It's Holiday time

We're heading off to the Netherlands. We'll be visiting several different sites and camping in a tent at Duinrell .
We're excited but a bit nervous as we haven't camped in like 10 years. We'll be back either Tuesday or Wednesday.
We'll update when we get in!

Crazy Fruit

I needed fruit for dinner Monday night. Well, I only needed the fresh strawberries, but the kids eat grapes like candy so I picked those up as well as some bananas.
I weighed the bananas and saw 2.00 on the label. Since when were bananas 98 cents a pound? The grapes were 5 something for the bundle and so were the strawberries. I couldn't believe I spent 12.50 on 3 fruit items. I mean, we need fresh fruit but I see how people don't buy it.
So, my question is....for those in the states, how much do you pay for a pound of bananas? Strawberries are out of season so those probably are more. What about grapes? I don't usually get them for less than 2.50 a pound. GOOD GRIEF, it's expensive here!

One Year Ago Today

We landed in Germany and began this journey. We have loved almost every minute of it.
The only time I wanted to give up was when we arrived to our hotel and didn't know what the heck to do. We didn't have a car, license, nor did we have a kitchen in the hotel.
We knew a couple people from email, but that was it. We felt helpless but knew everything would work out. The most pitiful part was Sunday (2 days after we arrived) we had gone to church but afterwards, we found ourselves back at the hotel with nothing to eat. Well, we did have cold cereal and a can of refried beans. So, we walked around to find a restaurant to eat at. Who knew Germany closed down on Sundays??? If it couldn't get any worse, it started to rain on us as we were out walking. We found a hotel that had a restaurant attached. We were thankful they were open and ate a wonderful dinner there. We knew we were supposed to be in Germany, we just had our doubts on those few days. We looked up the chaplain in the phone book to find out when church was. The amazing thing was that out of the day, the LDS chaplain had phone duty for 2 hours. And, we happened to call during his duty and directed us to the right people to get us to church. We've heard that the other chaplains have a hard time "locating" the LDS church leaders. They forget that the church is in the community and has been for what...50 years!
From that point on, we haven't looked back. We've fit right into this community. We absolutely love it here and the people. We love our ward and have made many friends. We've traveled a bit and look forward to traveling much more.
We look forward to another 2-3 more eventful years!!!
We miss and love our family and friends back in the states. We are thankful for your thoughts and prayers on our behalf.

Sleepover time!

Last night the girls had a friend sleep over. Lauryn gave her bed up, Maddi slept on the floor and Lauryn slept in a storage container??? What the heck? When asked if it was comfortable, her first thought was yes, but then she said not really. I can already guess who will be Ms. grumps today! Hey, it did make for a cute picture though, she looks like an overstuffed doll in there.

A Camping We will GO!

After church yesterday, we loaded up our camping stuff and headed to the outdoors. The weather was going to be cooler so it seemed like we had the entire supply of blankets and sleeping bags packed up.
We even had my lap top for some evening entertainment. Ok, so from the pictures you can clearly tell that we only camped in the back yard. It was a trial run for our real trips coming up in a few weeks. We'll be heading to Holland to go here. You actually camp at the amusement park. The North Sea is just a short walk from the site. We'll spend a few days at the park then do some of the fun sites in Holland. THEN, we'll head here for another camping trip to Garmisch Germany. It's about 60 miles away from Munich. We'll base out of there to see the beautiful bavarian country side.
The tent we have hasn't been used in probably 7 years. My sister gave it to us years ago, and we haven't taken it out of it's bag. I'm glad we did because it had some seams that were rotten, a disaster when camping in the rainy German mountains. SO, we just HAD to order this beauty, we hope to get many wonderful camping trips out of it.
I say that a bit sarcasticly because after last nights adventure, I'm not sure what we've gotten ourselves into.
Mike didn't join us as he had to get up at 5 to be into work early. He needed sleep for an important day at work.
So, we headed out around 9:30 and turned the movie Spiderwick on. We were all freezing, I was huddled inside the bag with a thick blanket on me with it covering my head. More than 3/4 through the movie, I asked if we could just turn it off and go to sleep. I made sure everyone was bundled up and I put my ear plugs in. (smart mom right?) The garbage trucks start arriving around 6:30, the roosters behind us start crowing much sooner than that, I wanted some sleep!
At 2:55 Dallin woke me up crying at my face. He was stuffed up and the girls said he'd been crying for a bit. (so my ear plugs worked quite well)
He didn't know why he was crying besides that his nose had gotten plugged from the cold. I loaded our pillows and their bed blankets up and we headed back into our warm beds. The girls didn't wake up until 10am!
I'm hoping our adventures in the wild won't be this short lived. We had good intentions though.

