Bienenfleissig ~ "Busy Bees"

~This castle is only 45 minutes from our house~

~Keanna, Emily, Kristine, Kade, Cynthia, Ayla - it stopped raining long enough for a picture of our adventure outside the beautiful Hohenzollern Castle~

~Kinder Carnivale - My little Mexican soccer player~

~Superman was all smiles~

~With a little help from the gutter guards - he scored pretty high~

~Cole & Jack having a blast bowling~

~Kade & Cole at the Kindergarten Valentine's Day party~

~February 14th - My valentines at my favorite gelato cafe'~

~"Training Holiday Weekend" ~ Day 1 at Rhein Falls in Switzerland~

~It was so much fun going over the bridge to the castle~

~Kristine so close to the falls with the rainbow over her head~

~The boys had to slide over to the icy corner for this picture in front of the falls~

~These falls were beautiful~

~Steve & Kade having a bonding moment on the bench~

~Day 2 - Kade hiding in a log along the creek~

~Day 2 - Schwabian Alps Waterfall~

~Lichtenstein Castle~

~Day 3 - Black Forest Waterfall with my boys~

~Momma bear with her bear cubs~

~A little hot chocolate after a busy weekend at the waterfalls~

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~Weekly Update~ My journal of our Germany Adventures~

Well, well, well, it has been a very busy couple of weeks. I will try to save the important details for this blog. We celebrated the last of our Carnivale events and the boys had an opportunity one more time to put their costumes on. Let me just say.... new costumes for next year. Cole played musical chairs, and other fun games in hopes of winning some wonderful prizes. We couldn't end our day without some Berliners (donuts) and french fries - yum! The Germans didn't know what to think about our little "Mexican" soccer player running around - I think I was offending them. They are die hard Fussball (soccer) fans here and Kade was wearing their competition? Oops - but I ran out of costumes - I had no choice. Silly me!

The next day we had the opportunity to have my friend Emily (her husband graduated with Steve from dental school) come into town with her girls and and a friend. I decided to take them to a castle that I had heard about that is only 45 minutes from our house. The bad thing, it was pouring down rain. The good thing, it was an incredible castle. We just ran through the stone tunnels up to the castle in hopes of staying as dry as we possibly could. We were soaked, but we were laughing and that is all that matters. We made our way up the long curvy entrance and the ladies realized that they had left their purses in the car and they needed 24 euro for the castle tour. I refused to get out in that rain again and walk all the way back to the car. I counted the money that I had, and joined with what they had in their pockets, we were 50 euro cents short. I took all of the money and courageously went up to the window. I did my best American flirting to talk the nice man into letting us in with not enough money. He laughed and let us in - I don't know if it was my flirting or the last ditch effort to add a Reese's peanut butter cup with the pile of bills and coins? I like to think it was my flirting, right? He even offered us the English guide book which was normally 3 euros, but he knew we were broke - with the promise of returning it after the tour. We finally were safe from the wind and rain and made it in the castle to the start of our tour. They had us slip on what appeared to be Jolly Green Giant slippers and we just cross country skied our way through the tour to make sure our enormous slippers stayed on our feet. We all agreed that we thought it was a cheap way to get the floors cleaned and shined up - we all wanted to sneak a pair home to help out with the cleaning of all of our hard wood floors in our own homes. The tour was in German, but we had our English book (wink, wink). It was a beautiful castle and I love that it is so close to my home. At one point I looked over at Emily and chuckled. I said, "Can you believe that a year ago we were both dreaming about coming to Germany and exploring the country. Now we are standing together in this incredible castle together." It was a dream come true for both of us - oh, where a year can take you.

Cole had a parent / teacher conference day off from school and was invited from his friend Jack to go bowling. The boys had a blast and we counted and they had rolled the ball 97 times between the 3 of them. Me and my friend Laura got to roll the ball 3 times total, they were enjoying themselves so much - we decided to let them rock and roll! Plus, then we got to talk while they were entertained - which is all that really matters.

