Germany--Mainz

Dan's sister, Sarah lives with her family in Frankfurt, Germany.  We were thinking about traveling there and Dan's parents volunteered to watch the kids, so we went for two weeks. We had a lot of fun and really enjoyed seeing new things and spending time together.  We have been married for almost 14 years and Emma is 11 and we have never done anything like this before.  I had been away from the kids for one night since Emma was born that didn't involve having another baby, so this was a new experience for us. I'm going to post a few pictures (we took over 900) to show some of the highlights from our trip.

 Day 1: Mainz
Sarah picked us up from the airport and took us to Mainz.  We saw the Mainz Cathedral, which was very nice and very old.  The oldest parts date back to the early 11th century.

The cities in Germany are very compact.  Here is an example of a walking street.

Here is a memorial to a Roman Military guy (I can't remember rank) that was built in the 9th century.  It was located in a Citadel that has the outer wall still standing in the middle of the town.  We also saw the ruins of a Roman theater that were along the train tracks.  It was neat to see, but hard to get a good picture of.

 Here is a famous fountain in Mainz that was built in the 60's. It wasn't running for us due to the time of year, but was still interesting to see.

We also went to the Gutenberg Museum.  It was interesting to see a lot of really old books and how they were made.  We saw some of the early books from his press, including some with hand drawn decorations.  We also enjoyed seeing different forms of printing and early printing editions from around the world.  It was a very interesting museum to go to.

Okay I'm a Slacker

I can't believe my last blog was Christmas!  We have been way busy and Dan and I just got back from a two week trip to Germany.  Pictures are to follow, but I'm trying to catch up with other things first.  Maybe I can post tomorrow. . .We'll see.

Christmas Day

Santa came and brought presents for the kids. It was a pretty low key Christmas morning because our presents to the kids were California, Knott's and Sea World.  We are still looking for what to do to make up for missing Sea World. We'll figure out something. 

Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve we did the traditional acting out of the Nativity Story.  We filmed it for the first time this year.  I tried to post part of it, but after trying to load for about 10 minutes, I gave up.  Emma was Mary. Ben was Joseph. Gideon was the angel/wise man. Gabby was a shepherd/wise girl. Eliza was a shepherd/wise girl.  Dan narrated and I filmed and gave direction. They had fun, but I think we need to work on a more condensed version to keep the kids attention.

Our traditional Christmas countdown Nativities were looking pretty sad, so this year we decided to make our own.  We found the pattern on the internet.  The kids had fun taking turns coloring the different pieces and gluing them on one day at a time.  Here is the finished product.

San Diego

We were planning on going to Sea World on Wednesday, but they were closed because of the rain. At least we were able to get a refund for our tickets, but it was still a let down. We were really looking forward to it. We were able to go to the Mormon Battalion Visitor's Center, which is AWESOME! I highly reccommend it to anyone who visits the San Diego area. We drove back to Grandma's on Wednesday and started back home. It was a long, wet trip and I don't think we'll go to California again if a forecast is as bad as what this week was. 

Knott's Berry Farm

 On Monday we went to Knott's Berry Farm. It wasn't raining the first few minutes we were there and we were able to ride Ghost Rider--a roller coaster the kids all wanted to ride. While we were boarding the ride, it started to pour. We got soaked! They closed the ride after we finished, along with most of the other roller coasters, but the kids were able to do some of the Camp Snoopy rides.  We had brought ponchos that helped keep us a little dry.

Emma was too tall for most of them, but the smaller kids enjoyed them. We were able to go on the Pony Express and the Log Ride a couple of times.  We went on the Calico Mine Ride and a couple others. For the rides that were open, at least we didn't have a line.   

We also enjoyed a 30 minute production of A Christmas Carol, a Snoopy on Ice Show, and our own personal viewing of "A Winter Wonderland", a Peanuts Gang show.  The kids all got to go on stage because we were the only ones in the audience! They ended up closing the park a few hours early, which was really disappointing because there was more we wanted to do.  

Pre-Christmas in "Sunny" California

We decided we wanted to spend sometime in California before Christmas. We wanted to see Grandma Pam and get out of the cold.  we also wanted to go to Knott's Berry Farm and Sea World for our Christmas present to the kids. We were all planned and ready to go. We took the kids out of school the Thursday afternoon before Christmas vacation and they missed Friday.

 We weren't planning on the rain that engulfed California our entire trip! The kids had fun playing with their cousins, Mya and Kaylee. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get outside much.

 Here is Scruffy, Grandma Pam's dog. We had fun, but I really wish it hadn't rained the ENTIRE time.