September and October

Considering I spent most of September updating the blog with all our summer events and then it took me all of October to post about our European vacation, I didn't want time to go by without acknowledging some of the day to day stuff that happened in September and October.  

I decided to get involved with sewing and give it a try.  I figured what better time to learn then while living here.  My friend Laura wanted to give it a try too so we signed up for a beginner quilting class together. Before the beginner class began, we gave sewing a shot and attempted to make an applique beach bag. Hmmm... considering we'd never operated a machine, heck... I don't even own a machine, the one I was using was borrowed, we were a little over our heads.  We did both make a pin cushion and got half way through our plastic beach bag, making some flip flops and cutting out our bag.  Unfortunately, both Laura and I went on vacations when the beginner class actually started and ended up missing some classes and were told it was in our best interest to come back the next class sessions.  Looks like we'll try and start, again, in January.  I'm super excited about this potential new hobby and am hopeful to learn something!  

Gavin's school held Culture Day where all the students were asked to dress up in something that represented their culture and country.  I received the letter the day before and didn't have time to come up with something, but did send Gavin to school in a GAP shirt that had the American Flag emblem through the letters.  When I arrived to his classroom to help usher the kids to the parade I found Gavin dressed in a US Post Man outfit from his class's dress up bin.  Um. Okay.  US Postal Man it is, then.  The parade was cute and there were over 32 countries represented from his school- pretty cool!

We celebrated Delia being with us for one year!  She has been such a HUGE blessing in our lives and we love her soooooo much!!

Since we are leaving for the USA mid November and returning right before Christmas, we decided to decorate our house early for Christmas so we could enjoy our decorations and not have to set everything up days before Christmas.  The boys were a huge help to us putting all the ornaments on the tree.  Miles was amazed at all the shiny balls that kept coming out of the boxes and Gavin enjoyed placing them all over the tree.  

 

 

I found this idea on Pinterest to make a felt Christmas tree and allow your kids to decorate the tree with felt ornaments and presents and it be used as a way to prevent them from messing with your real tree and ornaments.  It has been a HUGE success in this house.  I let Gavin stay up one night after the little ones went to sleep and Brooks was at basketball.  He helped cut out the ornaments and glue the designs on them.  He placed the star on top and presents underneath.  Miles has fun taking the ornaments on and off the tree.  Even Brooklyn has had some fun ripping them off the tree.  

 

My group of girl friends last year decided we were going to have girls nights once a week since our husbands get basketball nights.  Sometimes we're able to make it work and sometimes we tend to get together during the day when all the kids are in school, but one week we took off and had dinner at Applebee's.  We were there for hours and even ordered desserts.  It was such a fun night talking and laughing.  It was also our last get together before our friend Heather had her baby.  

A week in October Gavin's school was closed for a week due to a national holiday called Eid and Miles play school was also closed.  It just so happened Miles and Brooklyn both got sick during this time with a nasty cold infection running fever for days and then Delia was out for the week due to various circumstances.  I was on my own with some sick and tired kids.  It was a really, really loooooong week.  I came downstairs one morning to find the bathroom like this and none other then Miles Lee on top of the kitchen counter, which he can now climb onto without the help of a stool, and helped himself to a few bananas, a bag of M&M's, a pack of gum, emptied Brooks' water bottle on the floor, and managed to open that bag of sugar and pour it onto the counter.  Nice.  All before 6:30am.

 

By the end of the week we were all hanging on by a thread.  We did manage to do a few fun things when everyone was feeling good.  

I heard Gavin calling me from outside and when I went to the door here's where I found him.  

 

Of course, if one gets to do something the other one has to do it, too! Miles got a turn!

 

Sometimes, we find Gavin asleep on the couch.  We have no idea when he went down stairs or how long he's been asleep down there.

Our Thursday morning watching cartoons.  They are too cute.

Switzerland

After visiting the Castle from my previous post and enjoying a delicious meal at a local restaurant and grabbing some gelatos on our way out of Fussen, we began our drive to Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.

