Durtschis in Deutschland: Camping in Saxony

Townsend and Emerson had been working all summer long to fill up a jar with m&m's so they could earn a camping trip. They each started the day with 10 m&m's and then if they did something naughty we took an m&m. It was a pretty good plan and helped improve their behavior...sometimes:) After looking at weather forecasts we decided to head up to Saxony for our campout on Friday August 20th. Hyrum was able to leave work about 2:00 PM so we got a nice early start for our 3 hour drive. Why Saxony? Well, we had read about a cool castle in Augustusburg that we wanted to visit, they had a rodelbahn close to the campground and we could also hit the big city of Dresden all in one weekend.

Julian did great for his first camping trip. He slept like a champ in his little portable crib in the tent. All 5 of us barely fit in our old tent but it still works for now. Hyrum was our campfire starter extraordinaire and Townsend and Emerson enjoyed s'mores and playing with sticks in the fire.

Dresden was HOT. We have had a pretty cool summer, temperature wise, so I think the high 80's we experienced in Dresden was sort of a shock. I don't do well when I'm hot and the boys are definitely more cranky and apt to complain when they are hot. Also it was the Stadtfest (city festival) that weekend in Dresden so not only was it hot but it was also crowded. Oh well, we still had fun and got to see some neat things.

The castle at Augustusburg is lots of fun. For one price you get to see 5 mini museums. There is an old motorcycle museum, a hunting museum, a natural wildlife museum, a carriage museum and a torture museum. Guess which one the boys liked the best? The torture museum. They had the display set up in the dungeon of the castle so it was super creepy and had a haunted feeling.

All in all it was a great weekend. The campground was fabulous and the weather was perfect for camping. We'll have to do that again next summer:)

Julian enjoying the fresh air at the campground

Our tent. Yeah it was a tight squeeze to fit us all in there but at least we slept nice and cozy warm at night:)

Julian always woke up first and Hyrum would take him for a walk around the forest in his pj's and jacket. Pretty cute.

This is a photo of the boys near a fountain outside the Zwinger museum complex in Dresden. We drug all three children through an art gallery a precious stones exhibit and an Arabian historical artifacts museum. The precious stones museum had a peach pit with 185 faces carved on it, that was the highlight for the boys. The art gallery had quite a few pictures depicting the death of St. Stephen (tied to a tree and shot with arrows) which the boys also found fascinating. They are just too young to appreciate the fact that they saw Raphael's Sistine Madonna.

Townsend in front of the Frauenkirche in Dresden. Dresden was fire bombed right at the end of WWII and this church was completely destroyed. It lay in a big pile of rubble until 2005 when it was finally rebuilt. The dark stones are original to the church and put back in their original places as well as could be determined. The light stone is all new.

We stopped at this really bizarre playground in Dresden. There were donkeys to ride, a big fort to climb on and rabbits to pet. Julian found this old wagon and liked being pulled around in the sand.