Ten birds with one blog!

So things are complete chaos...but I thought I would throw a few cute pics up that otherwise wouldn't make it!

This is my favorite picture of Ava lately!

You can't really tell but Christian has pulled himself up in this picture. He is only on his knees, but he stands too. He just started crawling on Sunday. He just all of the sudden went across the whole room.
Yes, we did have Thanksgiving, way back when.
Ava's favorite new game...hide and seek.

We did put up our Christmas tree and it only got about half of our homemade ball ornaments on it because they took us about an hour each...good idea Martha Stewart!

2nd Annual Gingerbread House Competition...pyro style?

Christian had spaghetti last night for the first time. He was so funny, I had to take some pis.

Go Cougs!

YAY for BYU Women's Volleyball...sweet 16! They beat the #6 team to get there. This is the last year that any of the girls I played with are still there (sad, I'm old) so I feel some attachment. Congrats girls and good luck this weekend!

Advice from your shoe rack...

Looking for shoes for a 2 year old...what are your favorite places?

...coming to town...

YES, I am headed to Utah for Christmas. I come the 14th...let the party planning begin! If you are reading this, I am sure I would love to see you!

Sweet Surprise!

Tyler made my day when this came in the mail for an early Christmas surprise...



I LOVE Willowtree figures and now I have a very large set! Thanks Ty, I love it!!

After a long airplane ride we are finally home! We had a wonderful time in Europe, but of course it is nice to be home. Southern Germany made for some nice family time with Tyler not working. It was absolutely freezing for us. It was kind of funny, we just came to expect the cold. We got in Saturday night and when we woke up on Sunday out of habit we bundled ourselves up for church with sweaters and coats. When we got home the sun was shining and we were sweating to death. So California is a warm place...who knew? It has taken me a few days to actually realize that I need to wear short sleeves or I will be real hot!

Anyway, the next few posts have some pics from our trip. The rest can be found on our smugmug site the password is Fish.

A sad day in Dinklebahl...

My favorite little place in Germany was this little city called Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber. We spent the last few days after Tyler finished work driving down into Southern Germany and the Alps. Wow the German countryside is amazing. Well our first stop was in Rothenburg o.d.t. It was a walled city, completely picturesque. In fact, we spent the night there and in the morning we went out walked around the city and Tyler (who is getting very good with our camera) took the most amazing pictures of our kids and of the city. I was so excited for them. Well, later that day we headed down the Romantic Road to Munich. First stop, Dinklebahl. An unfortunate mishap occurred in this place. We lost ALL the pictures that were currently on our camera...wipe tear. We were so sad that it literally ruined our experience in Dinklebahl. So we continued on down the Romantic Road.

The beautiful German Countryside.

We drove all the way down to the Neuschwanstein castle, aka Cinderella's castle which was awesome. It is right at the base of the Alps. It snowed on us, so we woke up that morning and first went shopping at any little place we could find to get hats, gloves, coats...we were not used to that freezing weather. Here are my favorite of the pics we took...

The most beautiful emerald river.

Ava loved eating the snow...yummy.

Carriage ride to the castle.

London

My other sister Amanda and her family are living in London for about 6 months so I was able to go and visit her while I was there also. London was great. Unfortunately, all my pics from London were deleted too. But here are the highlights of the trip...

A day in London with all 6 kids (my 2, Amber's 2, and Amanda's 2) a pregnant sister, my BIL and other sister. We went on the London Eye...I had really good pics of this :( Then we just kind of walked around to different places.

The next day my 2 sister's and I went into London without kids while my superstar BIL watched 5 kids (we took Christian) and did I mention they are all 3 and under. This was so fun though. We went to the Tower of London and walked around a few other places then went shopping. We went to Marylebone Street, which was fantastic. I loved ALL the shops we went into. I highly reccommend it to anyone in London. There was this little vintage store called Cath Kidston. You could get the cutest bags and random stuff there. It also sold fabric that was adorable. Anyway we loved shopping here, it was darling!

Our next and last day there we went into the city, went to Harrod's and saw there Christmas stuff. They create this Christmas store within the department store that sells all sorts of darling Christmas stuff. I loved it. The we went to Mass at Westminister Abby.

London is great city. Thanks Amanda and Clark we had tons of fun. Ava misses her cousins already!

A week in Prague

If you have never been to Prague, you are definitely missing out! It is a beautiful, old city that was not destroyed by the war. Lucky for me, my sister happens to live there. I packed the kids up, left Ty to work in Frankfurt and headed for a week of fun. We weren't too adventurous since I have been there before and between the two of us we would have been toting around 4 kids. So we did a few things downtown and had a blast just hanging out.

Ava and Anna looking at Prague castle from Charles Bridge.
We took the kids for a carriage ride around old town square.
The Zoo.




We were there for Halloween, luckily or my kids wouldn't have had one. Amber let us borrow a few dress up things for our costumes.
The kids were so funny. We carved pumpkins and had these little ones for decorations. We went out one night and left the kids with a babysitter and came home to them each sleeping with a baby pumpkin. It was so funny. We could just imagine the girls talking the babysitter into letting the sleep with them (like it was something there mom's would never let them do).

Thanks Ambs we had a ton of fun!

Weekend Trips

We try to take advantage of the weekends with Ty off work. Last weekend we went to Weisbaden and had a wonderful and relaxing day in a nice city, seeing a few sites and hanging out at the park. Then we went to church here, which was a lot bigger than I expected. Then we walked around Frankfurt since Tyler had not been able to see it yet. Here are a few pics from last weekend.

Downtown Frankfurt

Funny German!
Obviously Ty is taking all the pictures!

Then yesterday we went to Heidelberg. We loved this little town. We were able to see a lot more country and it is beautiful right now with the leaves changing color. Here are a few pics from that.

Ava looking cute all bundled.
We've discovered Christian is "All Boy", he loves to get dirty.
There was a fabulous market in the center of town...fruits and veggies, meats, cheeses, flowers, and the yummiest "steak" sandwich ever. (I say "steak" because it was not what you and I might consider steak.)
I was freezing, so when I felt Christian, sweating in his coat, hat and gloves I stole his blanket for a few minutes :)
This half destroyed castle was amazing and enormous, not to mention up an incredibly steep hill.

There are more great pics on our website: www.kearlfamily.smugmug.com