Week 43

Aiden decided it wasn't enough to watch Connor cry last year when he stuck his tongue to a pole... he had to try it himself.

Aiden was invitied to go rock climbing with a friend from school. He was so nervous to go and asked his friend if his Mom could come! I had to stay with Whitney because Jeremy was at scouts with Connor. I felt bad "making " him go but I'm glad I did... he came back and said "I had a blast!!!" Here he is with his friends right before they left.


Meanwhile... Connor was at the Space Derby.


Even Santa came

He had time to see the little siblings too!



Despite all of Jeremy's efforts... Connor still got last place. :(

In the end he still had lots of fun. He LOVES scouts!!

After scouts I went into the library really quick to return some books. I turned around and Whitney was gone. Within about 20 seconds she found her way to the kids area, lined her little library friends up and started reading them a book. She didn't waste any time. lol!

Ludwigsburg Palace

This week we took a bus to Ludwigsburg for a tour of the Palace.


The Palace started out as just a hunting lodge but the Duke liked it so much it became his home, as well as the home to other Dukes and Kings.


Today it is used for Weddings, among other events. The day we were there a bride and groom were rehearsing for their big day. It seemed like such a romantic setting for a wedding!


Aiden's favorite part of the palace... King Frederick's thrones

Connor's favorite part... The King's bed. He liked that there was a rope right next to the bed so the King could ring a bell any time he wanted something from the kitchen. There is a small door right next to his bed where the servants would come in to serve him.

This was the Queen's room. You can see the port-a-potty next to the bed. Apparently it was an considered an honor if the Queen asked a servant to aide her whilst doing her business.



The wall of portraits. These were all the Dukes, Princesses, Kings, and Queens that lived here. The art work through out the palace was very impressive.

The Queen use to be carried in this. On hot days the top would come off like a convertable.


The grounds... I can only imagine how beautiful it must be in the summer!

Aiden's idea: "Connor, let's pretend like we are reindeer".



Back to the bus!

Next Stop: Stuttgart Weihnachtsmarkt

It was very crowded


LOTS of rides for the kids!


Poor Connor... too big for the little kids rides.


I caught Jeremy off-guard as he is buying MORE hot chocolate and waffles!!

The kids found a moment to remember the true meaning of Christmas

Roasted cashews and macadamia nuts... YUM!!!


Nutcrackers!!


Whitney fell asleep while we waited for the bus to pick us up


I didn't have the heart to tell the boys that their snow angels would never work with that much snow... they just kept trying!


Such a beautiful site... a nice, warm bus that pulled up right to the Market!


Settled in for a long bus ride home.


ONLY 5 MORE DAYS 'TILL CHRISTMAS!!!

Week 42

This was a really hard week for everyone. I was in Ramstein, Germany all week for training with my job. It was really hard to be away from everyone for a whole week.

While I was gone I had Lauren take some pictures at the Christmas Party for Whitney's preschool class. Whitney goes to a preschool class twice a week with some other German kids her age. Some of the Moms speak a little English but they mostly speak in German the whole time, and none of the kids speak any English. The language barrier doesn't seem to affect Whitney though... she loves playing with those little kids.


Like I said, this week was the Christmas party. They had a Santa come in and call each child by name to come up and sit on his lap and then he gave them a present. When it was Whitney's turn Santa spoke English (kind of) to have Whitney come up and then talked to her in English. I thought that was really sweet for him to make the effort to communicate with Whitney in English.
Whitney loved her little toy too!!




We finished up the last of our Christmas shopping this weekend and now just have to wrap it all!! After a full day of shopping on Saturday we rewarded ourselves by going to our local Weihnachtsmarkt.



Our little village had a very small Christmas Market for today only. There are so many here but most of them are open for the entire month of December. Even though this one was small it had all the "Must-Have's" for ALL Christmas Markets...

Gluhwein (even this one had 4 different kinds!)

and Bratwurst (3 different kinds)

The kids especially liked seeing Weihnachtsmann (Santa)


He gave each of the kids a Kinder Egg (Whitney calls them 'dinner eggs'). They LOVE these things. They have the cutest little toys inside of them that you put together - so the kids get chocolate AND a toy! Unfortunately, they don't sell them in the US because the little toy parts are so small and could potentially be a choking hazard, if swallowed. (The German kids seem to be ok with them though.)

It was a nice ending to a busy/hard week.

This morning we woke up to beautiful, BIG snowflakes!


Kayla was so funny. She thought they were little balls falling from the sky and was trying to eat them.

Week 41

'Tis the Season!

Everything is Christmas-y now... I love it!!

The backerei's have their special Christmas breads out. I had to get a Weihnnacht's Bretzel for everyone to share.. it was huge.

Friday night Connor had scouts but he was really excited since it was his first meeting with his new scout uniform. He also got is Wolf Scout handbook that night and hasn't put it down! He's already half way done reading it. He's really into scouts I guess.

That night after scouts we went to the Holiday Magic festivities in Heidelberg. I thought they really did a nice job for this.

There were horse and buggy rides (which we did not do since we were freezing!!!).

They had a little carousel that was Whitney's favorite part!

Lots of yummy food!

Then they went to see Santa.

I had a very embarrassing moment here because I could NOT stop laughing! There was a really long line of parents waiting to see Santa with their kids waiting in the freezing cold and I was just cracking up...

So this is what happened. The first picture I took was ok, but I wanted one with Whitney on Santa's lap. In the second picture I noticed Connor was making this funny face. I pulled him over and realized he had a bloody nose. I gave him Aiden's glove (the only thing I had on me) to hold over his nose while I took the last picure with just Aiden and Whitney.

After the last picture I looked at Connor and his face was covered in blood!

Poor guy... he didn't even know (which was making me laugh even harder).

Saturday Connor was invited to a birthday party at Kid's World. We have been here once before right when we first moved into our house. It's a really fun place for kids (a nightmare for paranoid Moms - like me!!).

Even though Connor was there with all of his friends from school he still chose to do everything with Aiden. It was really cute.

I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was going crazy trying to follow Whitney around. She was a mad woman! She didn't stop for 2 seconds. One of Connor's classmates had a little sister there who was 4. Whitney immediately bonded with her and they were attached at the hip the whole time. The hilarious part though was when I tried to take a picture of the 2 of them together Whitney was acting so weird! She was trying to act like she was really cool. Nothing I did could get her to smile she just had this "I'm so cool and hanging out with a 4 year old" look on her face the whole time. lol!

St. Nikolaus Day

December 6 is St. Nikolaus Day. Apparently, he is Santa's German brother. The boys learned, in their German class at school, that if they shined their shoes really good and put them outside their bedroom doors on the night of December 5 that St. Nikolaus will fill them with toys and goody's in the morning when they woke up.

The boys came home Friday and informed us of this German tradition and made sure their shoes were in tip-top shape!! We were a little worried if St. Nikolaus came to American children or not but it looks like he does! :)

Connor was worried about St. Nikolaus being able to walk up the stairs to the bedrooms "cuz he's really old" and insisted on us putting the shoes on the bottom stair.