Christmas jailbirds

Here are a few pictures we took on "Christmas Eve." (It was really Sunday night.) Because Santa has to go all the way back to the US, he really needed to come on Christmas Eve to have time to travel. This happened to be also convenient because we're leaving for Prague on December 26, so now the kids could have one more day to play with toys before we leave. Here are a few pictures from Sunday night when they got to open their books and Christmas Pj's.

We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!!

Cute boy with a multi-colored forehead

Look at this trick, mom!

Here's your lens cap, mom. Quit taking pictures!

Kevin in all his gloriness :)

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

We took my mom to Rothenburg on Saturday. It's a little medeival town a little over an hour away. The city has an intact city wall all around it which was cool to see. You can't drive within the city walls unless you have a hotel reservation, so everyone parks outside the walls and then walks in.

It was such a charming and quaint city. They have the most amazing Christmas store there. Its a huge store that's open all year-round with nothing but Christmas things in it. It's so cool just to walk around and look at everything! You could definately go broke in that store! There was also a small Christmas market with the best kinderpunch (like hot apple cider) that we've had. We also got waffles, of course, but they weren't as good as Ulm's market. :) We saw St. Jakob's church, which is really old (not sure of the exact date), and cool to see. We all went to an organ concert there, which was good (although I had to take Ethan out after 10 minutes).

After shopping, we found a cute small German restaurant to go to. It was really good and everyone was nice.

It was so freezing, but we all had fun. We already made hotel reservations to go back in March when both of my parent's come back! They have a night watchman's tour that's supposed to be really good, but we were all too cold to go. Hopefully in March!

Kevin & Dallin enjoying the signature carvnival rides

The most amazing Christmas store!

This was just one room in the store. There's tables and tables of ornaments around the tree. So pretty!

The family in St. Jakob's church

Ethan lounging on the stairs in front of the restaurant

I just pulverized a chocolate cookie and I couldn't be happier!

The Long Search for a Christmas Tree

We decided to get our first real Christmas tree here for a couple reasons. First, it's cheaper here than in Arizona because Christmas trees actually grow within a 500 mile radius of here, and because we didn't bring our fake tree with us. Devin absolutely loves the smell of Christmas trees, which was a general smell, I thought. Well, I've soon discovered that it is a very specific tree smell that he's wanting and remembering. We decided to buy our tree from the family at Farmer's market that sells us potatoes & apples.

We drove out to a city about 20 minutes away and began our search for "the tree." We went around smelling them all, but Devin couldn't find the smell he remembered from his childhood (the tree his family buys, which we don't know the name of). We had bought some branches to decorate our house with a month ago from this family, and that was the exact smell Devin wanted, so after a small confusion, the family told us the tree we are wanting is called "blautonnen" (I'm probably not spelling that right). They have blautonnen in a forest nearby that we could go chop one down (very fun in my opinion), but it was only open last Sunday and this Sunday, and we wanted it earlier. So, the family offered to go and chop one down for us and bring it to market on Friday. Yeah! We told them how big and tall, and we picked it up on Friday.

Devin carried it home from the market which he liked better than worrying about trying to tie it to the car and not killing someone on the road. We got a tree stand at the grocery store along with some ornaments, lights, and candles. I know this sounds a little suicidal to put candles on our Christmas tree, but that's actually what they do here, and after putting them on (but not lighting them.... yet) I think it looks really pretty with the candles. My mom and I bought 3 small packs of lights, but when we opened them, they were in a circle, which was a little confusing. We think it might have been for wreaths, but we're not sure. Anyway, it wasn't going to work for the tree, so at 9:30pm, we ran to the only open grocery store in town to get more lights. They only had one box, so our tree is a little sparsely decorated, but it's a tree anyway. :) We got a few ornaments at the different Christmas markets we went to, and my friend brought me some, so we have a few ornaments that Ethan loves to pull off. (The reason you'll notice in the pictures that the candles are not put below 2 ft.)

Ethan wanted to help decorate, so he went and got some house shoes and put them on the tree

Kevin has been really obsessed with Nutcrackers lately, so for his ornament this year, we got him a Nutcracker, which he loves. :)

Yeah! We got our tree!

They brought only our tree, but they didn't know our name, so they just wrote "Amerikaner" on it. We thought it was funny.

They gave the boys free apples because we brought them a plate of toffee that my mom & I had made. :)

Our finished tree, even though it doesn't look really finished. :)

Munich & Meersburg

My mom and I took the kids on a few adventures today and yesterday. Yesterday we went to Munich. I absolutely love that city! We went to the Christmas market, which is in the center of town and it's just a big huge pedestrian walkway. It's so relaxing (well, except when you have crazy Greeks screaming for their soccer team, who happened to be playing against Munich...) and pretty. Munich is such a big city that there was like 5 different Christmas markets around. We just went to the main one and a nearby one that had only nativity things. It was SO cold outside, and somehow Ethan learned how to take off his gloves, even with the string through his jacket. It was a bit tricky trying to keep his gloves on, but once we did that, we were ok. We walked around and looked at the shops for a little while until Dallin had to use the bathroom. We found a department store that had a restroom, and we also saw that they had a little kid's play area. There was a slide that went up to the second level and a ball pit area. The kids had a great time playing and thawing out. My mom stayed in there while I went around the nativity area.

