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!