Trier & Kinderspiel!

Being as I was sick the first part of the week, our original plans spread out over the course of the week leading up to my mom's departure were thrown off track. The problem was, I couldn't not go to any of the places we'd planned to! So we squeezed it all into her last two days with us. Thursday we went to Bischwiller, France, and on Friday we went to Trier and met up with Misha and Kristin.

I had to take The Instigator to work so that we would have the car, but he went in a little later than usual, so we didn't get as early of a start as I would have liked. Thankfully, Trier is only about 20 minutes away! I've only been to Trier once before (about a year ago) when I met up with a friend (and German native) from the Harry Potter knitting swap (HSKS) I'm a part of. My only goal at that time was to find the massive, 3-story craft store; and since there was snow everywhere last year and I had Batman with me, sightseeing was not exactly on the priority list. All I did on the last visit was pick up Yvonne from the train station, find the craft store, have a snack at a cafe (where I opened my package from her, as she was my spoiler for that round of HSKS), take her back to the train station and go home. This time, however, I went as a complete and total tourist! LOL

House of the Three Magi (Dreikonigenhaus)

Porta Nigra from the direction of Hauptmarkt

Passing through Porta Nigra

Porta Nigra from the "outside" of the old Roman city limits

Hauptmarkt Square and St. Gangolf Church

Batman & Superman checking out the Lego display in a store window

Mom and the boys at St. George's fountain in Kornmarkt

St. Gangolf's Church

Grave markers at St. Gangolf's Church

Unfortunately, we didn't get to seeing any more of Trier because of a combination of two pairs of little legs, shopping that my mom needed to get done for everyone back home, and still needing to meet up with my friends down in Kaiserslautern. (Which just means I'll have to go back another time! :D )

After leaving Trier (where I found a pair of winter boots for me!), we had about 30 minutes to get to Kinderspiel (an indoor play area in Kaiserslautern) to be there on time. Luckily, I figured ahead of time that we'd run behind (and warned Kristin & Misha of that the night before, lol), so the fact that it actually took us an hour to get there wasn't too big a deal. For dinner, though, I wanted to get Schnitzel at Kinderspiel...but they were out! :( Sad panda. But the kids had a blast and mine were upset when we had to leave (they were closing! LOL), and we all ended up going to base at Ramstein and met up for dinner there after mom & I took the boys on a detour to a local grocery store so she could get some German chocolate and kuchen to take home with her. Then it was time to come back home...

Strolling Through Spangdahlem

I am finally over whatever that stomach/flu/virus thing was that took me down! I actually didn't have it as long as the boys did, so I should be grateful for that at least...

We didn't end up really going anywhere today, though, because after my middle-of-the-night wake-up last night, I went back to bed and crashed HARD! The Instigator woke me enough to ask me if I was going to need/want the car today, but I was so out of it, that it was pretty well out of the question. Instead, I slept until noon. I evidently needed it, though, because when I woke up at lunch time, I was able to eat and shower and feel pretty much my normal self.

I do feel bad, though, that half of my mom's vacation has been spent home-bound (when she's wanted to come to Germany since she was little, and this is her first time overseas!) because we were all a bunch of sickies. So once the boys were dressed (they go about the house half dressed ALL the time...it must have something to do with making for a quicker changing time when they need to don their superhero outfits... ;) ), we went for a walk around Spang-Town! :) And I do mean literally "around." We may not have walked the entire perimeter (we skimped by a couple streets due to short legs that went with us), but it was pretty darn close. :)

A & C walking towards the tower in the distance

The wall up by said tower

A close-up to show the detail on the wall

The tower that we saw from a distance turned out to be what appears as some sort of chapel...as it's right next to a cemetery. And it's a pretty new one, too. I saw dates of death as recent as 2006.

One of the headstones

Part of the cemetery overlooking the town

We walked from the cemetery on the hill down to the main street of the town and went all the way to the street where the church is (yes, "the," not "a"...Spangdahlem is too small for more than one church...and as best as I can tell, it even shares it's priest with 3 other towns!).

St. Nikolaus' church in Spangdahlem (taken by my mom)

Looking back at the church's bell tower above the rooftops of Spangdahlem

It was nice to get out of the house and walk around a bit (and the boys got to burn off some energy, too!)...now if only I could get to sleep tonight! Tomorrow's plans include a 3-hour drive (one-way!) to the town of Bischwiller, France, to see if/what we can dig anything up in the way of ancestral information. :D

Christmas Fun

Unfortunately, the couple of days leading up to Christmas, A & C were battling a stomach virus (which seems to invade a body and make them vomit over the course of a 48-hour period, back off for 24 hours and then rear it's head again one last time), which they passed on to The Instigator (he was sick on Christmas Day and the day following).

