Rothenburg's Medevil Festival

After church on Mother's Day, we headed over to Rothenburg ob der Tauber and experienced one of their medevial festivals. I LOVED it! I told James this is what I wanted to do for Mother's Day, and he agreed without hesitation even though he hates big crowds especially on hot days. We watched the famous Shepards Dance, and then watched the parade. They had people represent the different times and wars that Rothenburg has experienced throughout it's history. We were standing across from a cute little store, where the owners would hand out beer, wine, and lilacs to all the people in the parade. So they would all stop and take a drink before they moved on. This is why you'll see a lot of pictures of people drinking beer. It was fun to see this, as it is very typical in Bavaria. Everyone in the parade would adorn their costumes with lilacs. Lilacs are everywhere here in Bavaria. I think May is my favorite time of year in Germany. It is so beautiful with all the different colors of green, mixed with fields of bright yellow flowers, it looks like a quilt of green and yellow. If you ever travel to Germany, come in May, it's gorgeous! I'm really glad I was able to experience one more Spring time in Germany before we leave. Anyhow, I have a slide show of the pictures from the festival. There are several, but I just loved all of the traditional clothing they wore. Enjoy!

www.designedphotography.com/RothenburgFestival

Happy Birthday Mom!

This was taken with our little web-cam, so the quality is horrible. We just wanted to say Happy Birthday MOM!!

Nuerenburg Zoo and Tutu Boy!

Last weekend, we took the kids to the zoo. I love the zoo, and seeing the kids get so excited about all the animals. Kedric was making all of the animal noises. We had a lot of fun. We were hoping we'd get to see the new baby Polar Bear, but it wasn't out. We still had a good time.

We had just gotten home from Reiyn's ballet class, and I went to get Kedric's pj's when I hear Reilyn just giggling and find that she had put her tutu on Kedric. Kedric was loving it, and just dancing around. It was too funny to see this little chubby boy with nothing on but a tutu, and his belly sticking out. James was still at work, so I was able to capture some pictures with out having to take it off right away! Oh the joys of big sisters!

Crazy Kids! These two love to say goodbye to Dad through the window. They push their faces up to the screen on the window and look like goofs! How funny is this picture?!

Kedric thinks it's pretty cool when we whistle (even though, I'm terrible at it), so he's been trying to do it too! Here we are sportin our hoodies and whistling!

Little Peeper

Reilyn thinks she has to take showers now. When she does, Kedric loves to spy on her, and she just splashes him with water! Here's a few shots I captured the other day...

a white Easter?

Yes! We woke up on Easter morning with a couple inches of snow on the ground!! It's been snowing all week, and still snowing today! Reilyn told me that the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause are confused! We have gotten more snow this week, than we did all winter! Crazy!! Here's some pictures of our Easter Day... and Kedric's first haircut with the clippers!

The candy trail from their bedrooms...Finding the hidden eggs...

Yay! Kedric found his basket in his high chair!
Reilyn excited that she got a Hannah Montana CD to dance to!
Wearing their springtime Easter outfits in the SNOW!

My little model...

I love Easter and how it helps us reflect more fully on the Atonement and Resurrection. We were a little frustrated that it snowed when it was such nice weather in February, but the whiteness and purity of the snow made me think of how we are able to be perfected in Christ. For my lesson in Young Women's we talked about how dark the Friday of the Crucifixion was, and then how bright the Sunday of the Resurrection was and how we all have "Dark Fridays" but with the Resurrection, we can look forward to that "Bright Sunday."

Easter Eggs!

London!

