Sunday--Church and Castle Ruins

On Sunday, we went to church.  It was interesting to go to church in German.  Sarah is the primary pianist and so I went to primary with her both weeks.  It was fun to hear the children sing the same songs in German that we sing in English.  They have the same songs for the primary program that we do.  Sunday school was a lot harder to understand, but at least we knew what scriptures they were reading.  Sacrament meeting was also hard to understand, but Elayne translated so we got the gist of what was going on.

After church and lunch, Sarah, Rick and Karen took us to Frankenstein and Auerbach Castle Ruins.  They were neat to see, but we didn't see any monsters or mad scientists:).  They told us that around Halloween, they totally deck the Frankenstein Castle out with skeletons and what not.  We enjoyed walking around and even were able to see some guys dressed as knights sparring.    

Here are some pictures of Schloss Aerbauch.  Schloss is German for castle. 

I love this one of the tree amidst the ruins.  Life carried on here many years ago, and it still carries on today, just in a different way.

They had some "photo opportunities" that we couldn't pass up.  Here I am in the stocks.

Dan is training the dragon.

Dan also got trapped, but we let him out for good behavior.

Saalburg and Konigstein

 Our first Saturday in Germany, we started out by going to the temple.  It was interesting to go through a session using the headphones and being the non-dominate language in the session.  That afternoon Rick, Sarah Breanne, and Elayne took us to Saalburg (Roman fortress) and Konigstein (castle ruins). 

Saalburg was a Roman fortress which was completely reconstructed in1898-1901.  It was originally a part of the limes that formed a wall around the Roman Empire to separate it from the Germanic Barbarians around 1st to 3rd century AD.  It was interesting to see and we were very glad to have translators along (Rick, Elayne and Sarah) to translate the different signs.

Here is a model of what they think the fortress looked like in its glory days.

This was labeled as being where the limes were.  The Romans would dig a ditch, pile the dirt up and then built up a wall on the pile out of stakes or rocks.  Sarah has some neat pictures of piles of rocks that were the limes.

We then went to Konigstein, where our camera battery died, so Elayne took pictures for us and e-mailed them to us. (Thanks Elayne!) It was very fascinating to walk through the ruins.  We were able to get an idea of what the castle might have looked like in its glory days.  It was fun to imagine the people going about their business and what the rooms would have looked like.  I have no desire to live in that time period, but it was fabulous to see.

Here is a view of the ruins and the town below from the tower. On the left is a picture of the supports for the second story.

Koln and Aachen

On Friday we took the train to Koln (Cologne) and saw the Cathedral there.  I cannot express how massive it is.  The North tower is 516 feet and it is just super impressive.  The foundation was laid in 1248, but it wasn't finished until 1880.

Here is Dan in front of one of the doorways.  There are little statues all over the archway. It was sad to see that some of them were missing and a lot of their heads had fallen off.  The craftsmanship was absolutely amazing.

This is a mosaic floor in the Cathedral. Simply beautiful.

This is the Shrine of the Three Kings, which supposedly has the remains of the three kings who visited Jesus after He was born.  The Cathedral was built for the purpose of displaying the relics.

There were tons of Stained Glass Windows depicting different scenes from the Bible. Here is just one of the many.

This is a shot of the inside.  It was just so immense from the inside.  It was made to make men feel small and it accomplished its job extremely well.

After seeing the Koln Cathedral, we took the train to Aachen to see the Pfalz with part of the original palace of Charlemagne.  This center section was built in the early 800's.  The marble work was truly stunning.  This is a candelabra that was original to the building. 

The gold thing on the right side is where Charlemagne's remains lie.

While we were in Aachen, we bought some very delicious gingerbread (printen).  We bought extra to bring home for the kids and we all agreed that it was the best gingerbread ever!   

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.