Once again, we were misinformed regarding the time it took to get to our hotel.  After stopping for gas and learning that they only took Euros and not credit cards, we left Brooks' passport with the clerk, drove back to Fussen (we were 20 minutes outside of town), found an ATM, retrieved money, drove back to the gas station, paid for our gas.  It started raining.  It rained hard.  I started getting car sick.  So I slept.  Brooks woke me up around 10pm.  He drove and drove and drove.  We talked. We laughed.  We talked and laughed some more.  We did everything we could to keep one another awake so we could make it to our hotel that night.  Believe me we considered several times stopping at a hotel and just finishing our drive the next day. Around 2am we made it to Lauterbrunnen.  The town was empty.  We were THE ONLY CAR driving on the roads.  Every place had their lights off.  Nothing was opened.  I started to panic when we couldn't find our hotel, but quickly located the phone number to call.  Thank goodness someone answered the phone and came out to the main road to greet us and show us where to turn off to reach our hotel (literally, the hotel lobby's weren't even open).  We unloaded our car, the kids, got into our room and settled, and had everyone asleep by 3am.  We were exhausted.

We woke up, ate breakfast, then headed to our first stop in Switzerland, Jungfraujoch, The Top of Europe.   The only way to get to the top was to take two train rides that took about 2 hours.  The boys were BEYOND excited to ride on a train and get their tickets stamped.  Gavin asked if we were on The Polar Express.  Everyone did great traveling on the trains and enjoyed the scenery.  Well, actually, on this day it was cold, rainy, and cloudy.  We were hopeful it wouldn't be like that all day.  We were wrong.  We made a stop in the middle of our journey to see some summits, but couldn't see past 10 feet out of the viewing windows.  That was a glimpse of what was to come.  We continued on the train ride and made it to the top of the mountain. There is an observatory and platform for you to gain the entire view over looking Junfraujoch.  Let's just say all we saw were the poles and fence that outlined the observatory platform.  The Top of Europe offers sledding and tubing, both which were not available.  There were some indoor activities we got to enjoy while being at The Top, including a restaurant, which had some of our favorite meals!!  Even though we weren't able to enjoy all the views of being at The Top of Europe, we still had some fun and played in the snow, even if it was a blizzard!  Some day, we'll be able to remind our kids they were there and stood on that mountain and made snowballs with their daddy!  Once we made it back down the mountain and to our little town, we let everyone take naps- we were extremely tired from the day and traveling the day before.  We ended up eating dinner at our hotels restaurant and were in for a special treat!  They catered to the kids, which allowed for Brooks and I to enjoy our meal, we ordered cheese fondue, and ate some delicious fish, and yummy desserts!  The kids got fun ice creams and colored in coloring books!  It was a fun filled day!

 

Train Ride

Brooklyn and I stayed inside the building while the boys played in the blizzard.  

He was cold!

Check out the snow falling off the mountain behind Gavin.

They had so much fun playing in the snow... although it only lasted about 10 minutes!

Out on the observatory deck

Gavin found some animals to ride

Our second full day in Switzerland we prayed for better weather and got it!  It was THE PERFECT DAY to take a trip up to Piz Gloria which is located on the summit of Schilthorn.  You may have heard of it from the 007 movie, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".  We planned to do breakfast in the revolving restaurant and take pictures of the surrounding mountains, and just take in the amazing sights!  It was such a fun day for us.  We took a gondola ride up to the train station, then took a train up to a local town that is operated by trains alone (no cars are allowed up there), then we took another gondola ride up to the summit, where we spent a majority of our time.  The weather was cold, but it wasn't rainy so that was a HUGE plus for us.  The kids never complained about the weather and just played with the snow!  One of the funnest parts of our day was watching Miles realize that the restaurant was essentially spinning.  It took him a while to figure out what was going on, but it was too cute!  The views on Schilthorn were breathtaking!! We were so grateful to not be battling rain and snow.  The boys played their little hearts out making more snow balls and trying to hit Brooks with them. Brooklyn got to soak up the sun and was all smiles throughout the morning!

Like I said, the views were breath taking and absolutely amazing!  We could have stayed at the top of that summit for hours.








