Weekend in Berlin

Berlin is huge! There is so much to see and we hardly saw any of it. On Friday we wanted to stop in Potsdam and tour the grounds of Sans Souci Palace but the skies were looking very ominous with a rain storm so we passed on spending our tour soaking wet (we did this in Munich and will probably never try to attempt sightseeing in the pouring rain ever again). So we drove to our hotel in East Berlin. We took a quick walk around Weissensee Lake and had a nice dinner at a local restaurant.

Saturday morning we were up early and ready to hit the public transportation to get to Zoo Berlin. Aubrey really enjoyed herself, she walked most of the zoo, and we had a hard time keeping Lolo contained in her stroller so she spent just as much time walking. They were both pooped by the time we got out of there. We ended spending over 4 hours there with just a quick stop for lunch. The highlight for me was a little petting zoo area that we went into armed with food pellets that we bought for 0.10 euro! The little goats were aggressive so we really had to watch the girls. They were not mean, just all over you to get the food. I had one goat hit me with his hoof to get more. Aubrey wasn't sure what to think of the goats but did try to feed them. It was cute. Lolo was safely strapped into her stroller for this and enjoyed watching all the animals at her eye level and so very close to her.

After the zoo we walked down to Ka De We, Germany's largest department store. We passed by a church that was bombed at the end of WWII and as they started rebuilding it was decided to leave part of the church there. Let me add that by this point in time my right contact lens was causing me some serious pain. My eye had been watering through most of the zoo and by the time we left I could hardly see a thing! 95% of the time I carry my glasses and lens solution with me on the chance that I may want to switch but that morning I left them sitting in the hotel bathroom and boy did I regret that. My make up was totally off of the right eye but perfect on the left. So the first thing we did was find the bathroom and I tried rinsing my lens with my eye drops and putting it back in...this was unsuccessful! So I gave up, put the lens back in and attempted to wash my left eye make up off. Grrrr! Lesson learned - ALWAYS bring my glasses just in case I need them.



Anyways, back to Ka De We! What an amazing store that I could never, ever in a million years afford to shop at. We did spend time on the 6th floor which is where all the food is. They had so much stuff there. Wine, liquor, pastries, meat, fish, chocolate! We bought a bottle of my all-time favorite wine, EVER. Period. Nothing tops this in my opinion. Eroica Riesling from the Chateau Ste. Michelle and Dr. Loosen. This is a wine from Washington state that I tried several years ago when James and I did a wine tasting at the winery and I purchased a bottle immediately. As far as wines go this one is a little pricey, especially when the winery sells their Reisling at around $8 a bottle and this one was $25. We were totally surprised to see the wine there and even more surprised to see that it was priced at 29.95 euro. If the dollar and the euro were 1 for 1 then this would be a great price but the dollar stinks compared to the euro right now. We did get the wine and it is in my fridge waiting to be consumed as we speak. I was surprised James decided we could get the wine and I totally think he felt bad for me and my pathically red eye.

We initially planned on going to a museum on Sunday morning but decided against it due to the long drive we had ahead of us. We did drive past the Brandenburg Gate but didn't get out as parking was difficult and there were a ton of people there. We will save that for our next visit to Berlin. We will be going back as there is so much to see and do.

A Little Bit of This and That

It has been awhile since my last blog and that is just plain laziness on my part so this entry will probably be a little random. Here we go...Lolo is quite the walker now and along with that has come an intense independent streak! She had a melt down last weekend while we were at Ramstein because I wanted to hold her hand while she walked to help steer her out of the way of others. It was embarassing for me! But she never crawls anymore and loves being able to get around so much better than before. I am so proud of her!

When we returned from Salzburg I wanted to take some pictures of the girls all dressed up since we haven't had any really nice pictures taken since we left the states last year. I should have learned from the Christmas card photo attempts last year that we just can't get good photos of the girls together. Either way, they were both cute but just wouldn't work with me or James on this. We only got 1 really good picture of Lorelei and 1 not too bad picture of Aubrey and Lolo together.

We went to Ramstein last Friday so James could get a couple of things signed off for his deployment and then went to Spangdalhem Air Force Base for the weekend. The bases are close together and Spang has really nice TLF rooms. We have stayed there before. Anyways, we took a drive into Luxembourg so James could check out a castle he wanted to see and then drove back into Germany and spent the afternoon in Trier. There was a music festival of sorts going on and there were alot of people but we took our time and walked to the important sites. The highlight of the city for us was St. Peter's Cathedral which is the oldest Christian church in Germany. The interior was amazingly beautiful. By far the most beautiful church we have seen here. The photos we took do not do this magnificent place any justice!

I hope everyone has a very fun and safe 4th of July weekend...eat a big piece of fresh, sweet watermelon for me!

