STAY-CATION

Last month the children had a week off school for "Fasching", a holiday that I never have quite understood. It's a lot like carnival, where everyone gets dressed up and gets a little crazy before Lent begins. It seems pretty funny, to sin all you can for one week and then give it all up and repent the next week. Anyway, we wanted to take advantage of the week and I started looking at vacation homes and destinations. As I was looking, the city of Starnberg, where we live, kept coming up. It made me realize, we don't need to go anywhere to have a great time--people come HERE to vacation. So we had a great week of stay-cationing. We went to museums:

Coolest museum--ever! Huge too, we saw about a tenth of it in half a day.

We enjoyed a little skiing in Ehrwarld, AUSTRIA. I went with the three oldest and Bruce had fun at home with the little ones.

Max in front of the Zugspitze--tallest mountain in Germany.
(We were right on the border between Germnany and Austria--
we were skiing in Austria but the mountain is Germany's)

Lifts were sweet with heated seats, and a dome you could pull over you when cold or stormy.

Then we went to Galaxy--Europe's biggest water park. It was different in that it was all indoor, and had tons of thermal pools with different types of water for different healing affects. It also had tons of saunas, beach simulated rooms and mood rooms. This is a crazy ride that Bruce, Tal AND I went on! It dropped straight down and then shot you out about ten feet onto he landing strip. Crazy!

OK this isn't Bruce or Tal because I never got the timing right on them.
But when I practiced on this stranger--it turned out great.
Notice how he is airborne...yes, painful landing.

Skiing was so much fun, that Bruce took a half-day off and we went up again, just the two of us. Needless to say, it was a memorable date, skiing in Austria with my man! This was just a few weeks later and the snow had melted considerably. It was 60 degrees and beautiful! 

Road Trips

We recently decided that we need to take a little more advantage of our stay here in Europe. So Bruce has been taking turns bringing someone from the family along with him on his business trips. It is against the law to take your own children out of school for anything other than sickness, so if we end up missing over here, just check the local jailhouse and you will probably find us! It's been so fun for the kids to have some alone time with dad, and hours on the Autobahn equals lots of time to chat and catch up. (Averaging 200 km/hour isn't too bad either!)  Bruce is such a great dad and husband--I'm one lucky lady! 

Here are Tal and Max in Berlin, one of the places they requested to see.

Checkpoint Charlie

The Iron Curtain, or rather, what's left of it

Tal and Max have adjusted really well to Germany and the language is coming along quickly. They are not afraid to speak and can already understand quite a bit. We tell them to try to "sound" like Boston or Ashton when they speak because they have awesome pronunciation!

c-c-c-old

Brandenburg Tor

Olivia wanted to go to Zurich, Switzerland with Dad. We have some good friends there who work with Bruce, and who have three little girls. They arranged for Olivia to go to school with their oldest girl for a day. Olivia had the time of her life, and the Schluchter's were so kind to her while Bruce was in meetings. She loved watching movies and playing her favorite music for her dad in the car. She's a very good co-pilot, manning the laptop and keeping dad alert at all times. (She and Ashton recently received their mid-year grades and they both did amazingly well. We are so thankful for their hard work and great attitudes!!)

Future trips in the works: Venice, Italy and London, England...and I better be able to tag along!