The Germany excursion!

The last four days of my family's visit, we piled everyone in the car to go to Germany and Luxembourg. Of course these are in reverse order (as usual!) but this is the inside of the cathedral in Trier Germany. It was very beautiful and the kids and I played our usual game of ghost hunting in all the the nooks and crannies. At least it keeps them from disturbing too much of the peace!
Grammy braves the cold!
One of the buildings in the town center. My camera died at this point... so I didn't get pictures of Kelly and her family (my friends from DC that are stationed in Germany now)... but they were here and we had a great time with them! Ava bonded with their daughter over pink highlights they had put in their hair. Yes my daughter is a little punk rock chick!
The outside of the cathedral in Trier.
Trier is one of the oldest cities in Germany and one of the few that was taken over by the Romans... who left this lovely ruin for us to ohh and ahh over!
We visited the American cemetery in Luxembourg... which believe it or not is not so easy to find! Luxembourg is probably the only place in Europe that I have been to that speaks pretty much zero English. And my French is sketchy at best. (Eric says it sounds like I have made up a new language when ever I try to speak it. And wild gestures, foot stomping and speaking English with a bad French accident does not help the bridge the language barrier... just for the record.)
Behaving ourselves at the cemetery.
It was pretty awe inspiring...
So, one of the themes of our trip was me parking, putting us on a bus to the town center, we miss the stop, and wind up in the middle of nowhere, where we are kicked off the bus (in french) and left to hope that a new bus would come for us. This happened twice. My family were very good sports about it... bless em! Luxembourg was one of the most clean and beautiful cities I have seen. If only I could have figured out the transportation system..
Here we are stuck in the middle of a pretty little town hoping a bus will come back for us! It did...eventually!
Me and my boy!
Pictures of lovely Luxembourg!
The boat ride across the channel has a great play area for kids... it offered Eli endless opportunities to creatively torture his sister. She is pretty far south of pleased in this picture!
And oh yeah, i turned 29 in Germany... at least that's what I have the kids trained to say!

The Grammys come to visit!!

For the last couple weeks, my mom and Grammy have been here (and we've been busy traveling thus the lack of blog entries!) I think we ran them nearly half to death but they were good sports about it! I have about 5 million pictures... but here's a few to get started! This one is the kids taking the Grammys to visit Bury St Edmonds. They are climbing on the Abbey ruins...and we are letting them...
Grammy Marilyn Rose, Grammy Rose, and Ava Rose!
Here we are celebrating Christmas in January with the Grammys. They went way overboard... of course! The kiddos are now thinking it is Christmas anytime anyone comes to visit!
Poor Grammy! In my mind, she is perpetually about 55 years old, so I forget that walking about 10 miles in the cold while a bouncy child hangs on you, might be less than her idea of fun! She was very patient with us though and we had a great time showing her around "our" England.
We went to the British museum and saw the Rosetta stone! Forgive me, but you know, I'm just a nurse. So I thought that the Rosetta stone was a computer program to help you learn foreign languages. You'll never believe it, but that was actually named after a REAL stone that helped people decipher hyrogliphics or latin or something. AND THIS IS IT! Pretty cool huh?
And here we are back to opening Christmas gifts. Eli was actually a heck of a lot more excited to get this than you would think by the look on his face. It just takes a LOT of photographic genius to capture it...
Opening gifts... my kids are maniacs with the wrapping paper... it's awesome!
And we are now back to London in the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese having dinner. I so love this place and very few people seem to grasp how cool it is. This is the oldest pub in London and the fish and chips are amazing... well, at least above average! Anyway, the Grammys seemed to have fun!
Back in the British Museum... I really should have photo shopped myself out of this picture...yikes!
In front of the British museum. We had a great time in the Cotswalds and more than one adventure in Europe... I will try to have that up in the next few days! For now, I have a paper to write, a floor to mop, and an hour or two of sleep to grab!