Merry Christmas!!!

Playing music on pipes!






Once again, Christmas morning has arrived and filled our home with smiles and laughter. We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas Eve with friends and neighbors as we ate dinner and played musical pipes. It was fun singing and laughing while listening to the music we created together.
After everyone left, we got the house ready for Santa's arrival which included leaving out cookies, milk and scattering reindeer food outside.
Before bed, we told the kids the earliest they could wake us was 5am. At 4:30 we heard Dallin's little feet pitter pattering downstairs. We called Dallin back to his bed and at 5am, the girls scurried up from their beds with excitement to get us up. AND, once again Santa and his crew left a MESS of muddy prints and food crumbs inside the house. In Dallin's words "Girls did you see the mud from Santa? I was TERRIFIED." We laid in bed and laughed as we heard his thoughts on the matter.
We've had a wonderful morning setting up an ipod, watching fashion shows with the new clothing and best of all, Lola loves the remote control car!
We hope everyone enjoys the day and know that we're thinking of our family and friends both near and far!

Rally Grounds

I wrote about the rally grounds in the post below....here are the pictures.

The Hostel

If I could read their minds they're saying "It's not too late to go to the Ramada up the hill Joe." "Just smile and act excited!"



We had fun in our bunk beds! Dallin ended up being afraid of the top bunk so Papa had to take the top one in their room. :-) They were troopers and I think enjoyed the humble dwellings.

Nurnberg

We have a cool tin that has Christmas treats in it from this store.





This weekend we headed out to see Germany's largest Christmas Market. It's said that each year 2 million people flock to see the market. We also had reservations to stay in a youth hostel located inside the imperial castle of Nuremberg. The hostel we stayed at belongs to an association that makes sure certain requirements are made to ensure safety and cleanliness. You have to be traveling with children for the most part to stay in the hostels. If they have room, they'll take people w/out kids.
We had 2 rooms with 2 sets of bunk beds in each. We shared a bathroom between 4 rooms. The rooms and facilities were clean. Breakfast was also provided in the price.
We saw the Christmas market as soon as we arrived. It was crowded, we were freezing but we still had a good time. We enjoyed latkes (potato pancakes with apple sauce to dip in) and the famous Nuremberg brats which are tiny compared to a normal hot dog. They put 3 inside a roll.
We headed back to our rooms to make our beds with the bedding that was provided. We slept very well and headed out early for breakfast. After breakfast, we headed to see some famous sites in Nuremberg that had to do with Hitler (or Antler as Dallin called him)
We visited the Nazi rally sites which included Zeppelin Field. This is where Hitler would give motivating speeches yearly to crowds of people to rally the troops and spread his trash.
We stood where he stood and gave his speeches. It's been an awesome experience to see these historical sites and learn as we go.
The weather outside was COLD, windy and rainy. It wasn't the most enjoyable of days out so we didn't spend hours touring the sites like we could've.
In all, it was a fun weekend. Brilee was not with us, she had a slumber party to attend. We picked her up tired and happy to get home to her bed.

School Pictures

Here are the pictures we have back so far.

MORE SNOW!

In the beginning.....

I like to color this way...how about you???Our steep drive-way


I hope you don't get tired of our boasts of snow but us Arizona people get really excited when the beautiful white stuff appears at our house. We woke up to a beautiful blanket of snow. This season we've had more snow days than we did last year and it's just begun! School was technically not canceled but since the buses couldn't pick us up, we didn't go. It was an excused absence for anyone who did not venture out in the snow. Aparently we're higher in elevation than those around us because we really got a lot of the beautiful white fluff. On Ramstein where Mike is, there was minimal snow left when he arrived around 9:30. It's still on the ground here and snowing again, but some is melting as it's 37'. Our activities included sledding down the driveway, hot chocolate, movies and a helping me color some Holiday bingo cards for an activity I'm helping out with on Saturday. We've had a fun day!
Let's not forget our last GOOD snow and what happened with MIKE. For those that don't know, you can click HERE to see. He headed out to work later this morning and had a slow but good ride in. Thankfully! We both laughed as he slid onto the road this morning.

Napoleon's Tomb/Eiffel Tower

Les InvalidesNapoleon's Tomb which lists the wars he was in

Bored anyone??







Our final day of exploring was spent back in Paris to see Napoleon's Tomb which is located at Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tower. We wanted to get more pictures of the tower.
Les Invalides also holds other war heroes remains as well as a museum for the French War History. The girls weren't too thrilled to walk through the museum. As you can tell from the picture. They just sat next to the heater and kept warm. Dallin was excited to see bombs, boomers, guns and other war items. He's obsessed with "pazooka guns" and things that go bang. He's a true boy that's for sure.
We made our way from the musem to a little cafe we found back in February when we were there last. We fell in love with their Flan dessert. Mike thought it would be a short walk, the guards told us it was a 20 minute walk for an adult. ADULT was the key word to the sentence. It was a 45 minute walk in 34' weather. We were FREEZING and I was NOT HAPPY! We made it to the cafe and enjoyed our yummy treats and hot chocolate's that we had to share because they were each about 5$ for a small mug. :-(
From there we took the metro to the Tower to take more pictures. We called it an early night around 5:30 and headed back to the condo's. The train ride back is normally 45 minutes but the traffic was high which made the ride home over an hour. We swam for 2 hours and also relaxed in the hot tub and steam room. :-) We had a successful day and a great end to our trip. We didn't lose a child nor did anyone get sick. YAY!

Disney Paris

I found this video on Youtube which shows some of the Christmas parade. We LOVE this song that was played during the parade. It's a catchy tune that just get's you in the holiday spirit.



We arrived back home today and I've had a moment to sort through the pictures to be shared. We took a lot but I'll spotlight the exciting ones. :-)
We had a great time at Disney. We went with 5 families with a combined total of 21 children 14 being the oldest age. We did not lose a single child and had a great time despite the COLD weather. It wasn't very crowded excluding fantasy land which we had about a 15 minute wait for the rides. The other ones were about 5 minutes or less. The lighting of the castle was fun as were the parades. We got there when the gates opened at 9:30 and left when the final parade was over and the park closed around 7pm. We had tired kids and chapped cold faces but it was a blast. We ended the night with it being Thanksgiving with pie around 9pm.