The boys' big gift was a Kinect system for the XBox (though it's not working properly...it won't find the floor...we'll try again once we get the stand or clip to put it on top of the television...). Santa left me Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and The Instigator got me Apple TV! :D

Then it was my turn to be sick. :(

Last time all 3 of my boys got sick, I got by without catching it myself. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky this time. And it ruined our travel plans a bit. We were supposed to go down to Bischwiller, France yesterday to see what we could track down about my mom's paternal grandfather's family (who immigrated to America from that town). Unfortunately, my bout with this stomach virus kept us home. I guess it worked out in favor of The Instigator, though, as today was his birthday, and this way he got his birthday meal (and cake!) on the day of instead of the day after his birthday (though he's not one to be a stickler for celebrating it on the day of...). But now we've been stuck in the house for 6 straight days (What a way for my mom to spend half of her vacation!!! I feel awful about that!), aside from the walk that my mom and A took (he showed her where his bus stop for school is), so maybe we can get out somewhere today...It's too bad I woke up at 2am! I don't know how long I'll make it today before needing a nap! I should probably get back to bed for a couple hours and see if The Instigator will let me drive him to work so I can have the car...

Here We Go A-Wandering...

After spending a day home-bound (which entailed a dusting of snow and the boys playing games with Grandma), my mom and I set out to see a bit of Germany. Our destination in mind was Mandersheid and it's castle ruins, but anything in between here and there was fair game. :)

While on our way to Mandersheid, we happened across something that I had seen signs for on the Autobahn and had been meaning to track down and see: Abtei Himmerod! As best I can tell, it's an active Abbey, but we only went into the little gift shop (where I got a schnitzel recipe book...It will be worth it to translate it to cook!) and the church part of the Abbey.

The facade of the chapel section of the Abbey

Nativity scene set up inside the Abbey

Close-up of the background of the Nativity (it's a painting of the Abbey!)

The organ in the Abbey's chapel

We continued on to Mandersheid, and got there only to discover that Neiderburg (the lower ruins) were closed. That didn't stop us, however, from going around and hiking up to Oberburg! (We got a nice view of Neiderburg from up there, too.)

View of Neiderburg on the hike up to Oberburg

Neiderburg and the Lieser(?) river running by

My mom at Oberburg, looking down upon Neiderburg

Me standing in front of Oberburg (and yes, my pant legs are rolled up...it was a muddy hike!)

Random tree-lined pathway off the road between Spangdahlem & Manderscheid

On our way back home, my mom's eye was caught by a random building in the town of Eichelhütte. Turns out it was a hotel! We went inside to try and find the cozy-looking restaurant we could see from outside, but had no luck. (I did, however, happen upon what appears to be an old yarn swift, used as decoration!)

But the building and setting were very pretty, so we wandered about and took photos until it got too dark to do so.

A fountain and the entrance to the hotel

Mini-windmill and swan on the pond behind the hotel

The pathway was literally the tree roots covered by dirt!

All-in-all, a laid back day, compared to the time spent in Frankfurt. (But then, the smaller places have a completely different feel to them. Much more relaxed.)

Willkommen, Oma!

Today was a very.....long.....day.

I knew I wasn't going to get to sleep in like I otherwise would on the boys' day off of school, but it was for a very good reason!!! :D I got to go pick up my mom from the airport!!!!!!! She flew all the way from Colorado to visit us in Germany and spend Christmas with us!!!!!!

When I had booked her ticket, the agent told me that she was getting in at 10:30, and so I planned accordingly. Two hour drive to the airport, plus extra time to get gas and such before hitting the road...I figured leaving at 8 am would be plenty of time (considering she had to go through customs and immigration) to get there to welcome her at the waiting area. Oh, how wrong I was...

It turns out that she was actually scheduled to land at 9:45, and not only that, when looking at the website, her flight was landing half an hour early!!!!!! It was already 7:45 at that point, the moment I should have been getting onto the Autobahn, and I still had to get dressed, get A dressed to go with me, get gas, put the destination into the GPS and everything! Once I had finally accomplished all that, the GPS told me that I had 3 choice for a route. I wanted to avoid the 2nd option, as there were construction warnings that way, and so of the two, I picked the one with the shortest drive time.

After about close to an hour into the drive (maybe 45 minutes), I got stuck behind a truck with flashing lights that blocked the way I needed, leaving me with only the option to turn left into the nearby town. He was setting up for a construction zone. It was so new that they didn't even have detour signs up! (That's what that truck was for!) So I went into the town and ignored my GPS while it told me to make U-turns, and it eventually got me on the path to go a different route. I was stuck on back roads going speeds far less than I would have been able to legally achieve on the Autobahn, and was already late. So naturally, the GPS had to take me to the second route. You know, the one with all the construction I was trying to avoid? Yeah, that one. And I got stuck behind a few more big trucks, to boot.

When I finally got to the airport, I parked in the first garage I came to, on the first open level I came to, in the first open space I came to! I was already super late and didn't want to waste time driving around looking for a space. It turns out I probably should have driven down a little bit further, as the spot I parked in was the furthest possible from the airport. A and I had to book it across the parking garage and into the airport. (He did really well in keeping up with me! I was impressed!)

