Planes and Trains and Tubes-Oh My!

In order to get to London we had to go by car, bus, plane, train, and tube (in that order) to make it. We were a little apprehensive with all the public transportation we would have to take on this trip considering how our last airplane trip went with Miss Briella, but this time it all went surprisingly well!

                

 We spent a lot of hours on the tube-London had a great underground system...the kids had fun riding it!

The London Tower

The boys taking a break...we spent a LOT of time walking...they loved every.minute.of.it.

Tower Bridge....much more beautiful than the famous London Bridge that sits a little to the right.

The London Eye

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben....unfortunately the person that was nice enough to take our picture, cut off most of the building...but I loved how Briella was poking her head out and it's one of the few pictures we have of all of us...

Buckingham Palace-it was POURING. I LOVE how you can see the guard in the background here. It took the boys a while before they believed the guard was actually alive.

 Trafalgar Square:

We stopped in Trafalgar Square to visit the National Gallery. The square itself was neat to see...it's apparently the site for many political rallies (there was one actually going on there when we visited) as well as the big blue..."bird". I did a little research to find out the reasoning behind this huge blue chicken and it actually is pretty funny. If you're interested, read here: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/25/big-blue-cock-trafalgar-square

We were walking down a random street to head to the tube so we could get to the airport and we came across Benjamin Franklin's House! 

We told the boys that every place we visit, they get one day to do whatever they would like...they chose the London sealife aquarium and the London Eye Merry-go-Round. 

LOVE this picture. Especially love that it wasn't even staged.

We did the Hop on/Hop off bus tour-it worked out great for us with little ones. The boys LOVED riding on the top deck of the double decker bus.

West Minister Abbey 

It's not a trip to London without the obligatory phone booth picture. Couldn't quite fit ALL of us in the booth...

While we were waiting in the airport to head back home... probably my favorite picture of the whole trip! People looked at us like we were crazy traveling all over with 4 little ones, but it was a lot of fun.  Love these little guys!!

Ludwisberg Pumpkin Festival

We've been trying to do a big family activity whenever it is someone's birthday, so for Lolo's birthday we headed to Ludwisberg to check out the pumpkin festival. It was SO fun to see all the things they made only using items from the squash family.

This was Dave's favorite one.

Big Bertha at her finest

They had a lot of displays depicting different events for the winter olympics coming up.

The grounds of Ludwisberg castle were beautiful...I never cared about my lack of photography skills until we moved to Germany...now I wish SO much I knew how to take good pictures. There are SO many beautiful places here!

This was Briella's favorite part of the day.

DON'T DO IT IZAK!!
They had a german "story book" land...it was fun to see some of the German long-standing children's stories  depicted.

And people say they don't play basketball in Germany...

The boys in their  natural element.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

So yesterday on Dave's day off we jumped on a train with the kids and went to a darling little village close by called Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

This is the city wall that goes around the entire center of the city. Apparently  there was a war called the "Thirty Years War", and when they got to Rothenburg the war went on for 2 days. According to the legend, after those 2 days the General of the military told the Mayor of the village that if he would drink 3 liters of wine, they would leave his village alone. So he did just that. And that is why this is one of the few remaining city walls in Germany. 

We visited a torture museum that had authentic torture items used centuries ago. It was really disturbing and interesting. Landon found his new time out chair (not sure if you can tell in this picture but it's covered in nails.)...ironically enough about 10 minutes after this picture was taken Landon was rolling around on the ground throwing a fit. We could've really used this chair right about then.

It is an old medieval village so the boys were very excited about all the armor, swords, and shields. 

They have this Christmas store there that is open year round. It had beautiful glass ornaments....perfect place to take 4 small children.

Truck that is permanently parked outside of the Christmas store.

Super fun day learning new ways to torture our children into obedience...here's to hoping they work!

Annnnnnd....we made it!

I still have so many posts that I want to write about Hawaii, but from here on out, I'm just going to try and post the current events and then as I have time (read: get my lazy butt motivated!) I'll post about Hawaii. 

At the SLC airport.

So... we made it to Germany! We had to leave for the airport about 7am on Sunday. Both my mom and sister had to drive their cars to fit all of our crapola! Man you need a lot of stuff when packing to live out of a suitcase for 3+ months! Our first leg of the flight was from SLC to Atlanta and it actually went relatively well.

I LOVE Lolo's photo bomb in this picture. 

The boys did awesome on the flights.

We were a little late taking off for that flight so by the time we landed in Atlanta and made it to our next gate they were paging our names for the final call. The flight from Atlanta to Frankfurt...well, let's just say that I hope we never see any of those people again. It was about a 9 hour flight and one and/or both of the girls were crying for the first 5 1/2 hours. I heard the guy behind me ask the flight attendant if he could switch seats. It was not a pretty flight.

