Happy Birthday, Christmas, Easter, 4th of July Mom and Dad

We had a family reunion!  I know, right?  We have only had one of those that I can remember, other than this one.  It's hard when you drop your kids off all over the country and when 2 of them marry military men themselves and some just need an attitude adjustment!  But hey, we did it and plenty of people came!

Finishing the binding on the quilt on the trip up to Mom and Dad's!

Mom came up with the theme of celebrating all the holiday's that they miss celebrating with all their kids and grandkids because everyone is so spread out.

We had 4th of July with sparklers and pool and slip and slide time,

We had Christmas presents- white elephant gifts,

We had birthday celebration complete with mini cakes to frost and decorate,

The book has pictures of all the kids and grandkids.  The quilt was a representation of each family.  They chose the main color.  I chose the square that would represent the family.  We have green and a hunters star since Rob is Army and we move a lot and we own a lot of guns.  Karl's is red- I assume for Arizona State and his is Wheel of fortune, because he is in the finance game.  Mike's is maroon, I assume for Texas A&M and his is Sister's choice, since they have a lot of girls in their family.  Cindy's is robins egg blue (not sure why.  Probably because she likes that color) and is a windmill- they live in Washington state and were Air Force, so it seemed to fit.  Dan's is.... I can't remember!  It was birds in flight though.  Was it blue???  Anyway, him and his wife both work for the airlines, so that's why the pattern.  Lise's was purple, because that fits her and the pattern was bento box, because she loves anime.  Tim's was a pattern that just looked digital to me, because he is into everything digital and it was grey, because he likes things plain.

We had Easter with the only two littles left that would participate in an egg hunt. 

We went on a treasure hunt of places that Mom knew growing up.

I can't tell you now what any of these places are, but we went there and checked them off our list!

We went to the temple and did baptisms for our dead ancestors.  

We visited with Great Grandma Keck

We played games and we chatted

What a great fun family reunion Mom and Dad planned!  It was so good to see everyone that came.  I haven't seen my sister in years and I had never met the two littles.  Gretchen and Dan were a blast.  I love people who aren't afraid to get into the fun even if it means getting soaking wet! 

 Until next time family!  Love you all!

A New Mexico Easter

Here we are in our new Easter outfits.  

I swear I look like I am in pain, but I believe it was just the sun hitting my eyes.  Or maybe I'm just getting old and it shows more when I smile. But I wanted to show my whole dress.  All of that is embroidery!  It comes from a new website that I was introduced to by a friend called eshakti.  They customize your dress for you.  You can change the neck, the sleeves, the length and give them your measurements and they make the dress for you.  Super excited about it!

We had a super low key Easter, but a nice one.  One where we laughed together and enjoyed each others company.  

I taught my class and did the eggs with objects in each one that represent the story of Christ's last time on the earth.  I have changed it a little to focus on the things I think should be focused on more.

My version:

1. Matt 26:26-28 (sacrament cup)  This is the Last supper and the institution of the sacrament

2. Matt 26:14-15 (3 pennies wrapped in tin foil) The 30 pieces of silver

3. Matt 26:36-45 (Olive oil) representing the Garden of Gethesemane

4. Matt 27:1-2 (rope) Jesus is bound

5. Matt 27:18-24 (soap) Pilate washes his hands

6. Matt 27:35 (dice) casting lots

7. Matt 27:50-54 (rocks) the earthquakes, ending with the soldiers believing that Jesus was the son of God

8. Matt 27:57-60 (white linen) burial

9. Matt 27:62-66 (large rock) stone sealed on tomb

10. Mark 16:1 (cloves) to anoint the body

11. John 20:2-9 (small roll of gauze) seeing the empty tomb 

12. Matt 28:6 (empty) he is not here but is risen

I would like to tweak it a little more and put in the part about Mary seeing Jesus.  More than anything I wanted to focus on the fact that he had risen and not so much about the death.  The death is in there, but it's not the main focus.  

What I found was 1. 8 year olds, even my smartie pants kids, have trouble reading long scriptures.

2. They don't understand how scriptures are laid out or are written down on a paper.  They kept saying Matt- what does Matt mean?  I had to tell them more than a couple times that Matt was short for Matthew.  Then they would say 26 dot dot 26 dash 28.  3. They really can't find scriptures.  I had to go around showing them every single time, even though we stayed in the same 2 chapters most of the time.  I had to say, "don't turn your page, don't turn your page.  Stay where you are" almost every single time and then come around and point to the right verse.  So that took our whole lesson!  But at least we talked of Christ and the real reason for Easter AND we learned a little about how to find scriptures!

Easter

I have to admit, Easter was almost forgotten- what with my parents visiting and Sam's busy week ahead.  I remembered in time, though and we eeked in a few traditions- all which seem to be close to the end.  Samuel didn't participate at all in the egg coloring and Joseph did his two and quickly went back to his games.  Only Max stayed and colored eggs until they were all done.

