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!

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.

The very bright church in Augustusburg

Outside the castle in Augustusburg

Walking down the hill from the castle to the most excellent bakery we have found yet in Germany. Mmmm...delicious cake!

A Trip To Speyer

It had been a few weeks since we ventured too far from home and I was getting restless. Call me crazy but unless I have a trip planned and something to look forward to I go a little insane, stir crazy, caught up with cabin fever...you get the picture. It is so cool to have my sister Paige just 4 hours away so we decided to head over to her part of Germany for a few days. Just an hour outside of her little town of Kaiserslautern is a town called Speyer. The main attraction is the huge Romanesque Cathedral that is on the Unesco World Heritage Sites list. This church was enormous (and I've been to quite a few churches here in Europe!) The interior is very solid and boxy, very Romanesque. Of course the boys favorite part was the crypt in the basement that holds the remains of 14 kings.

Also in Speyer is a "technical" museum. The boys loved going inside all the airplanes and boats and space ships they had on display. The favorite part of this outing was the huge slide you could go down from the top of one of the airplanes on stilts all the way to the ground.

We always have fun visiting Paige. Just to be in a new part of the country and have new playgrounds to visit and things to eat and see is so much fun. Thanks Paige for a fabulous weekend!

The Cathedral in Speyer

Julian and I in front of the Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall) in Speyer

The boys down in the CRYPT...spooky!

All Catholic Cathedrals have one of these where you can pay money to light a candle. Usually they are just little shelves with rows of candles on them so I thought this one was really cool with all the neat metal work surrounding it.

Hyrum and the boys slipped inside this Cathedral for a free organ concert. This isn't the famous Cathedral but one of the smaller ones in the town.

Two monkeys in a tree. The weather was just perfect to relax in the park for a bit of lunch and let the boys run around and get some wiggles out.

Paige found a nice place to relax and read her book.

The boys sitting in the lap of one of the kings statues outside of the Cathedral.

This is the slide at the technical museum that the boys rode down about 5 times each!

Townsend in front of a real Nazi U boat submarine at the technical museum.

Julian having fun at the park with Auntie Paige.

Medieval Festivals

Germany really knows how to put on a good festival. At Christmas you can't drive through even the smallest of towns without reading an advertisement for their Christmas market. Summer is no different. Each city has either a medieval festival, a town festival, a kinder festival or some sort of market each weekend. We headed up to Nabburg for their medieval festival and had lots of fun. The festival included jugglers, musicians, knights in shining armor, washer maids that flung water at you as you passed by their booth and of course lots of yummy food. The boys loved playing all the medieval games but I think their favorite part was when they were allowed to run and knock down a row of knights (along with about 30 other kids!)

It's really great to attend one of these festivals and think about all the history that is all around you as you walk on cobblestone streets and look up at the old buildings.

We also went to the medieval festival in Weiden which wasn't nearly as good but still lots of fun. We head over to Weiden every Sunday to listen to a free concert in the park. We usually bring a picnic and spend some time at the playground or take a walk along the river. I'm so glad that we live in a place that offers so much culture and fun activities so close to home.