A Whole Lotta Silver

Maddi got braces on her bottom teeth this morning. She's quite excited to get her teeth straightened but NOT happy with the restrictions. She's not sure what to eat when we go to the movies since popcorn is on the off limit's list. I told her we'd bring some softened celery and carrot sticks. She didn't think that was too funny. She'll have them on for a year, we won't be doing much with her upper teeth as they (orthodontist's) don't know what to do at this point. Her best friend in the states Maddy just got braces on last week. Now they can sympathize with each other. :-) I'll post the picture later, blogger is on the fritz right now.

Can you spot Dallin?

Mike took these tonight after the 2 had taken showers. We just happen to have 2 pairs of these pajamas. Don't look at the messy room, he loves to play hard, and I just hate to clean it! :-(

Going Barefoot!

Major picture overload but there was just too much to see! The pic's are out of order, "bare" with me! :-)








Saturday we went on a barefoot hike to a place called barfusspfad in Bad Sobernheim. We were a bit worried that the weather wouldn't be nice, but it held off until after we were done for the big rain. It was still a bit cool but once we got going, we warmed up enough. The hike started by crossing a muddy area. Then, you walk in the grass, through fields on different surfaces. Sometimes you were walking on mulch, other times "smooth river rocks" (cold feet on river rocks...you get the idea) We walked on bridges, over smooth logs and crossed a stream. The concept of this hike they say is good for your body. It gives your body a chance to use the muscles the correct way instead of walking in a shoe that doesn't fit right. They also say it's good for your spine..? We found it to be fun, the mud smelled like sewer water though. We had a good laugh while walking through that murky mess. The kids were in heaven being told to stand in the mud. The hike was about 1.5 miles, we took it slow and enjoyed the scenery. We crossed a stream that ended up being deeper than we thought. Dallin and Lauryn ended up with completely soaked shorts. They were good sports about it though. We are glad we ventured off and did this day trip. It's something we'll remember for awhile. Oh, Dallin got a splinter in the bottom of his foot and says "that's why we shouldn't have gone on the hike with bare feet". That was the only casualty though.

The Diva's new Bling Bling

Happy 4th of JULY!

Our 4th was beautiful! The weather all through the day was gorgeous. The base held a party which included the usual stands..hamburgers, hot dogs, brawts, and funnel cakes. We stood in line for an hour for those funnel cakes. They were worth it though! We got there around 6pm because we had things to do during the day. We enjoyed music, friends and a pretty lame firework display but it was still fun. The weather was cool, by the time the fireworks began (10:30pm) I didn't bring jackets so I heard some complaining but all in all, we had a great night. Below are random pictures and silly videos. I mean, do you ever expect something serious from Mike? I really didn't take many photos...oops!

Have you seen Lauryn's sucker???

Why are you looking at me that way??I'm not hiding anything...
What?? You say the sucker is on my neck??
I don't believe you...I smell it over here..
Ok, enough with the pictures, you know and I know where the dumb sucker is, just take it off ok!



The blue dum-dum sucker went missing this morning. We found the wrapper on the floor in the family room but nobody "took" the sucker. Where did it go?? If you find it, please return to Lauryn, she's pretty sad that someone ate it. Signed- Mom