Summer is here for one day a week

I inflated the girls pool when we got home Monday night as it was pretty darn hot. I filled it and let Aubrey splash around for a bit until her teeth started chattering. The air was warm but the water was freezing. The next day it warmed up enough for me to get both of the girls in the pool for a bit. They had a grand time splashing around! Lolo loves the water just as much as Aubrey and even bath time is exciting for them. It gives me so much joy to see the girls so happy and playing together. Too bad the weather hasn't been as nice! It is been cold and raining every day since Tuesday. This morning the skies were a beautiful shade of blue and not a cloud in sight. Now it is overcast, breezy and about to rain. I guess the bathtub will have to do for today.

Romantic Weekend

For the long weekend we headed back up to the Rhine and stayed a couple nights. I just love the area. There are castles every couple of miles, lots of traffic along the river, cute little towns and lots of vineyards. It is an amazing place. We walked along a little spit to see the statue of Loreley and got an amazing view of The Loreley (a dangerous spot in the river where many ships crashed and it was blamed on a beautiful siren named Loreley), a couple little towns and Burg Katz.

View of the spit and Burg Katz from a hilltop

The Loreley Statue

We also drove over to visit Burg Eltz and did a quick hike down to get some great pictures there. It is amazing to think that this castle is over 700 years old and it has never been destroyed. We also passed a beautiful castle sitting on top of a vineyard. We were pretty impressed by this one, maybe because it was sprawled out across the hill rather than condensed onto on small spot along the river like many other castles in that area.

Burg Eltz

View of a castle from below

Finally, my favorite picture from the entire weekend. The 3 loves of my life sharing a sweet moment. Aubrey was picking flowers while I was taking pictures of the river below. I turned around and caught her sharing with Lolo. These are the moments that take my breath away. The view was nice but this tender picture made my day.

Life

Not too much to blog about this week. Things are slow. The girls had their check-ups yesterday and everything went well. They are healthy and growing! I have been spending time cleaning up my scraproom. We added some toys for the girls, a baby gate, TV and DVD player for them and I am trying to keep them out of all my supplies. I like being able to just reach over and have my supplies right there. Since we moved I have been crafting on the kitchen table.

That's about all I have to say for now. Just wanted to add a post just in case anyone actually reads my blog and was wondering what have been up to.

Catching Up

Things around the Gibson house have been pretty boring this week. James has been working late because they have inspectors visiting. I honestly can't wait for this inspection to be over because he has been working late since at least November. At night it seems the girls go into over drive and I really like having him around to help a little.

Lolo is getting 4 teeth on top, not just the 2 I thought she was. I can't imagine how uncomfortable she is feeling but she is hanging in there and taking it like the super trooper she is. She has decided that naps may just not be for her (much to my dismay) unless they are in her high chair at dinner time. Twice this week she has fallen asleep while eating because she has skipped her nap. Yesterday I made her take a nap and this usually involves some serious fighting between the 2 of us.

Aubrey has decided that helping herself to food left on the counter is way better than telling me she is hungry. She also thinks that lip gloss is the perfect make up and I think it is quite possibly the hardest stuff to wash off. She was still greasy after her bath! Finally, James got out of bed on Tuesday morning and asked me where Aubrey was. I told him in her bed and we look over to see her head on the opposite end of the bed with one leg touching the floor and the other still in bed. We are assuming that she decided she wanted to crawl into bed with us but fell back asleep before she even got out of her bed. Being a mom sure does make for many funny moments!

Mothers Day Weekend

Wow! I had such a great weekend. I love being able to get away for 36 hours and seeing some beautiful places. These are the times when I really realize how fortunate we are to be living in Germany. We went to Hohenschwangau Castle, Neuschwanstein, and Linderhof Castles again. This time we toured through Hohenschwangau instead of Neuschwanstein and learned more about the ruling families that lived there and the history of the castle. I found it to be more informative than the Neuschwanstein tour. I also thought that the castles were more beautiful in the spring than there were in the winter. The colors really popped against the green more than the white snow.

Hohenschwangau Castle

Neuschwanstein Castle

We stayed the night in a small town just on the outskirts of Reutte, Austria. We had a beautiful view of the Alps from our balcony. Our dinner was delicious! I was totally surprised at the gourmet food at super affordable prices. The room was very spacious which is hard to come by in many European hotels and I just loved it view. I know I mentioned that just a couple of sentences ago but it was amazing!



On the way home we went to Lindhof Castle and it was totally different than in February as we were able to see the fountains, statues and trees as they were covered with burlap to protect them from the elements. This is one extravagent castle! Definitely worth the visit. After we left there we drove to Oberammagau for a wonderful Mothers Day lunch. We ate at the Ammergaur Maxbräu at the Hotel Maximilian. If you are ever happen to be in that area ;-) I highly recommend you eat there. I had a Mothers Day special menu and it was some of the tastiest food I have eaten here. James had a huge pork knuckle and he really enjoyed that as well. At the end of the meal they gave me a rose for "Mutters Tag" (Mothers Day in German) and it was a perfect end to a great meal and weekend.

Linderhof Castle

I am a winner!

Really, I am! I love blogging and visiting other blogs. Let me tell ya that the scrapbooking industry is very generous with providing tips, contests and prizes on their blogs. I was visiting the Creating Keepsakes blog on Saturday and I left a comment to win a prize. And I won! LOL. I won a custom made set of organization tags and a Making Memories Desktop Organizer! I am absolutely thrilled because I am in the process of finally organizing my craft room so I can actually use it and the prizes are perfect! The room is a total disaster area right now and I need to get my stuff organized, bring down some toys for the girls and set up a TV and DVD player as well. We just ordered a baby gate for the room and I hope to have the room pretty much good to go once that arrives. I have been using the dining room table to work on my projects and I just hate it (and I know James does too). I can't wait to have all my supplies right on hand instead of running back and forth everytime I need something.

We did absolutely nothing this past weekend. Well, we went to lunch on Saturday but we mostly spent the weekend running errands. We really needed a slower weekend where the girls were not in the car for a large part of the day. Lolo is cutting her top 2 teeth right now and has been pretty irritable for the past few days. Aubrey is always a little crazy! She is half girlie girl and half tom boy. She might be a future WWE diva someday! From the time James gets home at night until bed she is rough housing with him. We have had plenty of fat lips around her lately because she just doesn't know that bouncing over James on the bed will launch her off the other side. I just hope Lolo isn't so rough.

National Scrapbooking Day

Today is National Scrapbooking Day and there is a celebration going on over at the Creating Keepsakes Blog (http://www.creatingkeepsakesblog.com/). I created a layout using my grandma's graduation picture a while back and decided I wanted to enter one of the CK contests today to win an awesome prize pack (please keep your fingers crossed for me, I love winning prizes). The image is a little distorted as I am still trying to figure out what in the world I am doing in Photoshop Elements but it doesn't look too bad!