Family

The reason for our trip was to celebrate my parent's 40th Anniversary.

My Grandmother planned a grand celebration, and it was quite the party.

 Some of my all time favorite people are in this picture.
We sent this photo to Brad.
 They are showing him where he would have been had he been present.

There was even an after party at the country.
With fresh hamburger from the family farm
 (our cousins have the farm, not us, we reap the reward of their hard work).

 

My favorite part about the trip was the amount of family time we had. We soaked up every minute.

We had my niece over for a sleepover. 

So I decided to have a theme.

Luau. 

We ate Hawaiian food and sipped on Pina Coladas (virgin of course).

 

A photo from the shore I forgot to post.

 

My brother and sister-in-law told us about this darling little zoo,
so we all went and had a blast.

 

She rode a horse. 

She was ecstatic.

She didn't want to get off.

There was a tantrum of epic proportions, only our Califlower could pull off.

You know that saying, "Though she be little she be fierce"? 

Yeah, that's her. 

However, there was the next entertainment and it calmed her right down.

If you can't ride a real horse, a fake one is the next best thing, right? 

 Awesome, little playground with plenty of shade right in the middle of the zoo.
Here is our monkey.
Yea, that's Califlower in the pink.
Yes, I let her do it by herself while I snapped a picture.
This wasn't even the worst one she did... alone.
She likes to do things "mysef"

We visited Auntie Lulu, and her cats.

 Every evening looked like this.

 I visited the church building of my childhood and youth, with my girls.

 

One afternoon my brother Jeff and I took a drive around our old neighborhood and schools. 

We then stopped at the local dairy farm to see the cows, drink the amazing chocolate milk and eat fresh ice cream. 

 

My cousins put on a special evening just for us.

It was Philly themed.

All my favorite sandwiches, chips and Rita's Water ice.

These are more of my favorite people.

My people.

I went home feeling so loved and so sad that I don't live closer.

But it makes these moments that much sweeter. 

 

It was a perfect night.

And I cried when I had to say my final good-byes to them. 

 Then I got a short but sweet visit, with this gal. A soul sister to me.

She married my cousin and we just hit it off. 

I was glad to finally meet that handsome little guy of hers. 

She is such an incredible woman, a strong mother, a quality human being, 

and such a great example to me.

Seeing her, if only for a couple of hours, was one of my highlights from the trip.

(Okay, the whole trip was a highlight).

We finally made it home for firefly season.

To show my girls this joy from my childhood and see their eyes light up when they saw them was pure bliss.

 

To say my girls adored my brothers is an understatement.

They wouldn't leave poor Tim alone.

In fact, B ugly cried on the plane ride home for him. 

She asks me daily if he has saved enough money to visit us yet.

I put it in her little mind that Uncle Jeff should move out west, so now she prayers for that every night (insert the smiley emoticon who is laughing so much it's crying)

She loved her cousin Adrienne and baby Mickey.

Califlower liked having a baby to boss around. 

Why I don't have a picture with their family I don't know. 

My phone kept running out of storage so I would have to email my photos to myself.

So I could delete them to take more pictures.

That might have something to do with that.

But she loved all of them.

Jersey Shore

 The kids enjoyed the sights, sounds and tastes of my childhood when we headed to the Jersey Shore.

They loved it.

One of the days we were out on the beach from 10 am until 4 pm, 

and they still weren't ready to leave.

 Getting her nap in.

B enjoyed collecting sea shells and making jewelry.

We ate our hearts out of Mac and Mancos Pizza. 

(Two days in the row on the beach. The sand makes the pizza extra tasty).

And finished it off with some custard. 

Nanny's House

In July I was able to go home to Pennsylvania with my girls for a few weeks. 

I realize my opportunity to travel weeks at a time with them is a short window, 

so I better do it while I can! 

We were able to visit my Nanny quite a bit during our stay. 

Its hard being 2,000 miles away from home.

My family.

My people. 

My roots.

The thing that makes me most sad are the things my children will not know, but today that changed.

During those few weeks and those frequent visits B now knows what my Nanny's house looks like.

Inside and out. 

My Nanny's neighbor has a brick red house.

Today we passed a house the exact color.

B recognized it as Nanny's neighborhood. Her words, 

"Hey, that house looks like Nanny's neighborhood."

It made my heart swell with happiness.

  

  This one had fun giving Nanny seeds.

(She was picking flower pods from Nanny's flowers outside, 

lets hope Nanny still gets flowers next year).

 She also loved this stuffed animal cat.

If not already, it probably should be willed to her ;)

 Enjoying sitting in the sun room.

In this very room I have another tender picture of B as a baby on my Pop's lap.

 We stopped by one last time before we headed to the airport.

Nanny gave me money to buy them a surprise gift at the airport to surprise them on the plane when they started getting ansty.

Well the flight was delayed by an hour and a half.

Then we sat on the tarmac for another hour.

They were antsy so out came the toys I bought, with my stealth shopping skills. 