On Saturday I got to go out with the ladies for an opportunity to experience a mall in Germany. You may be thinking, how do you experience a mall? Well, they do the malls a little differently here. When you go to the mall, that is your activity for the day. You start out early to make sure you can find a parking spot, and then you shop, eat lunch, shop, drink a cappuccino, shop, sit, talk, watch people, etc. As you can tell, this is a big event. The best part of the day for me was that I was shopping and right next to me was the cutest little dogs. Dogs in Germany are amazingly well behaved (unlike American dogs) and you are able to bring them to restaurants, malls, etc. I thought it was awesome. After 5 hours of shopping, I was definitely done. I had shopped and was ready to drop! It was good to have a German experience at the malls.

I am a member of the International Women's Club Stuttgart - which is the group that I went with for my spa retreat (remember... naked menthol leg wrap?) I really love this organization and one of the things I like best about it is that it has very few military women members. They do monthly meetings, monthly lunch, monthly dinners, monthly chick flick movie nights, and lots of other cultural events like museum tours, etc. I haven't been involved with this club as much as I really wanted to. I was quite happy then, when the chair of the club called me and asked me if I would be the Charity Events Coordinator for the club. We have 3-4 main charity events a year - and my only weakness will be that I don't speak German - we have to get local sponsors for donations. I am excited and flattered for the invitation and it became official when I was voted in at the monthly meeting on Tuesday. I am ready for the challenge - especially for a good cause.

We had a great Valentine's day. Cole had a party in his class, and he wanted to make sure that Kade and I would be there to celebrate with him. Can I just say that it is priceless when I walk in his classroom and he just has the hugest smile on his face and he is so excited that we are there. I wouldn't miss that face for the world. We had fun putting all of his valentines in the mailboxes, playing heart bingo, making heart shaped pb j's, and he made a valentine for me and Steve. We washed everything down with some cupcakes and juice. It was a very fun party for the kids. I made Steve and the boys a delicious Valentine's meal and took all my boys to my favorite Gelato (italian ice cream) cafe. I am the lucky lady of 3 valentines that melt my heart everyday. Kade looked over at me during ice cream with his big, beautiful brown eyes and said "I love you so much." I am in heaven! My gift from Steve is a fabulous ladies spa weekend in the Netherlands. We have 6 ladies heading out for 3 days at the spa. This should be a much better experience then the last. I have signed up for a 60 minute massage on Friday, a chocolate pudding body wrap and a facial on Saturday. I am out of my mind excited - you will hear all about it in my next blog - stay tuned. And yes, swimsuits are required!

It is great, once a month Steve gets a 4 day "Training Holiday" (which are free vacation days) - and boy did we get some good training time in :-) We decided to enjoy the beautiful areas close to our home and take some day trips. We ended up making it a "waterfall weekend." The first day we headed to Switzerland which is only 1 hour from our home. We visited the Rhein Falls - which are a beautiful set of raging waterfalls right beneath a beautiful castle. Being from the Pacific NW - I found myself thinking "this is what everyone was telling us to come see?" We walked along the river and headed over the bridge to the castle. That is when it became magnificent. We were inches from the waterfall. Never in the US would they let you get that close. The days have been cold and clear with beautiful blue skies, so the lookout points were all covered in ice. We skated our way out and got some great pictures - we had such a fabulous time. There was a rainbow over the falls which we were able to capture in our photos. The second day we drove to a town in the Schwabish Alps where we had a beautiful 20 minute hike in along a creek to get to our prize waterfall. The boys had an awesome time throwing rocks and sticks in the creek. We finally made it and enjoyed the climb to the top where we got to enjoy a picnic lunch that I had packed. The third day we took a trip to a town in the Black Forest - which we were very sad (OK not really) to see that we could only walk up to the base of the waterfall and that the path to the top was closed because of ice. The boys were very disappointed but we made it up to them by offering them some delicious heisse schokolade (hot chocolate) at the really cute cafe in town. They were over it within seconds. What I loved most about these trips was seeing all of the excitement from Cole & Kade. They continue to amaze me at how much they love these new adventures in their lives. I have friends that say their kids will not go and see another castle or waterfall. My boys love to go to both, and they love to climb the hills and reach the top. They run along and race each other, laughing all the way, and that makes for such great memories. These are going to be a great three years, full of bear cub adventures. I love my "European boys"!