Salzburg, Hallstat and Konigsee....and some places in between

We just returned from a whirlwind 5 day trip to Salzburg, Austria. It was gorgeous! We stopped in a cute town called Burghausen which is home to the largest fortress in Europe. Then off to our hotel which overlooked Salzburg and we had a splendid view of the mountains. We ate an overpriced but delicious dinner and went to bed dreaming of our upcoming adventures. Monday morning we got up and went to Berchtesgaden and to Konigssee Lake. The weather was not on our side as we had some rain in the morning. We then drove over to Hallstat Lake where we walked through the little town and had an early dinner before we headed back to our hotel.

The Bavarian and Polish Coat of Arms at Burghausen

Lunch in Hallstat

On Tuesday it was pouring rain and we were unsure of what we were going to do as that was our day to tour Salzburg. We ended up at a large mall where we had lunch at Ikea and bought a new umbrella so we could at least stay dry while we were outdoors. We parked near the altstadt and began our tour with a Rick Steves book in hand to guide us around. We saw the home where Mozart was born, a couple of places where scenes from The Sound of Music were filmed, looked inside some gorgeous churches and enjoyed the old achitecture in the city. At the end of the day we made our way back to the Jeep and found a grocery store where we picked up some bread, meat and cheese for dinner. It ended up being a nice day and we didn't need the umbrella for too long.

Castle and Mirabell Garden in Salzburg

We woke up to sunny skies on Wednesday and took advantage of the nicer weather. We visited Mirabell park where we got an amazing view of the castle. The scene from The Sound of Music where they are singing the Do Re Mi song was partly filmed in this park as well. They had a little loop that had statues of dwarfs and a small play ground where Aubrey played for a bit. Then we drove to Hellanbrun (James will be mad because I just forgot how to spell it) Schloss and saw the gazebo from The Sound of Music where they song Sixteen going on Seventeen was filmed. There was a large park there that we walked through and found a cool area where they had a small wading pool and a neat misting walk through thing. Aubrey loved this area so much. Once she saw me turn on the mister she was all over it. She was getting very wet so I took her shirt off and let her play a bit longer. We had fun watching her play. For our last part of the day we drove up a mountain that we could see from our hotel room to check out the view from high up. Salzburg is so beautiful!

Finally, on the way home yesterday we took a ferry boat to visit the Royal Palace of Herrenchiemsee. This is another one of King Ludwigs palaces. This is an amazing structure modeled after Versailles. Then we began the drive home which is an adventure of it's own. Traffic is a bear here. You hit it and expect to add at least an hour to your trip.

I should be sleeping...

Instead of sitting at the computer. We have to be up earlier than normal tomorrow morning because we have plans and it seriously takes us forever to get out of this house. We are all very slow in the mornings with or without coffee. I still haven't downloaded the program to reduce the size of our photos. I really need to do that. I will do that, next week! I hope to have alot of new pictures to share next week, too.

I am adding just one picture because it takes soooooooo long to upload them at their size. I could make the pixels smaller but I just hate thinking about doing that. I get super paranoid that I might need that full size photo and I won't have it if I take a lower pixel shot. I am still trying to figure out all the things that my camera can do. It is such an amazing thing! The girls LOVE the camera. If only they loved to sit still so I could take a couple pictures of them then I would be happy momma. Anyways, this is a photo taken last weekend of Lolo and me in a little town James wanted to visit on our way back from Munich. I realized that I need to make sure that James and I end up in more pictures as we seem to be absent in most of them. I want to make sure that we have alot of photos that show interactions with the girls...not just posed shots. If I could only figure out photo editing in Photoshop Elements.

So this has proven to be a very random post, but hey, this is what happens when I am blogging at midnight. I hope you all have a great weekend!

New Computer = No pictures

I was going to add some of our pictures from this weekend but I don't have the program to resize our photos on our computer. I will take care of that sometime this week (I hope) and get some pics added. I have been busy sewing little things together and I realized that while I am not a great seamstress I can finish things nicely. I like seeing things come together. It makes me happy!

Rained Out

Here we sit in our hotel room as we were rained out today. Yesterday was nice and we really had a nice time walking in Munich. We ate lunch at the Hofbrau house and I got a frappuccino from Starbucks. Today we got up a little late, ate breakfast and by the time we got off the train at the Marienplatz it was raining. Just a sprinkle for the first 10 minutes we said we would tough it out and covered the strollers with rain covers. We went into Starbucks for a quick minute and then it was pouring by the time we came out. By the time we made it back to a train station James and I were soaked through. So here we are trying to dry out, eating a quick lunch of bread, salami and cheese and watching the MTV Movie Awards on MTV Deutschland (it is in English with German subtitles so we can understand everything!).

And she is walking!

Lolo busted out her first independent steps yesterday afternoon! It was so exciting to see her do that. We did lots of clapping, hugging and kissing to celebrate. We had a great day and I am so glad I got to witness her first steps. I missed that with Aubrey as she was in daycare. I am thankful every day that I get to be at home with the girls now.