Since it was our last full day in Switzerland, we wanted to take full advantage of all the time we had left and decided to let the little ones take naps in the stroller instead of going back to our hotel room like we did the day before.  We spent some time in a small town called Murren and walked around some but most of the stores and places were closed.  We did get to see lots of mountains and fresh springs throughout the area.   We took our last train ride and gondola ride back down to the town we were staying in and went sight seeing in the town.  We found a cute little shop and bought some souvenirs to remember our time in Switzerland.  We now own a cuckoo clock, which is a HUGE hit in our house, and several swiss army knives that Brooks will give to our kids when they are old enough.  After doing some shopping, we walked down to the local water fall and learned that you can hike up to an area under neath it.  Brooks and I were up for the challenge and off we went.  Don't let me fool you... there were man made stairs that we followed up that had railings on one side, then a tunnel to go through before walking up more stairs until we got to the waterfall.  It was a neat experience and the kids did great.  There were so many stairs we put Miles down and let him walk up it himself.  He was so proud!  At the bottom of the waterfall were a group of sheep and Miles was enthralled with them.  He tried so hard to feed them some grass and he kept calling them out yelling, "sheep".  It was precious and a fun thing for him.  It started raining on our walk back from the waterfall so we decided to head back to our hotel and do dinner there again.  We loved the food that much and we loved that we didn't have to drive anywhere for dinner.  We knew the kids would be taken care of, plus we had a lot of packing to do that night since we were leaving for the airport the next morning.  We ordered more fondue, this time their meat and potatoes special and it was really, really good!  Our evening was relaxing and the perfect way to end our trip!

                                                                    

Every where we went, Gavin kept finding animal statues

                                             

The next day, we left our hotel early.. so early the front desk wasn't even open yet, it was dark outside, and once again, we were the only car on the road in that small town.  We had an extremely eventful trip to the airport, with me getting sick, but I'll spare you all the details. The best news was that the kids did awesome traveling and flying back to Saudi.  Once you fly 16 hours with 3 young kids, no flight under 10 hours is a big deal at all.   

We had an awesome vacation and enjoyed every minute of it.  Going to Europe and visiting the different countries is one of the things we looked forward to getting to do while living on this side of the world!  It was a great experience to finally get the opportunity to spend some time together as a family and experiencing new things.  Now that we know we can travel with 3 little kids, make things work, and have fun visiting new places we have several more trips in the works and we're so looking forward to them!

Neuschwanstein Castle

We checked out of our hotel in Austria and began our drive back to Germany.  We planned to stop in Fussen, Germany and visit the famous Neuschwanstein Castle before we headed to Switzerland.  We were mis-informed on how long it takes when driving from point A to point B and our trip took a LOT longer then we expected.  We also battled rain the entire drive, which caused more traffic and slower driving time.  Eventually, we decided to stop at a McDonalds to grab some food for the kids, since we still didn't know how long it would take until we reached the castle and I'm so glad we did that.  After everyone ate lunch, went to the bathroom, stretched their legs, we were on a mission to get to Fussen and we only had 2 hours until the ticket office at the Castle was going to close.  I'll spare you all the details about the panic Brooks and I felt (since this was our only opportunity to visit the castle) or how we rushed to find a parking spot, didn't have cash, had to find an ATM, then pay for parking, get dropped off, and run into the ticket office literally 3 minutes before they closed.    Thank goodness!  We got our tickets, went back to our car, got everyone into their rain gear, the little ones into the carriers and started our hike.  Generally, there is a 30 minute walk up to the castles, but we found a bus and hitched a ride.  It dropped us off in an area and then we had a 10 minute walk up to the Castle.  Of course, it was raining off and on so we were toting around the kids, umbrellas, our bags, etc.  What a fun walk we had (enter sarcasm here).  

We made it up to this bridge that was built across the way where you can walk on it and get a view of the castle.  The castle is beautiful and it's even more beautiful seeing it with all the scenery, too.  We went on the bridge and attempted to take a family picture.  Between the rain, the crowded bridge, being HIGH above a valley, we made our trip on the bridge quick.. You can tell how thrilled we were to be on it in one of the pics below.  In all seriousness, it was an amazing place to visit and I'm so glad it worked out for us to tour the castle.  It was built by King Ludwig II starting in 1869 and built over 60 years, however it was never completely finished.  King Ludwig II was only able to live in the castle for 172 days before his mysterious death. This is the castle that Walt Disney used to design the Cinderella Castle.  I promise, it's beautiful!  We were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, but enjoyed the informative tour filled with lots of information.   

After our tour, the only way to our car was to hike down the mountain.  We took the opportunity to relax on the walk and just soak up the huge trees and scenery.  Until it started raining.  It rained the entire walk down.  We entertained the kids by singing songs and attempting to skip some, but after a while, we were all just done.  We were exhausted.  Brooks and I were hurting from carrying Miles and Brooklyn the whole time.  We were hungry and we were wet.  This day was by far our most draining day.

King Ludwig's father also had a castle nearby.  We didn't tour it, but got a pic of it.