France: An Anniversary in Strasbourg

Hey, Kev's here! For our 17th anniversary this year I thought to myself "How could I make this the most special anniversary yet?" Since moving to Germany a few months ago we had gone on trips to Belgium with the kids, have Austria secretly planned for Christmas (with kids) and London next year (with kids). Not dissing the kids, but man a trip just ourselves sure would be nice, but how?

So then came the striking idea: FRANCE! We haven't been there, but Paris would be to far away. Well since Christmas spirit is alive here now, and polling the best Christmas markets to attend, I heard about Strasbourg, and joyfully we could drive there and it was only 2 hours away! Win, so off we went. 

We situated the kids with promise of bribes and took off. We were so excited when we crossed the bridge in the middle of no where and crossed over into France: picture worthy moment! We had to snap this real quick because there was a semi truck coming! 

Strasbourg is a beautiful city in France, quant and pretty, and luckily today it wasn't unbearably cold. Unfortunately Heather had forgotten to take a dramamine before we left, and thanks to a million back road switchbacks so she was horribly sick. You can't tell it from the pictures but she felt horrible. So after finding a pharmacy, we bought something similar to dramamine and hoped for the best. She's such a trooper!

Talk about a super cute town. Everything was decorated primarily for the Christmas Market. We loved seeing the huge decorations over the restaurants and businesses.

Owing to my affinity for Cathedrals, we stopped first at Cathedral Notre Dame de Strasbourg. It was started in 1015 and took 424 years to finish, and for 227 years it held the record for the tallest building. It still does hold though the record for the highest extant structure built entirely in the Middle Ages. What's crazy though is that this church is one of the churches that had 74 of its stained glass structures stolen by the Nazis, and recovered and returned to the church by the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of our military in the U.S. In case you haven't seen The Monuments Men it's worth it describing this adventure! What I love about this picture though is the tapestries. They are gigantic and 600 years old!

Inside during the Christmas season was the joy of the many creches and nativities that were on display. They highlighted many of the events during the nativity.

So this cathedral is famous for the astronomical clock. It's the 3rd clock that has been in this location since 1681, but this current clock has been there since 1843. It has a working perpetual calendar, orrery, which is a planetary dial, a display of the moon and the sun and the solar and lunar eclipses, all on one clock that spans three stories high. It has 18 inch figures of the Savior and his apostles, to include a life size rooster that crows three times at solar noon. This thing was huge and incredible to see.

Of course the outside architecture was amazing and so detailed as you can see from the prior front doors used a long time ago.

After going around more of the outside and seeing of the different sides of the cathedral we realized that it literally was the center of the Christmas market. We visited the different shops, enjoyed some crepes (yep - crepes in France) and some other fun little shops.

As the day progressed it so so nice to just spend time together, without the kiddos. Unfortunately the medicine we got for Heather didn't work well, and after a very well endured afternoon of nausea, we decided to call it and went home. So it was a shorter day, but just wonderful to spend time with my best friend! Happy 17th anniversary Love!

First Thanksgiving in Germany

Happy Thanksgiving!  We had a pretty amazing Thanksgiving this year.  Kevin and I sat down and made a list of people that we wanted to invite over for Thanksgiving this year.  We sent out our invites and were excited to have a little over 30 people at our house for Thanksgiving.  

Kylee and Emily made the dinner rolls and 12 layer jello.  It is so wonderful having these little ladies here to help me make the Thanksgiving dinner.  Not only does it take off a big load for me, but it makes cooking in the kitchen all day so much fun.  We turn on our favourite songs and sing nice and loud while we roll, knead, and bake.

We asked everyone to bring a few things to put on the table, and we ended up having three tables worth of the best looking food, and everything tasted so absolutely amazing.

The kids had a fun time making name tags and setting up the different tables.  They put the fine China on the adult table, the cute Thanksgiving paperwork for the teens and then the coloured paper plates for the littles. They made the name tags out of coloured paper and made cute turkeys and then printed out everyone's names.

I think what made this Thanksgiving so much fun was that we did have so many people.  We realised our house is simply amazing for holding big groups.  We were able to have a space for each of the different age groups.  All the adults were upstairs at our normal table.  We all fit perfectly. The teens and tweens were downstairs in the stube in their own little area.  They all really appreciated having their own area.

We then had a table for the kids around Little A's age and then we used our Korea table for all the about 3 year olds.  The Korea table was so perfect because it is low to the ground, so we didn't have to worry about finding more chairs and we didn't  have to worry about the little kids falling out of chairs.  It we so perfect. We have so much to be thankful for this year and the Lord has showered down blessing on us.  It has been a wonderful year and I am so grateful for the opportunity to live overseas and I am so grateful for all our friends.