There were only 12, so it didn't take long.  The next morning they quickly looked at their baskets before heading out the door to church.  I was sure we would get plenty of Easter at church.  Nope.  Sometime church just plugs on ahead with their schedule despite the holidays.  I really hate that.  Some years I wonder how a visitor would take our talks on Easter and Christmas.  I think mostly they would think we weren't Christian!  I can't even remember what the talks were about- Priesthood, Family history, the reason for the Book of Mormon- something like that.  Next year I have to not get so distracted and make sure we have a little more Christ in our celebrations, because I can't always rely on other people to make sure it happens for me!  We did at least have our traditional meal of ham (what is ham on Easter all about?) and the strawberry cake with lemon icing that I came up with years ago.  Yummy!

And on my new Italian pottery too!

Next year- we'll do better! Fingers crossed!

Addendum to Easter

We had the missionaries over for dinner the next day and they helped us color Easter Eggs.

One of them hadn't colored them since he was 12 and the other one had never colored eggs- ever!  His family tradition was to clean out the Grandparents swimming pool the day before Easter.  Great fun!!  I'm glad we got to share a tradition with them!

The Lame Mother excuse Blog

With our big trip to Rome, the start of track and normal living, it was hard to do everything we usually do for Easter.  The commissary and Bx ran out of Easter candy along time ago and never reordered.  I had grabbed a bunch of little peanut butter eggs when I saw them, but Joseph slowly ate those away, until I only had one bag left.  I re-hid those, but he found them before Easter as well.  Hence, Joseph got zero peanut butter eggs.  The rest of those that were left were split between the rest of us.  They don't do peanut butter in Europe still.  In fact that and Root beer is what you give a German to say thank you.  When they came to the American school as part of an exchange program, they all went out and got American money and insisted on going to Taco Bell and then over to the shoppette to get peanut butter cups.  Emma said it was really funny to see them all showing off their foreign money and getting all excited about Taco bell and peanut butter cups!
In the end we had to drive on Saturday, after the base Easter Egg hunt

(Friday was Good Friday and so everything was closed!) to the Real and picking up a bunch of yummy Germany Easter candy- which all happened to be made by Lindt!  I didn't get anything else, but had enough stuff in my "birthday box" to give the kids a little gift, also- a flying helicopter for all the boys (but we are out of batteries, whoops!) and some light up balloons for Emma (along with a shirt that she found that I liked and so stole from her!)

I didn't have time to make rolls, by the time we got home, so we didn't have our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  We made do with some good German bread for dinner.  Forgot about a jello salad, too!  We also never colored the eggs, but I needed them to make deviled eggs.  Oh well.  The dinner turned out fine, though and then we had a nice long walk.

 By the time we made it home it was past 8 pm and we needed to get everyone to bed.  No coloring of Easter eggs happened!  There was one bright spot.  We have been watching conference talks for our scripture reading lately and the one we were on, just happened to be about Jesus and the atonement.  It capped the day off nicely.
No one seemed too put out about the lack of Easter traditions happening, except the coloring of eggs.  We have the missionaries over tonight, so maybe we will do that with them.  Max said, "but it's after Easter, now."  Hey, we are making our own rules here, so we can color eggs whenever we want!

Easter Market in Maulbronn

Friday we worked at the Patch Bazaar with the scouts, but Saturday, we dropped our scouts off to work and then headed to Maulbronn to check out their Easter Market.  It was held in an amazing Kloster.

Rob saw this sign and read it Bez-erker Kloster and decided it was where the Berzerk nuns worked.

Of course it really means visitors to the Kloster. But when we were looking at the buildings one of the handles popped up and made a bang and we decided it must be some bezerk-er nuns coming to tell us to go away!    

Right before you get into the kloster there is this beautiful graveyard terraced onto the hillside.

It takes up about 3 terraces and then the rest is terraced with a vineyard.  Gorgeous!

Festive Fountain in the middle of the square.

The room wasn't very big that they had the Easter Market in, but for a tiny space, it seemed to hold a whole lot of amazing artists!

We saw eggs of every variation and all beautiful.  We saw some eggs where they had pin pricked parts of them out until they were the most amazing lattices with gorgeous pictures embedded in them.  Those were around 200 Euro.  We decided to stick with a few painted ones.  These are actually painted and then the design is scraped into it with a razor. 

We had three (one for Emma- the butterfly one, one for me the red, and one for Max- the Green.)  You can't see the green, because Max already broke it.  Smashed!  12 Euros down the toilette!  Not even a picture to commemorate it.  

We also bought the three goose eggs which are already blown out for us.  They had every variety of egg to choose from.  We almost got a peking duck one, but it was a lot thinner than the goose eggs.  With all the moving that we do, we decided we better get some hardy eggs!  We will try our hand at decorating them later.

After getting our eggs and looking around the kloster a little, we had butterwaffeln with puderzucker .  Emma and Dad didn't think they wanted any, but they ate half of Max and Mom's!  

I love it when I overhear people's conversations and learn about amazing things like this Easter Market in Maulbronn!