They never knew.

So when I pulled them out to show them Nanny's surprise.

The planes were a hit. It entertained them well into the flight. 

They light up and make sounds.

 

B's plane is Air Force One.

Which is kind of ironic because one of the reasons for our delay was our President was returning to D.C. and you can't have planes in the air (in a certain radius I would imagine) while Air Force One is in the vicinity. 

More posts to come.

Deutschland (through my phone)

I had an incredible opportunity to visit Germany and a husband who insisted I go "because he's got this." Serious, props to him for making this happen (and of course my neighbor Liz who helped anyway she could).

I don't have the good photos yet, Carrie has those on her camera, but I wanted to document before I forgot, so for right now you are stuck with my phone photos. 

We went the first week of May, it was rainy but beautiful. 

We started and ended in Munich. From Munich we traveled to Salzburg, Austria.

From there we spent the day in Berchtesgaden. 

*Austria and Berchtesgaden have to be the most beautiful places my eyes have every seen*

From Berchtesgaden we stayed in a little town called Eibsee. 

From there we headed to Fussen to see the Neuschwanstein Castle and it's neighbor castle (I can't ever remember the name of it and I don't feel like googling it). 

It was Fussen to Lindau and Lindau to Rothenburg - which was the coolest town I have ever been in.

And then it was back to Munich to come home.

 Here I am at the Marienplatz, in Munich. This is the famous clock tower with the figures that spin around on the hour. (However, it's not every hour). The figures were buried deep in the ground during WWII so they would not be ruined.

 

One of the open markets, in Munich.  Loved it. 

 While in Salzburg we did the Sound of Music Tour.

 I would recommend it to everyone and anyone. Unfortunately, most of the places in the Sound of Music are privately owned so you can't get close, like the above picture. That is the back of the Van Trapp Mansion where Maria and the kids fell out of the canoe. However, the tour takes you through a lot of Austria and it was breathtaking, so I say do it!

The famous gazebo. You can no longer go in it because too many people were jumping around the benches in it, imagine that?

 Beautiful Austria.

 And beautiful Carrie.

 Berchtesgaden, is in the Bavarian Alps.

There are no words to describe the alps. I thought our mountains were beautiful (I still do). 

But the Alps are majestic. Not only are they huge but they are green. 

It's like my two homes combined ;)

 We took a gondola in a ski resort. It just kept going and going. It took about 40 minutes just to get to the top. Also the birds sing. They sing here too, but nothing like in the Alps, I have never heard anything like it.

 

And my pictures are out of order. Here we are back at Salzburg. The above picture is a typical shopping strip. 

 And do you recognize this church? It's wear Maria walked down the aisle.

 Getting festive.

 We took a boat ride in a Lake in the alps.

 Our inability to drive manual actually paid off, the Range Rover was our free upgrade because it was the only car they had that wasn't manual. Ha!Ha!

 Oh, you know just a castle we passed on the highway.

 And the gold castle next to Neuschwanstein. A lot of buildings and castles are gold in Germany it was a big royal color back in the day.

 The Neuschwanstein.

 This castle was the first thing I ever put on my "bucket list". It wasn't an actual bucket list, but when I was kid and I first saw this castle in a magazine I thought, "I have to go there one day." And I finally did. It was magical. The bridge is over a waterfall, so while looking at this beautiful structure you hear the birds and the waterfall and it's a "pinch me" moment.

 Rothenburg, is a medieval city, best known for being the Christmas village in Germany. 

It still has the city wall that was built around the 16th century.

One of the houses still has the original foundation from 988.

 These are Schneeballen, that we saw all over Rothenburg. Not my favorite, but glad I tried it. It is scraps of pastry dough deep fried into a ball and then covered with either, powder sugar, chocolate, nutella, or cinnamon and sugar.

 This hot dog, was the best hot dog ever.

 One of the streets in Rothenburg. The original wall.

 A garden area.

 The wall.

 A play ground just outside the wall.

 

While in Rothenburg, we took the Night Watchman Tour, hands down one of the best tours I have ever been on. This man dresses up as the Night Watchman and takes us on a walking tour of the city and tells us the stories and the history of the town.

 And here we are back in Munich.

The food.

 This is the famous German dish, WeiBwurst (that B is actually a german letter that looks like a B but actually sounds like an s - I don't know how to type it in the blog). And it is only served until lunch.

 White asparagus everything. I loved the soup.

 This mustard on everything. 

When I asked the server for it she said, "But that is only for white sausage." 

And looked at me as if I was crazy.

 

A chocolaterie, cutest bag I kept. 

 The English Garden in Munich.

 But you didn't know they had surfers in Munich? On our first day we saw a kid in a wet suit with a surf board and we thought, "What the heck?". Well, we figured out where he came from.

 

And I brought home these dresses for the girls. They had them everywhere, and I saw them all week, and on the final day I finally bought them. 

Great trip.

 I missed my little family like crazy though, so their hugs when I got home made me cry.