on to Trick or Treating...

I was quite busy with all the kids so no pictures got taken. The Missionaries met up with us after the movie and went Trick or Treating with us. It was a great night! Afterwards we all went to the food court for a late dinner.