We're In The Army Now...

Hyrum is in Utah for a week and a half and so the boys and I had nothing better to do with our Friday night then head over to Netzaberg to enjoy their "community fest." This was an Army sponsored event but it's purpose was to allow Germans from neighboring communities to come and experience what the US Army is all about.

The boys had a lot of fun (see pictures below)! HOOAH (Hooah (pronounced /ˈhuːɑː/) is a U.S. Army battle cry used^[1] by soldiers)

The boys exploring one of the tanks they had on display

They had 45 seconds to apply their camouflage

Townsend's end result

Emerson's end result

Townsend learning how to fire a gun. They actually got to fire some sort of bullet but I'm hoping it wasn't a lethal type bullet...who knows?

Emerson takes a "shot" at using the rifle

The boys doing push ups for their PT test

They had 30 seconds to do as many sit ups as they could. I was pretty impressed. They just pounded out the sit ups like they were professionals. There was one kid who was crying and he looked like he was older than the boys

This is a video of the boys doing the obstacle course run. I'm glad they got to have a little taste of what soldiers experience when they go to work.

Labor Day Weekend

Hyrum was on call for Labor Day weekend so we couldn't travel very far from home. Lucky for us there are lots of fun things to do just minutes from our house. Here are the highlights from our four day weekend.

Friday: Hyrum had the day off of work but the boys still had school so we got the rare opportunity of hanging out together with just baby Julian. We headed down to Regensburg (about an hour away) to walk around the old town, enjoy some sushi at our favorite sushi bar and watch Julian enjoy gelato on a warm day.

After we picked the boys up from school we went for a family bike ride to the Grafenwoehr duck pond. It's a pretty easy bike ride on the way to the park because it is mostly down hill but the way back is slow going with two 6 year olds. It was beautiful weather and we just enjoyed being together as a family and took our time on the bikes. What a great way to start a long weekend.

Julian and mommy by a fountain in Regensburg

Mmmm...gelato

Little man Jules was worn out by the end of our busy day

Julian and Daddy by the duck pond

Saturday: We headed out to Nabburg (about 45 minutes away) for a hike and a trip to an open air museum. The museum had about 12 houses they had restored and brought from all different parts of Bavaria. There were little houses with small gardens and chickens and big houses with flour mills and water wheels. It was a great place to walk around and enjoy the beautiful day as well as some interesting history.

On our hike we found some donkeys that loved the attention (and fresh green grass) the boys gave them.

My four boys hiking

It was a great day for a walk through the woods.

At the top. There was also a lookout tower at the top which is always fun for the boys even if it makes my heart race when I see them peering over the edge for a look down...200 feet down!

Lunch at a park near Nabburg. Hyrum and I have decided this is the only way to eat out with kids...bring a picnic and let them run around!

Daddy and Julian on the slide

The boys playing in the goat house at the open air museum

Daddy and Emerson in the kitchen of one of the museum houses

Oh the fun of chasing chickens!

Sunday: After church and Julian's nap on Sunday we headed out towards Kemnath (about 25 minutes away) for a hike. Once again we were blessed with great weather. Some of the hikes that Hyrum finds are very hard to locate just exactly where they begin. The instructions were to head to this small town, find a small Catholic shrine chapel and head up the hill. Needless to say we had to ask a few people for some directions and even then we got lost on our way up to the top. It was worth all the hassle though because the view from the top was amazing!

Emerson and Townsend at the top of the hill

Family photo

Monday: Our four day weekend ended with a trip to Bayreuth (about 40 minutes away). We headed to the beautiful Ermitage garden. I had been there twice before but Hyrum had never gone so we decided to make a family trip of it. The garden is so well taken care of and the fountains are neat to see, it was a fun afternoon.

The boys in front of one of the many fountains.

They loved floating leaves down this stream and running along watching where they would go

Posing for a photo

Julian loved getting wet under the spraying fountains (daddy wasn't such a big fan of getting wet!)

Once again we had great weather. Overall it was a great four day weekend and it turns out we don't have to travel far from home to have a wonderful time.

First Day of School 2010

OK, so I am a week late with this post but here goes. The first day of school was Monday August 30th. I was really looking forward to this day for weeks because the boys were starting to drive me crazy at home. They really needed more structure in their day and they needed new toys and friends to play with. They are the best of friends and play so well together most of the time but when they decide to be rotten to their brother it turns bad pretty quick.

