Auerbach Castle

Our first castle experience!!  We ventured there while we were still in the army hotel, so this was over a month ago.  This was before the leaves were really starting to turn colors and while we could still wear short sleeves.  I put a lot of pictures on here, but keep in mind that this is actually only about 1/3 of what I took.  It was hard to narrow it down, it was such a fun experience for us.

 

This is the outside of the castle as we walk up to it.

    

These buildings are just outside the castle.  they have the restaurant, snack bar, and gift shop in them.

 

    

         

It was so amazing to look out at the city and hills surrounding the castle.  It was very beautiful there and you felt very high up.

                      

            

This tree was my favorite part.

         

I didn’t realize it until I looked back at these pictures and saw that Ethan was wearing his USA shirt.  That explains why people were staring at us so much.  You get a lot of stares when people realize you are American.  I try to have him avoid wearing that when we are out in the economy, but somehow it slipped passed me.  He’s just proud to be an American, I guess.  It’s his favorite shirt.

If only I could get one of these for our house for time out.

Two Months of Adventures!

I can’t believe it’s been two months since I’ve posted anything. A lot has happened since then. We are now in Wiesbaden, Germany and here is a picture of our view from our hotel. It is such a beautiful place to be. The last two months we have been in Texas and Utah visiting family and friends. Here are a few pictures and videos from our adventures.

After James’ graduation, we packed up the car, left Monterey, California, and headed to Texas.

We decided to make the three day trip a little more exciting by stopping at the Grand Canyon halfway. It was well worth the extra hour.

In San Antonio we stopped by a really fun animal park, where you get to drive around and feed the animals out of your hand. There are some that are starving for attention and some that are starving for food. They were so cute.

On Pioneer Day, we decided to try something new…ice blocking. It was so much fun, but a bit scary.

Now we are in Germany and trying to get used to the change in culture, language, time, and everything else that is different, but loving every minute of it. Here are a few pictures we took on the top of the roof of our hotel.

I can see the wheels turning here.

These are from the inside of our hotel. The sky is so beautiful here.

Ethan turns 6

With moving next week, James’ testing last week and this week, appointments, paperwork, appointments, and more appointments going on we decided to try to simplify things this year for Ethan’s birthday.  We thought it would be fun to take Ethan and a friend whale watching instead of throwing a big birthday party.  We asked him which one he would prefer and luckily he was all for the whale watching trip.  He loves sea animals and watches the nature videos religiously, so we were excited for him to see these amazing creatures in person and in their natural habitat. I have to say I was pretty excited myself to experience this.  I read up on these trips on the internet and read a bunch of reviews about them.  Most of them raved about how wonderful it was, but there was also a lot of comments about all of the people who got sea sick on the boats.  I decided to be extra careful and prepared and took a motion sickness pill before, even though I’ve never been sick from being on a boat.

We were a little early so we were one of the first ones.  Here we are enjoying ourselves before we set off on our adventure.

      

Unfortunately I didn’t get many good pictures.  We saw two humpback whales.  A mom and her baby.  They didn’t do a whole lot.  We saw their tails come out of the water a couple of times and their mouths from feeding.  It was still amazing to see them though.

   

Due to my taking pictures, I lost my equilibrium and started feeling sick about half way through the trip.  So the second half I spent at the back of the boat ready to lose it over the side if need be.  I definitely wasn’t alone back there.  There were people getting sick all around me.  Unfortunately as we started to head back I couldn’t hold it anymore and lost my breakfast to the sea.  Ethan had a great time, though.  It didn’t affect him at all and he wants to go again sometime.  I’m not sure I will be on that trip if he does.

 

Here are some more pictures I took of him opening his presents and blowing out his candles.  Probably a bit more than you need to see, but it gives you a play by play :)

  

He was very excited about his guitar we got him and wanted me to take this video of him.  It’s kind of funny though, at the end he was definitely done.

 

Here’s the cake I made.  It looks a little weird because I decided to try being creative.  The border on the bottom is ethan over and over, in case you couldn’t tell ;)

I can’t believe he is already 6.  He is definitely a special young man who is learning and growing so much lately.  We are so lucky to have him in our family.