When my mom was here, we were able to make a quick trip to London. We took the kids and had our backpacks and everything with us everywhere we went, but I'm glad we went. We had fun seeing all the sights and how HUGE London is. I really liked it, and would love to go back. There's so much to do and see. It was really cool to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. There were several tourists and a group of Japanese girls standing by us. I think they thought that my kids were a tourist attraction (they took more pictures of them, than they did of the British Soldiers!) My mom and I had fun trying to talk like the British, and Reilyn soon joined the fun! We saw many different types of people, just like in any big city. The business men were very well put together, and the people there were very nice. The architecture was awesome! There were some really cool buildings and so fun to see the old with the modern right next to each other. Kedric learned to say "cool" when we saw the big Tower Bridge and that's all he would say over and over again. We've been watching Peter Pan the past couple of days, and Reilyn thinks it's pretty cool that she's seen Big Ben and the London Bridge (the Tower Bridge) that she sees on Peter Pan. Here's a slide show of some of the pictures we took there. Enjoy!
London Slideshow

Samuel the Lamanite

James came up with a really fun Family Home Evening on Monday. We learned about Samuel the Lamanite. After reading about him, we acted it out! Kedric was Samuel the Lamanite and Reilyn was the Nephites throwing rocks (marshmallows). We had plexy glass protecting Samuel (Kedric). It was funny!

Kedric thought it was pretty funny that Reilyn couldn't hit him with the marshmallows!

Eating the marshmallows...
We had S'mores for our treat-- this is the fam watching them in the oven.

Good job James! You're awesome! We had a great family night!!

Paris...

My parents and my little sister, Jadeyn, came to Europe for a couple of weeks. We played really hard and traveled lots! We picked them up from the airport and drove straight to Paris! Paris was a beautiful city with a lot to see. We LOVED the Eifel Tower, and I'm sure we could've stayed at the Louvre for the entire day-- actually I think we did. The people were all beautiful, and well put together. The pastries were unforgetable, and the macaroons were awesome! We went to several fun places in Germany the following week. My Dad served his mission over here, so it was fun to go to some of the places he served in. We actually found the very apartment where he lived in Regensburg. I'm so glad they came! We loved having them here. Reilyn loves my mom to pieces and she would wake up with a huge smile on her face everyday they were here. Kedric, however was a little hesitant and when he would wake up and see my mom, he'd look at her like, "why are you still here?" It was funny, but I think he finally warmed up to her the day she was leaving!

I've put some of the Paris pictures on a slideshow, and I'll get the London pictures up soon.
www.designedphotography.com/ParisSlideshow

We're moving back to the States!

It's true! We will be leaving Germany this summer and moving back to the the States. Our next (and last) duty station will be Ft Lewis, Washington! We are excited to move close to family. We are actually a little nervous about living in the United States again. We love America and we are proud of our country, we just have seen a different way of life here in Germany. I guess you could say that we have learned how to live a simpler way of life. We know that it is really easy to spend money in the States and have realized how CONSUMER driven it is!

What we will miss about Germany:
1. The simpler life
2. The beauty of the land- Alps, green hills, the farmlands mixed in with the trees, the vineyards
3. The old buildings and castles
4. Traveling
5. Driving on the Autobahn
6. Friends we have made in our church ward
7. Being able to relax at restaurants (because they are a lot quieter than those in the states)
8. The fresh bakeries
9. The Chocolate!
10. H&M (although I hear there getting one in Seattle!)

What we are excited to come back to in the States:
1. We'll be close to Family and Friends
2. Big Grocery stores with lots of variety of foods to choose from!
3. Applebees
4. The dollar is actually worth something there
5. A bigger church ward
6. Target
7. American Commercials (yes, you do miss them when you don't have them)
8. Country Music Stations
9. Stores will be open later than 6:00 PM
10. James is excited to be able to find Jeans that are not "crotch-lovin-butt-huggers!"

Remember

I found out about President Hinckley's passing this morning in an email from my mom. I have felt like some one really close to me has died. He was such a magnificent man. I think of all the beautiful reunions that he is having right now. We all knew in our hearts that the time would come that he would no longer be here on earth with us, I just don't think we wanted it to ever happen. Below is a link to a tribute slide show that the BYU photographers put together. It's beautiful.

http://photo.byu.edu/video.php?cat1=Slide%20Shows&cat2=General&cat3=2008&cat4=Hinckley%20Tribute

Christmas!