Townsend's teacher, Mrs. Martin, was the only first grade teacher this year that had taught first grade last year. All the other teachers were new to first grade so I am pretty confident that he will have a good year. She is really into science experiments and hands on learning and I know he will love that.

Emerson was not so lucky in the teacher department. Two days before school started his teacher (a 70 year old man) decided it was time to retire. So Emerson had a substitute teacher all last week and talking with that teacher there is no telling when a new teacher will be hired. Oh well, at least the substitute teacher is our Bishop's wife and she is really great. It's not the best way to start off the new year but I know he is in good hands.

I continued the tradition of bringing them a schultute for their first day of school. This year they were filled with toy cars, candy and a ball with a basket game inside it. I think it helps get the school year off to a fun start.

Townsend with Mrs. Martin

Emerson with Mrs. Andrus

Berlin Trip Day 3 and 4

Saturday morning we headed over to the Berlin Zoo. It was really fun to take Julian to the zoo and have him recognize animals that we have read about in books. He still isn't talking at all but I could tell that he really liked seeing the animals up close and in person. In the zoo is an aquarium with a great fish, reptile and amphibian exhibits. I think the boys really liked the snakes and the jelly fish the most. Another highlight was when we went to visit the polar bears and it just happened to be feeding time. The zoo keepers threw the meat into the water so the bears had to dive in and get it. That was really cool because the boys were standing right up near the glass where the bears were eating the food.

We got to the zoo just as it was opening and it was pretty deserted. Julian really liked the elephants and giraffes.

Four crazy monkeys posing for a photo (well, I guess one of them is a crazy gorilla).

The Berlin Zoo playground was fabulous. If I lived closer I might buy a season pass just for the playground! We spent about an hour eating our lunch and letting the boys run and climb and swing and jump.

This is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Allied bombs left only the shell of the west tower intact during WWII. After the war the Germans decided to leave the church as it stood instead of restoring it. This church really is amazing when you stand in front of it and imagine what Berlin must have looked like after months of bombing.

Our next stop was the Natural History Museum. The main attraction here was the enormous brachiosaurus skeleton, the tallest dinosaur specimen in any museum in the world. The boys also enjoyed the displays on human evolution and a movie about the big bang. We could have easily spent hours and hours in this museum but after a busy morning at the zoo we were all tuckered out.

Emerson studying a display of animals in the Natural History Museum. We will have to come back and spend more time at this museum, there was so much more to see.

Hey look, the sun came out! It was cold and rainy the whole time we were there except for a few precious minutes on Saturday evening...what a difference the sun makes!

Our plan for Sunday morning was to check out of the hotel and then head back into Berlin and walk around a bit more. However,as we pulled out of our parking space at the hotel it started to pour down rain; so we just put a movie on for the boys and headed home. After we drove for a few hours the storm let up a bit so we decided to hit the historic city of Leipzig. This picture was taken in the town square in Leipzig.

Goethe, the famous author of Faust, studied at the University of Leipzig. This is a sculpture of Faust being directed by the Devil. Legend has it that you can rub the foot of Faust for some good luck...hey it doesn't hurt to try:)

This photo was taken in front of the Town Hall. It is one of the largest in Germany with over 600 rooms! Even after living here for 2 years the old architecture of Europe still amazes me.

Townsend posing at the base of the Bach statue. Johann Sebastian Bach worked at St. Thomas Church from 1723 until his death in 1750. His remains lie beneath a bronze epitaph near the alter of the church.

This is the organ in St. Thomas Church. It's neat to imagine hearing Bach's original music coming from this organ each Sunday.

We spent about 4 hours in Leipzig. We did a walking tour (thanks Lonely Planet guidebook), we ate some extremely yummy pastries and we walked the streets that Goethe, Bach, Schumann, Wagner and Mendelssohn walked. All in all a pretty interesting side trip and a bonus to our Berlin vacation.

Berlin Trip Day 1 and 2

A few months ago Hyrum scheduled to take leave the Thursday and Friday right before school started. The idea was to have one last vacation as a family before our lives got too crazy with school and the routine that sets in after school starts. Our initial idea was to head to the North Sea where we could relax on the beach for a few days but after looking at the very cool and rainy weather forecast we switched our plans and headed to Berlin for the four days. In big cities it doesn't matter if it's cold and rainy because there are so many neat museums to explore.

