A Little Squishy

Well, all our furniture arrived today and I'm wondering why I feel so squished. It could be because I had the perfect house in DuPont or it could be because I've gained a few pounds since the 1/2 marathon and my pants are a little tighter. Hmmm, it is probably a little bit of both! :) You laughed didn't you? Because honestly...that was pretty funny. Anyways, I am going to try to download a few pics of the place before the boxes and chaos. The internet is a bit slower over here and it is hard to download big files so hopefully it works!!

THE BATHROOM
The bathrooms here are tiled from top to bottom. It is actually pretty nice!
This bathroom here is actually bigger than our kitchen. Crazy!

Our pretty backyard. We live in the country where there isn't alot of traffic so there are lots of places to roam which is one thing I loved to do as a kid. Roam and explore! I think I'm going to explore Rome in December if you were wondering :)


The girl's bedroom! Originally, Jenny was going to get a Queen bed all to herself but the boxspring wouldn't make it up the stairs and thru the little door (this room is on the 3rd floor). So, Brett gets it! And he is estatic! Loving every minute of it! Asking Jenny if she is upset, while she is yelling at him to not talk to her!! Yeah, I think she's upset!!


The View!

The Burgs

This past weekend we took off to see one of many many castles in Germany! One of Dave's friends told us about Burg Eltz and said it was his all time favorite! So, we said, "Hey, let's go then" It was only about a 2 hour drive. The drive was nice and quiet. I remember this because lately it has not been all that quiet! The kids have been pestering each other lately...it must be part of the "adjustment period" that everyone goes thru! :) Although, I haven't been pestering anyone. Anyways, the drive was nice and beautiful. We drove along the Rhine for awhile. Luke really liked that river. "It's so big! I thought it was a lake," he said. There were speed boats and sailboats on it which I thought was really cool! Well, we went to the castle without Euros! Oops. We had to spend 50 Euros in order for them to take a credit card. Bad for Dave, nice for me! :) I purchased a really cool plate with the castle etched into it! I don't know if I should keep it or give it to a family member for Christmas! Hmmm, we'll see! Dave just realized that he is actually interested in history! Who knew? He loved listening to our guide tell us about all the interesting little facts about this castle. It was hard for me to listen because Luke had to go to the bathroom so bad he truly thought he might have an accident. I told him he absolutely could not have an accident in the castle!! He managed to make through just in time to run to the bathroom! Thank goodness! Well, two of my favorite facts from the tour are: 1) This castle was one of the very very few that has never been destoyed. Not even Louis IVX touched it. That is because the Eltz family is very political...and knew all the right people. (But, the tour guide assured us that they were always on the "right" side of the battles/wars.) and 2) The Eltz family still lives in the castle after all these years...it was built in the 12th century! Cool huh?

Burg Eltz on a foggy day!

Cool view from an old look out post! The coast is clear!

On our way back, we saw this other castle up on the hill. I believe it was called Burg Thalias. It was a very foggy day so my photos didn't turn out great but oh well, it was still super fun and beautiful!

The castle looks over the Rhine River

Looks like we made it!

Hi to all my blogging friends! I know, it's been awhile! But, since I'm here in Germany, I thought I'd better try to keep track of some of my memories cuz if I don't, they will fizzle out and won't be memories at all anymore because I won't remember them!

We had a great flight over...quite uneventful which is SO nice. Flying with 4 kids is a piece of cake. I may feel this way because they are older or it may be because Lufthansia has TVs for every seat and they had 3 or so movies (good movies) that the kids could watch. I think even I watched 3 movies! And they were ones that I actually wanted to see in the theater but never got around to watching and they were all edited for kid eyes! Very Nice!! And to top it all off, we didn't die! And we didn't hit any turbulence! Well, a tiny bit but it was nothin'! And our plane didn't fall apart like the one that recently broke apart over the Atlantic coming from Rio. I bet you didn't know that flying terrifies me. Hate it! But it must be done or else I wouldn't be able to have these fun adventures!Now, traveling with 11 carry-ons and 12 check-ons wasn't all that fun but we managed!! We had three trollies piled high and enough big people to cart them around the airport. The elevators are really small at the Frankfurt Airport so we had to take the carts down one at a time. Dave had what's called a sponsor who picked us up in a big van that fit all of our stuff and he dropped us off at out temporary lodging which is where we will be til Aug. 11th.

Here we are with all our bags and we are super tired. This is where the jet lag started. And I'd say it lasted about 4 day. It is hard to adjust to a nine hour time difference!

We also went to the largest pool in Europe and I'm guessing there isn't one this size in the U.S. either. It was huge. It was built in 1908 and a natural spring supplies its water. It was cold but not that cold. We had German sandwiches, Schnitzen or something like that which is pork and they were really good. Dave had a bratworst hot dog which wasn't bad either. And the chocolate over here is GOOOOD. German chocolate is yummy!

On Sunday, after church we went on a walk up to Nanstein Castle which is right here in Landstuhl. Driving on these little roads is a little nerve racking (and we had to take a little road up to the castle) but I'm hoping to feel more comfortable over time! Anyways, it was a short 5 minute walk up to the castle from the parking lot. This castle is where the last known Knight fell in battle. Yeah, I didn't know that Germany had knights to be honest but hey, they were the last country to have them! The castle was built around 1162 and was damaged or destroyed and rebuilt twice. There are walking paths around the castle and down the hill that it is on so we decided to go for a walk on one of them...have you heard about the rain here? Well, it sneaks up on you and then it falls like there's no tomorrow!! That's what it did to us! We got drenched and it was so much fun! We are looking forward to so many more fun adventures!!!

Before the rain!

During the rain!

We ran back up the trail to find shelter somewhere and this is what we came up with. There was a little cafe type place not too far away and I think the owner was looking at us and I'm sure she was happy that we didn't slop into her business!