Christmas has come and gone, and I'm sad that it is gone. I don't want to take down the tree and all the decorations, but I know that I need to do it this coming week. We had fun time and kept it simple, but definitely missed being with our families! We invited the missionaries (Elder Tilgner and Elder Zern) over for Christmas Eve dinner and a short program after. Elder Tilgner is from northern Germany and brought his small trumpet. He's very musical, so it was nice to have him there. Kedric was just taken by the trumpet. He was absolutely in awe and loved it! We sang "Christmas is upon us" of course. Kedric was the Santa, Reilyn the dolly, and the Elders were the elves. After the program, we were just talking with the Elders and didn't realize what the kids were doing. Suddenly we heard some toy making noise and the kids just laughing with excitement. They had opened up one of Kedric's presents and playing with it. It was too cute!

We had my parents on the web cam on Christmas morning and Kedric was only interested in the laptop (with the web cam) the camera, and the camcorder! He didn't really know that he could open presents because we've been telling him not to all month! He did love the beef stick that was in his stocking, so he was running around all morning chewing on a beef stick! Reilyn loved Christmas! She was so patient and came and woke us up before she sneaked a peak in the living room. She was trying to figure out which pile was hers, and shouted with glee when she saw her name on one of the presents! We did get a White Christmas, but it wasn't snow, it was a build up of 4 days of frost, but it was still so beautiful! Here's a little slide show of some of the pictures...

December Pictures

December has been a fun and eventful month so far, Christmas isn't even here yet! We've enjoyed it so far and are so excited for this next week!

These pictures are from our Ward Christmas Party. Reilyn sang with the Primary children. They were so cute!

Kedric and his buddy, Jack, were standing next to the stage wishing to be up there with all the "Big" kids!

These are Reilyn's best friends from church, Grace and Sam. Sam calls Reilyn his girlfriend, and actually asked her to marry him last week (in addition to another proposal from a boy in her preschool class)-- She told them both, "I don't think I want to marry you!" Let's just hope she keeps that up!

This was the Santa at the party. When he came out one of the German boys yelled, "Hey, Das ist Bruder Wenzel!" Then all the kids knew who he was!

Silly Kids!

Kedric is quite the climber, and he thinks he can do everything that Reilyn does. The other day I caught him in the bathroom sink. He had placed a box on top of the step ladder, so he could reach high enough to climb on to the counter! Am I in for it or what? Then as I was loading the dishwashing and went to put the soap in, I noticed that Kedric already tried to do this with his crackers! I'm so glad he wants to help!

Reilyn still loves all her babies...

I love that my kids are such good friends! Every morning, they love to sit on the couch and watch cartoons together.

Kedric is my little bookworm! When I'm processing my pictures and working on the computer, sometimes he gets really quiet, and I get nervous that he's making a huge mess...and come to find out, he's just sitting in Reilyn's room looking through books. The other picture shows his nasty lip he bit through a couple weeks ago. It's healing fine now--thank goodness! (If you click on it, you can see the picture a little bit bigger.)

Congratulations James!

James graduated from Warrior Leadership Course on December 12th. It was a month long course, and we missed him every day that he was gone! We went over for his graduation and did a little bit of Christmas shopping while we were on the BIG base over here in Germany! The graduation was cool, and I wish I would've brought my camera in to capture it, but I didn't--sorry! He looks so thrilled in this picture!

This was the Santa at James' work Christmas Party. Kedic was still scared of him-but I think I would be too if I was him. We don't get any real looking Santa's over here, they all look pretty fake! That's sometime we can look forward to when we're back in the states!

Reilyn's School Christmas concert...

We got to go on the "Nikolaus Wagen" with James' work group. It was cute, they had it all decorated and had juice and cookies at each seat.