When we were all warmed up, we went outside again and got hot chocolate and shopped some more. While we were looking at some ornaments, the lady started putting things away. We were a little confused until she said, "well, we close at half past eight." What?? We thought it was like 6:00! So we ran over to another store to buy something we forgot before it all closed. We were a little sad that the fun was over so quickly (eventhough we were there for like 5 hours) but we had a great time.

We took the kids to "Old McDonald's" (Dallin calls mcDonald's that) downtown before we left. It was such a great night! Ethan says "Cheese" now anytime he sees the camera (I must be taking a few pictures....).

Today we decided to go to a small town on Lake Bodensee (Lake Constance in English) which is bordered by Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The town we went to is called Meersburg. It was a cute little town right on the lake, about an hour and a half from Ulm. Supposedly in the summer you can look across the lake and see the Alps, but it was too foggy today. We went to Altes Schloss, which is the oldest intact castle in Germany. Supposedly it was built in like 700 something. It was really cool because this is apparently the off-season because we were the only people in the castle. You could also just walk around by yourself and go in most of the rooms, which I think is fun. Some of the castles we've been to are more strict and don't let you just explore like that, so it was fun. It's really amazing that there's things that old still around! They had some axes, swords, shields, and cannons at the end that were fun to see. We wanted to take the ferry across the lake to Switzerland, but we ran out of time. It was a fun day- we decided we'll definitely have to come back in the spring!

Kronen Brauerei

We took my mom to our favorite restaurant here called Kronen Brauerei. It's really close to our house, so we always just walk there. The food is always wonderful. Devin just loves that place - I'm pretty sure he's going to cry when we leave because of that restaurant. :)

These are called kartoffelkroketten. They're really good- they're sort of like a potato version of mozzarella sticks, or similar to tater tots, but the inside is smooth. Anyway, come try them... they're really good. :)

This is what Devin & my mom got to share. It's a platter for two people that has a little of everything on it - spaetzle, sauerkraut, frankfurters, maltashen (big ravioli things), roast steak, and kartoffelkroketten. It was fun for my mom to try all those things. She liked it all, even the sauerkraut! (which I think is disgusting)

Kevin and Dallin enjoying their food (or Legos). They got a form of hot dogs and putenschnitzel (turkey schnitzel -- ya, don't really know how to spell that one) and shared them.

Ethan loves the noodles!

This is what I ordered tonight off the daily menu (which always changes). I usually would classify myself as a picky eater, so I usually would run away from a dish looking like this, but it was really good. It was in a mild cherry sauce (those red balls are cherries) with a roast-like meat, turkey breast piece, and winter veggies. Yum!

Holiday Baking

My friend in Tucson used to have a cookie exchange party, which I thought was really fun, so I wanted to do one here. The only problem is that I know like 4 people here, so it was a very small cookie exchange party. :) My mom and I made Toffee, snickerdoodles, and peanut butter kiss cookies. We also made a lime fizz drink (all made in less than an hour and a half!) that was good, but Germans aren't so used to sugar so we had to add a lot of water. :) It was fun to see the cookies that the other ladies brought. We ate cookies, drank fizz and berry herbal tea (very common in Germany), and talked for a few hours. It was good to have my mom meet some friends here.
Here's a picture of the nativity that we bought. I wanted my dad to see the olive wood. When we were looking at it at the market, Dallin dropped baby Jesus on the concrete and I almost had a stroke. The guy selling it didn't even blink and was just like, "It's really hard wood." That was the clincher for us, so we bought it. Hopefully it will last a long time!

Tons of pictures

Yeah! Nana got here! We were all so excited to see her (although we wish my Dad could have come, too)! She also brought my Christmas present, a new camera, which I am extremely happy about. So, here are some pictures that we've taken the last two days. Kevin & Nana at a restaurant we found in "Fisherman's Quarter" in Ulm. It was a very cute, quaint restaurant and the food was good.

Sweet brothers!

Nana, Ethan, & Kevie

We went to Ulm's Christmas Market today. It was fun but SO freezing. We were all frozen solid. Just another reminder for us that we were definitely meant to be an Arizona family. :) Here's a picture of Nana with Ethan and her waffles that we just bought. Yum! Ethan did have gloves on but he kept taking them off. It was so cold outside, so I ended up just buying gloves from a vendor that had a string attached that you string through the jacket so he couldn't take them off. He was quite a bit ticked off about that, but at least he didn't loose his fingers to frostbite.

A really cold mama with two sweet boys

Dallin has been saving his allowance for the past 2 1/2 months. He wanted to buy a new toy today with it, so we went to Toys R Us and he picked out this transformer's helmet that changes your voice into Optimus Prime. We all had fun with it. :)

The first night here, the boys laid down with Nana and she told them stories. It was so cute. I went in a little while later and she and Kevin were passed out.

The boys got a huge cotton candy. It was practically as big as them!