Before we went on our trip we decided to try something new to get the boys more involved and hopefully more excited about the things to do in Berlin. Hyrum printed off about 20 photos of sites to see in Berlin and then we each chose the 3 that looked most interesting to us and we did just those things. The boys thought it was cool that they got to choose some of our activities and I think it helped in the overall enjoyment of the trip.

I'm so happy that we chose Berlin. We had such a great time exploring that city. We took the metro everywhere, we ate some yummy Berlin curry sausage, we found about 20 "Berlin Bears" (see photo below) and we had fun at a bunch of playgrounds.

We left early Thursday morning and reached Berlin (after stopping at McDonalds for lunch) around 1:00. We decided to hit a few museums before checking into our apartment. The first stop was the Spectrum Science Center. There were three floors of child friendly hands on science exhibits. The boys loved the exhibits on high voltage (go figure!)

Attached to the Science Center was a Technical Museum. They had exhibits of boats and airplanes and a really fun children's area where the boys could build things out of blocks and play with magnets. This photo was taken in front of a WWII German airplane that was shot down. You can't really tell from the photo but the wings on this plane were full of holes and the fuselage was just torn to bits.

After the Technical Museum we headed to our apartment and got settled in for the night. We were glad to be in such a cozy comfortable apartment with the rain and wind blowing outside.

Our first stop on Friday was the Reichstag. The German parliament meets here and there is a really cool dome you can walk around. You can see in this photo how they combined the old stone building with a new modern dome to signify the merging of ancient and present.

This is me and the boys inside the dome. You can walk all the way to the top of the dome on a ramp that circles around the glass wall of the dome. It really gives you a spectacular view of Berlin.

Our next stop was the Pergamon Museum. This museum was great because it has very few exhibits but the ones they have are massive and really interesting for the boys to see. This is the Pergamon alter from Greece built around 165 BC)

Also in the Pergamon is the Ishtar Gate. Built around 600 BC it was one of the gates you would go through to enter Babylon during the reign of King Nebuchanezzar. The colors on this thing were simply amazing.

It is sort of hard to see what we are all doing standing around the center of a plaza looking at the ground. This was actually the famous Bebelplatz where Hitler had 20,000 books burned in 1933. Under a piece of glass in the center of this square is a sort of memorial. You can see a room with bookshelves lining the walls but there are no books on any of the shelves. It is a kind of foretelling of what the future would hold if we were not allowed to explore and gain knowledge on our own through reading.

Emerson standing in Gendarmenmarkt. Yet another beautiful and stunning piece of architecture.

Now, this is MY kind of shopping!

Here are the boys in front of one of the many "Berlin Bears" we spotted. These bears are placed randomly throughout the city and they are all uniquely decorated. It was actually kind of fun on long bus trips to keep the boys entertained by having them try and spot Berlin Bears.

Checkpoint Charlie was the crossing point between East and West Berlin. Here Hyrum and the boys are standing in front of the Checkpoint Charlie museum (which we didn't go into) with a big chunk of the Berlin wall behind them.

The best way to view the Berlin wall is by walking down the Eastside Gallery. 1300 meters of the wall has been preserved as an open air art gallery with artists getting about 10 meter chunks of the wall to decorate. It was really neat just to see the wide variety of artwork along the walk.

My boys in front of a more crazy art piece along the Eastside Gallery.

Hyrum and Townsend posing along Unter den Linden. This street was originally planted with Linden trees about 200 years ago for the prince to have a beautiful drive from his palace to his hunting grounds. Why are the trees so small then? Well when Hitler came to power he decided to cut down all the trees and have Nazi flags line this street. The people were so outraged by this that he decided to replant the trees but they are still sort of puny when you imagine what they could have been.

At the end of Unter den Linden is the Brandenburg Gate. It was really amazing to stand in front of such a historic icon.

Here are my boys being really respectful at the Jewish memorial...ummm oh well, at least all the kids were jumping around on these big stone slabs.

Julian loved jumping, running around and exploring the maze which makes up this memorial.

We headed home ready for a good sleep after a long day. More to come!