We arrived in Frankfurt at 8am (midnight Utah time), got all of our stuff (we were a sight to behold!) and starting walking to the exit doors, hoping someone was there to pick us up. Luckily there was! Actually there were 2 (remember? we had a BUNCH of crap!). It was about a 2 1/2 hour drive from there to our "apartment" (the hotel we are staying at has one little apartment that we were lucky enough to get. And after seeing the size of the hotel rooms here, man am I glad we got an apartment! Not only are the hotel rooms super small (though I don't know if that is just for the village we are in, or in general in Germany), but there are none that attach to each other, so even if we got a couple of rooms (which we would've needed!), they wouldn't be connected....now let's see, should Briella have her own room or Lolo?).

Outside our hotel apartment (on the right) in Bad Windsheim. It is the cutest little village!!

 Literally, the minute we got to our hotel apartment, we unloaded our stuff and Dave had to leave to go start "inprocessing". By this time we had officially been traveling for almost 24 hours straight. Exhausted isn't even the word to describe how we all felt.  The poor kids have had a rough time with the time change. At least 3 of them were up for 3+ hours in the middle of the night. But last night only Briella was up for 1 hour in the middle of the night so hopefully they are all adjusted to the time. The boys started school this week also. Since we still have no idea where we will be living, we decided to enroll them for now in the school on base. Needless to say, there are a lot of new things we are all trying to adjust to.

The best picture I could get of the boys' first day of school. They were SO tired after being up from 1am-4am.

The army personnel we have met so far have all been so helpful and kind. The doctor Dave will be replacing has been showing us all over, let us borrow cell phones, and even made our kids muddy buddies. Another guy let us borrow his minivan until our car gets here, which might be another month. Their kindness has definitely helped this past week go MUCH smoother than it otherwise would have!

So, overall we are doing well. Just trying to take everything in and adjust. But this country is beautiful with so much history and we are excited to start taking it all in!

Awesome Parenting at It's Finest.

As I'm sure you will soon find out, there is no order to this blog (but our lives are TOTALLY in order and super calm and collected, so no worries)....

Warning: After reading this post, you may feel like you might never measure up to the parenting bar which we have set for you all. Just remember, everybody has their talents. Yours just might not be as awesome as ours.

While packing the last few things to get ready to travel (alone! super awesome!) with all 4 (which is the new 10, mom) of these cute kids to Utah, here is the conversation that Izak and I had.  Keep in mind this conversation happened about 2 hours before heading to the airport. At which time the kids would have to say goodbye to Dave for 2 1/2 months.

Izak: Mommy, I'm super nervous about my swim team tryouts (he was going to try out for the swim team, for the very first time, a few hours after we landed in Utah).

Me: I know Izak. I would be too, but all that matters is that you do your best. As long as you do your best then even if you don't make it, it doesn't matter and you can just take swim lessons instead.

Izak: If I make the team, I'm super excited for Daddy to see me swim at the swim meets.

Me: Oh, well swim team will be over before Daddy gets to Utah.

Izak: What? What do you mean?

Me: (Holy crap!) Umm, Izak, you know Daddy isn't going with us to Utah, right?

Izak: (As he breaks down sobbing) He's not?! Why not?! When will we see him again?!

Yep. That's right folks. In all the craziness of trying to get everything done and shipped to Germany we TOTALLY forgot to explain to our children that their Dad would be M.I.A. for the summer.

We.Are.Super.Awesome.Parents.

Izak-after he made the swim team

"Road to Hana" Drop-Outs

So, we recently visited Maui. It was the last island Dave really wanted to visit before we leave this beautiful island....so off we went....and it was gorgeous. The first 2 days we enjoyed the beach out our front door. Starting at 5:45am every day. Yep, 5:45am.

Hard at work on their sand castle 

I love Briella's face in this pic.

Seriously in love with this little girl's hair

An awesome blow hole we found on our hike along the ocean

Resourceful love: Your husband finding someone elses' heart with their initials in it, and rearranging the initials to be yours.

Gorgeous sunset on the beach

They hate the beach

Enjoying our solitary hike....no one else was cool (read:stupid) enough to do the hike in the pouring rain.

How Landon keeps quiet...

Dave really wishes he never had a baby girl

Caption: Life as the mom of 4 children

Our last day there we had planned about 8 hours to do the "Road to Hana". We read up on it, planned which hikes we were going to do, and which mile markers to stop at. It was going to be awesome. And it was. Until mile marker 2. At which point Izak said he was about to throw up. So Dave ninja jumped over the seats to quick grab Izak a ziploc bag in which to throw up. At mile marker 4 Dave started to feel sick. At mile marker 6 I started to feel sick. And by mile marker 8 Landon was threatening to blow...so Izak had to relinquish the ziploc-throw-up-bag to Landon. This was the point that Dave and I looked at each other and started laughing. And for the next 15 minutes (which was how long it took us to go 1 1/2 miles) Landon was yelling at us to, "Quit laughing and just get me some water before I throw up!". So....we managed to make it to mile marker 10 where we did a hike. In the POURING rain. Declared ourselves "Road to Hana" drop-outs and turned our pathetically-weak-stomachs around and headed back down the mountain.