Enter the next problem...I went into the wrong terminal. I've never picked anyone up from the Frankfurt airport before (and they didn't say on any of the signs on the road that Terminal 1 was departing terminal and that Terminal 2 was the incoming terminal). And I could not for the life of me find the way to get to the other terminal. After about an hour of walking around (including a jaunt outdoors, as I saw other people going that way), I finally was able to find the SkyRail to the second terminal. (A was thrilled to get to ride a train!!!!!!) At that point I was near panicking that my mom was going to think she was abandoned and I had no way to communicate with her, and she wasn't in the arrivals area. I went to the information desk and asked if they could page her. They sent me to the airline's ticket counter to make sure she came in on the flight (even though I already knew she had). That entailed another 5 minutes of walking and being sent to different people. They confirmed she came in and told me to go to the information desk and ask for her to be paged. (Isn't that just where I'd come from?!) They paged her, and A and I finally found her! (Two hours after she landed! Although, she had been stuck at immigration for an hour, so she didn't spend that ENTIRE time waiting for me...)

But the day wasn't over yet! We went further into Frankfurt and hit up the Christmas market. Finding parking was a long time in coming, and so I finally just pulled into an on-street spot that I found. (The parking garages had lines of cars to get in!) We walked around for a bit, came upon the Frankfurt Cathedral ...and in taking 3 photos came to realize that...I had forgotten my camera's SD card in my computer at home!!!!!!!!! I thought for sure I had an extra one in my purse at some point, so I looked, but I couldn't find it. :( (My camera won't take more than 5 photos with the internal memory...) So I only got about 3 photos while in Frankfurt. (I would post them, but Blogger is not recognizing my uploads for whatever reason, and I'm sick of trying to get it to work...) So we walked around the Christmas Market for a bit; mom & I shared some Schnitzel, A had a chocolate-covered soft pretzel, and after he dropped what was left of it on the ground when he tripped and fell, he was promised his choice of either another pretzel or ice cream (he chose the ice cream, also chocolate), we went down to the Römerberg Platz and past to the Main river before heading back to the car. Where I found a parking ticket on my windshield.

On the way back home, I was not about to repeat my earlier problems, so I went the third route, which took us all the way down to the Kaiserslautern/Ramstein area. I don't know why, but the GPS took us off the Autobahn, and we ended up driving around K-Town in rush hour traffic. By the time we got back onto the Autobahn and heading the right direction, it was already something like 6pm (an hour after A is used to having dinner), and he said he was hungry and had to go potty. So we got back off the Autobahn and had dinner on base at Ramstein! LOL Eventually, we got back home, Grandma in tow, and what do I find when I open my purse once in the house?.....an SD card I could have put into my camera. ::sigh::

Productive Day!

Whew! I was on a roll today! Whatever was bogging me down the past few weeks seems to have finally lifted, and after sleeping pretty much all day yesterday, I had a lot to make up for today! Then again, it could also be that it was kick started by The Instigator buying me this:

It's a wireless adapter for my desktop computer, as my PC doesn't have a wireless card in it. Which means....I was able to move my computer and desk into my craft room!!!!! I made the move just last night, and I am already ecstatic about it all! I also moved some more things from the old craft room downstairs to the new/current one on the main level of the house (the one that used to be the boys' toy room...until I booted them out of it and moved their toys upstairs to take over the space!). So today I was pretty busy setting up some of the stuff and organizing a bit...plus doing the everyday things like laundry and dishes and vacuuming and sweeping...

While on my little breaks from the cleaning, I worked on knitting on a Super Secret Christmas present (which I finished, and it is now blocking!), and browsed the Web. Shocker, right? Well, on Pinterest, I came across this nifty little tutorial on turning cereal boxes into magazine holders! So I gave it a go and did decoupage for the first time ever and came out with a perfect storing place for my recent comic book collection.

I'm pretty excited about it, and can't wait for the boys to finish off more cereal so I can make more for my knitting magazines! LOL

I also made a couple buttons for said Secret Knitting Project, which means playing with Sculpey for the first time since I moved from Italy (over a year ago)! That being said...I definitely am still not used to my non-gas oven! LOL (Though I definitely prefer it not gas!) Here are the buttons as they're baking:

All in all...a very productive day! I only have a couple more days to get ready for my mom's visit!!!

Giveaway for camera-lovers!

I know, I've not posted much lately...and I actually have a couple that I've been working on for the past couple weeks (things have been crazy around here!), but I wanted to share a blog (called "A Bowl Full of Lemons") that I came across via Pinterest...this lady has some great organization tips and printouts available to help make a schedule and/or routine (something I have a very hard time holding to, for as long as I can remember...), and while browsing her blog, I saw this giveaway! As a knitter, I love, love, love my Namaste knitting bags that keep my yarn-y things separate from my regular purse items, so I know that any friends I have that are into photography would feel the same about these Jo Totes that she is going through for her giveaway! Go get your name in the proverbial hat!!!