Little A as an Angel, Mouse & Party Girl in the Nutcracker Ballet

Hi! This is Little A, and I wanted to tell you about my rehearsal and performance for my ballet studios performance of the Nutcracker. 

So for almost half the day during Christmas time, I would have to go and practice. I had to work for the angels and rats and party girls, and it took so long. I eventually was an angel and a rat!

The long practices made my legs feel so tired and sore for a long time. The rehearsals were two months long.

The performance on the first night I was an angel and a rat and the second night I was an angel, party girls and a rat. When I was a rat I had to run around and protect the queen. We had to sing a lot as angels, and the on the second night I also was a party girl, which meant that I got to dance around and hold up a stuffed animal, and danced around with the other party girls.

When I was all done I was glad because it meant that I didn't have to be in those uncomfortable clothes anymore. I forgot my wings the first night too!

I was happy to see my family supporting me and coming to my performance, and I even got these beautiful flowers after and I really liked them.

Italy Day 6: Rome Italy Temple & The Palace of Caserta

Guten Tag. This is Big sis and I'm going to tell everyone about our adventure the the Caserta Palace and the Rome Temple.

I have to say, the temple grounds were the best tended to then any other temple I've been to. Even in the winter time, the plants were all blossoming and beautiful. Their were about 10 people cleaning the grounds and tending to the temple. Of course we didn't go int the temple itself, but we planned on going to the visitors center instead. We arrived there at around 8:45, but it didn't open until 9 and so we explored the grounds and saw the beautiful temple from the outside. It was absolutely gorgeous. 

We finally were able to go inside and we got to see all of the 12 apostle stature and the statue of christ. I am pretty sure the the Rome temple visitor center is the only one that holds all of the original 12 apostle statue. These however aren't originals, but replicas of the actually statue in other churches scattered around Italy. There were two missionaries and a nice elder who were there and they told us the background and some stories about all of this wonderful statues. 

Then the took us the the other side of the wall were there was a 10 foot long stained window that held 140 stories from the New Testament. Everything in the window at least represented 2 stories. For example, the woman reaching towards christ represented the woman touching Christ's garments, the woman at the well, and the story of the adulteress. The artist of this window even put hi face in the glass, he's the man walking toward christ, he also represents the one leper who came back and thanked Christ after healing them. There are so many stories and symbolic things. It was so amazing. Eventually, we had to leave, but before we did, there was a scaled model of the outside and inside of the temple. So, yes we didn't go inside, but we still got to see the inside of the temple. 

After saying goodbye and going back onto the rode, we stopped at one of the largest Palaces in the world. At the front of the palace, it didn't look very big at all, but the completely changed when we went inside.

We first wanted to see the English gardens in the backyard, and though it would be fun walk around. We thought that it would be a little walk, but we were completely wrong. The the backyard was at least 2.5 MILES LONG!!!!!!! And it just so happened that the gardens only entrance was at the very top of the 2.5 mile hike to the end of the palace.

So we put on our determination faces and started the walk. We made up games and enjoyed the water in the middle while walking up and so the time didn't pass by terribly long. The gardens didn't allow entrances past 1 and we were half way at 12:30 and we had already been walking for 45 minutes, and we started to hustle to the top.

We finally got there at 12:56 and got in to the gardens with some time to spare. The workers told us that they completely closed at 2:30 and so we had lots of time to explore the gardens. We saw so many weird plants and structures.

There were some fallen trees and some broken house roofs from the fallen trees, but other then that, it was so beautiful. We saw many lakes and a man made waterfall with really cool cave. The spiderwebs were humungous and disgusting.

We walked around and saw some really things and then deciding to call it good. We left at 2:25. We had the great blessing at making everything just in time. When we saw the all back, we didn't want to do it at all, and so my family took the shuttle back while the Doland's ran the entire way down. Since they had all kids between 11 and 7, they made it down surprising quick for 2.5 miles. While we waited for them, we started our tour of some of the palace rooms. We didn't know that we would be doing that for at least on hour.

The rooms were very big and looked very elegant. All the room had many chairs and paintings and some other artfiacts such as super old books and stuff. The largest amount of chairs me and M&M counted in one room were I think 38. Including a couch to hold 6 people. Crazy. There was even a room that had the ancient kings personal library and another room hand the royal babies bed. Sadly, there are no more royals to live in the palace and so it's just used for site seeing now. Kinda a waste in my opinion.

We explored the many rooms that we were allowed in and then went to the front of the palace again. If you ever want to go to this cite, it's worth it. Just be prepared for a very long walk that paid off in the end.