London

I have wanted to go actually see London ever since I went there as a 12 year old to a gymnastics camp. That's why, since I am in charge of the family vacations, the first major place we went was London!

Most of what you think of as London is actually different boroughs. All the entrances and exits of the actual city of London are guarded by dragons.  There are all kinds of different dragons.

Oh yah!

  We got great airfare deals on Ryanair, but the rest of the tour hurt the old pocketbook.  I am sure that is one of the reasons we never made it as a family when I was little.  Everything cost so much!  Our last site before we left was St. Paul's and Rob almost gagged when he found out that it actually cost money to go see a church!  Not only money, but almost $100 for the family and that was with a 2 for 1 deal I had.  It was beautiful, though!  I took a picture on the sly-

 I am so bad! (Right, I'm the one being blasphemous, when there are money changers in the house?!)  Anywho- I loved the auto guide that told you about the mosaics and stuff.  I would have never realized what was up on the ceiling, except it showed you close ups and explained.  They were actually very fascinating.  We went up to the whispering gallery and tried to whisper to each other.  Rob heard me, but I couldn't hear the boys.  We also made it all the way up to the top.  I inched around the circle, took a quick picture and got back into the other set of stairs.

We told Max that he had to come up, because everyone was, but that he didn't have to leave the stairs.  All the sudden here comes Max.  I was so proud of him- "Hey buddy, you made it!  How did you do it?"  "There was no way down on that side, " he told us honestly.  His blunt, honest reply made me laugh.

Our first real day in London we went out of London to see the making of Harry Potter.  It was very cool!

The Chess pieces

 Looking for the 15 golden snitches hidden around the studio and getting ready to take pictures on a flying broom.

 Having some butter beer at #4 Privet Drive.

 The Leaky Cauldron

 Practicing our spells

 Diagon alley

 Bridge

The castle.

We stopped on the way home to say hi to 221b Baker street!

The next day we went to the Tower of London- Loved it!! 

 We got Barney the yeoman.  

You have to have 20 years of honorably military service to become a yeoman beefeater.  Barney was the best and kept us laughing the whole time.  Some of his warnings were the best part.  Once he told us not to trip on the 1 inch incline going into the chapel, but if we did and we were a woman, he would catch us with his guns, but if we were a man, it was going to hurt!  The boys thought that was so funny and kept imitating him!

There were several of these guys around the walls, including archers and spearmen.

Dragon made out of weapons.

We took some time out to have a little fish and chips before finishing our tour.

Picadilly circus which is a lot like Time square in New York, except that circus means round about- so it is not square it's round!- ha, it isn't really, but it used to have a round about there.

We also saw Buckingham

These guys marched toward the two guys on duty.  Stood in front of them for like 5 minutes- seriously it was that long, marched toward the other one, stood in front of him for a couple of minutes and then left.  We made up words for them- "so, it's pretty cold tonight.  Did you remember to wear your long underwear?  Still cold?  Sorry about that.  Well Cheerio.  I'm off to get a warm bath and some hot chocolate."

Parliament

Which we thought was Westminster for about 1/2 hour!

Westminster, which we missed getting into by 1/2 hour.

The changing of the horse guards

This ceremony took almost an hour and involved lots of standing at attention forever!  The horses weren't so happy about it!

#11 Downing street (Right, 11 not 10.  Ever since Mr. Blair and his large family the Prime minister has lived at #11, because #10 only had 150ish rooms and that wasn't quite enough, apparently!)

Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station

Mom had to take one for the team and be the lone Hufflepuff.  Can you even name a Hufflepuff?  Rob says I am definitely more Slytherin.  Uh, thanks!

Ooh I want that wand!  There were a lot of no ways at that shop!!

Spitafield markets

Petticoat lane Markets- I seriously don't know why I got to markets.  I always find the expensive junk and never any wonderful finds like other people, so I end up buying nothing most of the time- like this time.

the Old Roman wall

Big Ben

Took a Jack the Ripper tour- he was nice and graphic and even provided pictures!  Luckily our boys are completely desensitized (saying this tongue in cheek!)

The Tower Bridge

The queen 

and other Lego structures at the big toy store that is comparable with FA Schwartz, Hamleys

The British museum with the Rosetta stone

 and an Easter Island head.

Trafalgar square with the lion statues.  We got in trouble for letting our kids climb all over them.

This blue chicken has no real significance.  It just won a place on Trafalgar square for a year or so.  Another piece of art will be there later in 2014.  I wonder if it will be that cool?

A stop to eat a quick breakfast yielded a Broadway style performance at the train station.

I loved the statue that they performed it around dedicated to the children of the London bombing.

It was a great trip. 

 Getting around on the tube and the hop-on, hop-off double decker bus.

Joseph kept that paper for 2 days when he found it on the tube, because it had information about the new PS4.

 If it wasn't so expensive I would make us come back a couple times before we left!  There is still so much to see and do!

 Our apartment

 Baker Street tube station.  All those little black things making up the Sherlock Holmes shadow were little Sherlock Holmes shadows.  So cool!

 Random statue that someone got ready for winter.  London is awesome!