Saturday, April 30, 2011

The first lawn-mowing of the year.  Let the fun begin!

Friday, April 29, 2011

Tonight was the Young Men/Young Women Ball that we've been preparing for since February.  I've been teaching the YM/YW some ballroom dancing every Wednesday for the last couple of months, and tonight we had the big party with all the kids and their parents.  It was actually really fun!

Here are all the kids ready to dance our Mambo routine.  A couple of the boys really wanted to learn Mambo (I know - boys?!?), so I put together a simple routine that we performed for the parents.  I really enjoyed dusting off my old choreography skills, and I think the kids liked it, too.  (The girl in the wheelchair had a starring role, believe it or not)

Afterward, they gave me this ginorm bouquet of flowers.  Isn't it awesomely huge?

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Look what our stake president brought back for me from his recent business trip to America.  Yeah.  It's the big bottle.

Pres. R is a beautiful, beautiful man.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I came home with 10 days-worth of laundry to do and found that my dryer is broken.  Joy.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

You know those super cute blog posts your friends make with pictures of their kids coloring eggs, finding coordinating Easter baskets, and dressed to the nines in their new Easter clothes?  

Yeah, well, this isn't one of those.

This year, the Easter bunny came on Monday night, since we were on our trip on Easter and everyone knows the Easter bunny cannot hop onto a cruise ship.  So, this morning the kids flew around the living room finding the candy the good bunny brought.  The entire hunt lasted about a minute and a half.  And, since I can't find the Easter baskets, we used the Halloween buckets.

I know.  You can just say it.  

Lame.

Wednesday - at sea

Wednesday was a travel day, so we spent all day on the ship.  We slept in, swam in the pool, and later the kids watched Tangled in their cabin.  It was a very relaxing, restful day.

That night, the show included the same singers and dancers from the night before, as well as a couple called The Silver Duo.

These guys painted themselves silver and did a series of slow-moving, death-defying poses.  Their freak-of-nature strength and balance was truly impressive.

The guy slowly stood up while holding the girl aloft with one hand. 

It was pretty cool. . .and a little strange.

Pre-cruise anticipation

On Friday night, we left Berlin to drive down to Italy.  We were scheduled to board our cruise ship on Sunday in Savona Italy, so we drove Friday night and all day Saturday to get there.  On the way, we went through Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Italy.  Whew!

The car was pretty crammed with everything we'd need for a week.

Liechtenstein is a little - and by little, I mean tiny - country by Switzerland.  The reason you don't see Jessica and Luke in this picture is because they were asleep in the car.  They slept through the whole half hour it took for us to drive through Liechtenstein.

From the highway, we could see this castle on the hill.  Brad was here as a missionary, so he knew that this is the official castle where the royal family of Liechtenstein still lives.

We took a 20 minute detour to drive up next to the castle.  I kept thinking it was so weird that Liechtenstein is still its own country.  It is so very small, and I can't imagine that it makes much difference whether it is Liechtenstein or Switzerland.  Liechtensteinians must be very stubborn people.

After staying Saturday night in a little hotel in Savona (with the smallest parking garage you've ever seen - I am still impressed that Brad was able to wedge our car out of there) we boarded the Costa Serena on Sunday afternoon.

We had two cabins, and the kids quickly determined that the window sills were the coolest places to be.  Throughout the week, we'd often find one of the kids sitting in the sill behind the curtains, watching the water go by.  Pepper especially liked sitting there wrapped up in his blanket.

Anyone who's been on a cruise before knows that food is a major part of the fun.  Here we are at dinner Sunday night, getting ready to eat our seven course meal.  Well, except for Adam and Luke.  They both had hot dogs (??).

Monday, April 25, 2011

Today, we finished our drive home through Germany, which means one thing to Brad - Autobahn!  Brad loves to drive as fast as he can on the unlimited speed stretches, which in our car is 210 km/hr.  We had to get a photo of the speedometer - probably not the safest idea when we're going that fast...

Sunday, April 24, 2011 - Schwabach

On Sunday morning, we disembarked the ship (sad) and started the long drive home.  After driving all day, we stopped for the night in Schwabach, Germany.  There is a little Holiday Inn there that we have stayed at many times on our way to other places, but we've  never been there early enough to explore the town of Schwabach itself.  Tonight, however, we arrived around 6 p.m., so Brad and I took a little walk around the Altstadt.  It was DELIGHTFUL!

 This statue was by the big old church, and the plaque said he is Adolph von Henselt, a composer.  I don't really care much about him, but I had to get a photo of his crazy eyes.  Freaky!

This Easter display was set up in the middle of the town square.  How cute is that!

Basically, I decided that discovering adorable Schwabach was Destiny's way of letting me down easy after a week of awesome sight-seeing and fun.  It was a nice bonus to an already perfect trip!

Saturday, April 23, 2011 - Aix de Provence

On Saturday, we docked in Marseilles, France.  Brad, Jess, Pep, and I all donned the blue ponchos again for a rainy excursion through Aix de Provence, the city not far from Marseilles where Paul Cezanne is from.  Our guide told us that Aix has beautiful weather 360 days a year - we were unlucky enough to visit there on one of the five days that were crummy.  Oh well.

Part of the old city wall.

The cathedral in Aix.

You can see that the statues have no necks.  Our guide said that during the French Revolution, revolutionaries beheaded the old statues all over France.  Many cathedrals have headless statues today, but in Aix the heads were kept and eventually reattached to the statues.  But, the necks are gone.

 

This baptismal font is in the oldest part of the cathedral.  Our guide told us that in the early years of the Catholic church, they practiced baptism by immersion, just like Christ was baptized by John the Baptist.  She made a big deal about what a nice tradition that was.  I couldn't help but agree!

Trudging through the wet streets of Aix, we got to see lots of old mansions and squares:

 

 Paul Cezanne is from Aix and is now their claim to fame.  But when he was alive, nobody there thought he was any good.  There are only three of his paintings in Aix today.

One good thing about the lousy weather was that it was just chilly enough to warrant a cup of hot chocolate at a little French cafe.  Délicieux!

Once we were all back on the ship, we went to the chocolate bar.  Jessica had been dying to try it all week.  You can see that things got a little goofy.

Luke did NOT want to try the chocolate-covered strawberry.  Finally, I convinced him to take a timid little bite, and of course he gobbled it all up.  I think he'll trust me more next time!

We were all sad that tonight was our last night in the fancy dining room.  After a fun-filled week, none of us wanted to leave the next day!

Here is our super cute waiter Elmer.  He took great care of us all week.

The last show of the night made me laugh hysterically to myself.  If any of you are fans of Arrested Development, you will understand why I kept thinking of Gob during this guy's magic show.

His version of the Aztec Tomb.

"It's the final count-down...!"  

(Sorry.  I think Gob has ruined all magicians for me.)

Such a fun family vacation!  Good-bye Costa Serena!