City Street

City street in Aachen

More Leaf Play

Wanted to post a couple more pics of the girls playing in the leaves...

The gang in front of the fountain in Aachen square

Hannah enjoying the leaves!

The effects of Cailyn throwing leaves - she pretty much dumped them on her head!

(pic taken by a friend of mine - I just thought it was awesome, so I had to post it!)

Aachen, Germany

This week we're staying with some extremely dear friends in Brühl, Germany. We're in Germany again because of some meetings we had to go back for. Since our friends live so close, us and another couple that we love decided to stay for a few days. The first day we really were able to venture out and see things we went to the city of Aachen. This city was once a very prominent city of major importance in the area, where the Medieval German Kings were crowned, and Charlemagne chose to build one of his largest Cathedrals and lived the last 20 years of his life. It's right on the border of Germany and Belgium, so in WWII, it was the first German city taken by the Allied forces. As we stood in the square of the city, the main City Hall and other buildings clearly showing damage done by the war. One fascinating thing about Germany I've found is that all the buildings that were damaged in the War were either rebuilt completely following destruction, or they were patched up with obviously new bricks interlaced in the old structure. It was a great day though...we were able to eat Pizza Hut for lunch, which was awesome, but then spent some time just walking the streets, enjoying the sights and even went into the Cathedral. Overall, it was a VERY good day. Here's some pics of the adventure!

Hannah and Cailyn with our friends' kids enjoying the fall leaves in the city square. They spent a long while playing in the leaves, and we attracted quite a crowd!

Hannah throwing a pile of leaves

Cailyn, Hannah and two of our friends kids peeking through the wall outside the Aachen City Hall, built in the 11th century

Aachen Cathedral built by Charlemagne in A.D. 805

Part of the mosaic ceiling inside the Cathedral

The front of the Cathedral with an insane array of stained-glass. The golden box in the foreground is said to contain the remains of Charlemagne.

A candelabra in the Cathedral

Street performers outside the Cathedral. This man is playing a Contra Bass Balalaika - a Russian 3-stringed cousin to the ukulele.

Germany Part 4

OK...so we've come to the end of our week. After Nuremberg, we'd spent a couple of days doing some other things like visiting Flossenberg Concentration Camp, and going to a really cool place where they've built toboggan runs on the side of a mountain. Fun would be an understatement if you asked Hannah! Her and Seth went on the toboggan together and were clocked at 46 kph or about 30 mph, and she was yelling, "Faster, Daddy, faster!" the entire time! It's really fun! So we enjoyed the rest of the week, and really had a great time...on pic from the toboggan run for you...

But the last day on our way to the town we flew out of, we decided to take a huge side-trip and see the Eagle's Nest. I'd always seen pictures of it, and just thought it was one of the neatest places ever built. Since we were so close, we just had to go. The Eagle's Nest was a building the Nazi Party built for Hitler as a 50th birthday present. It was finished in 1939 at the cost of about $200 million. The road to the Eagle's Nest was part of the fun in going...it's a 4 mile long, 13 foot wide road that climbs over 4,000 feet. And of course, the last 250 feet are taken by an elevator built into the mountain. That elevator used to be gold-plated! During WWII, the Eagle's Nest was captured by the 101st Airborne after they had taken the nearby town of Berchtesgaden.

Overall, it was spectacular to say the least. Built on the top of a mountain that sort of juts out into a valley, the view is amazing. The strangest thing was, that big octagonal room that is seen as a place the Hitler visited with his head's of staff and other dignitary, is now a restaurant. That's right...we had coffee and ice cream where Hitler once entertained guests. We thought that to be surreal. Anyway, thanks for looking at our journey of Germany. Here's some pics of our time at the Eagle's Nest.

View from the bottom of the mountain looking up to the Eagle's Nest

Great looking gals!!

Location, location, location

Looking from behind the Eagle's Nest north towards Austria and Germany

THOROUGHLY enjoying the ice cream!!

Once a gathering room, now a cafe

View to the south of a lake nestled in the mountains

Germany Part 3

wow...so it's been another long time in-between posts, and we're sorry! BUT...we wanted to share with you a few more pics from Germany...we did have a LOT of fun, an there's some great things we got to see.

After Legoland, we went to Nuremberg for a day. It's an incredible city! A river runs in the middle of it, and there's a great castle overlooking the city. It was wonderful! We even found a shop that sold root beer!!! So, for the day, we just walked around, relaxed and enjoyed the sights.

The 3 Musketeers got their hair done for the day, then the needed posing from our apartment!

We found a Starbucks in Nuremberg, which was awesome! We got Hannah and Cailyn Hot Chocolates, and needless to say, Hannah got INTO hers!

On a walk along the pedestrian route, there was this wall laced with these flowers

This is the courtyard of the Nuremberg Castle

Cailyn taking a rest on a bench in the Castle

Walking back to the cars, we crossed a bridge with this view

Germany Part II - Legoland!!!

We took a day during our second week and went to Legoland near Munich. It was so awesome! Hannah was big enough to ride her first roller coaster, and there was plenty for Cailyn as well. It was an awesome day full of adventure and interesting things made from Legos! There's several pics on this one, so we hope you enjoy!

Hannah's first roller coaster!!!

Captured this through the trees...what was skepticism has turned to joy!

Cailyn got her first ride on an interesting boat ride...the little kids actually paddle themselves! Not pictured is Jen having to "help" Hannah finish her ride. Cailyn is taking this ride with the daughter of our dear friends we were on our trip with

The 3 Musketeers on the train ride. They felt grown up being on their own!

Hannah had seen this Log-ride from afar and kept asking to go on it. Unfortunately as with most log-rides, there's a "scene" you go through on your way up to the top. This ride had a dragon that she wasn't too thrilled with and it kind of ruined her desire to be on the ride, of course, at that point, you're stuck. This is just as we're peaking over the crest to come down

Zoomed in a little. Daddy's excited of course, trying to encourage. Wish you could feel the death-grip she had on my hand! She later admitted that if it hadn't been for the dragon, she would have loved this!

Cailyn and I went on this airplane ride that you actually make it go up and down as it goes around...she thought it was awesome! (Little tribute here to Grandpa and Uncle Adam!)

Germany Part I

Hello everyone! Sorry that this has been so long in coming! For those that don't know, we were fortunate enough to be in Germany for the last couple of weeks. Our company had some meetings scheduled in South Germany, which was awesome. We had the opportunity to stay after for a week with some dear friends of ours and just hang out. We took over 1300 photos, which we will not be posting obviously, but over the next few days we'll be sharing some of the best pics and stories from our trip!

The first batch is from where we stayed in Southern Germany. It's a town just north of the Austrian border, which means ALPS! My friend reminded me that these were just the foothills of the Alps, but nevertheless, our view was incredible!

View from our conference room...how could we concentrate??

City where our conference was held

One day, two of my friends snuck away from the conference.

We all just loved this house perched on a hill surrounded by tall peaks.

I'd snapped this picture thinking I'd gotten just a nice scenery shot with a neat historical building. Then I learned something cool...that building was actually built by Hitler to house and train SS officers