Time to catch up (Part 2 of 2) (See part 1 below)

After our trip to Frankfurt and the Rhine River, we took another weekend outing and went to the awesome medieval town of Rothenberg ob der Tauber. Rothenberg dates back to the year 950 and has been incredibly well preserved and restored following WWII. There is a wall that stretches around the entire city and most of it includes a walkway where you can get a higher vantage point of the town.

Our hotel. One of the newer buildings in town, it was built in 1927.
Holly and Josh on our walk around the top of the city wall.
We visited the Crime Museum a.k.a. the Torture Museum
I have been told that Josh and I either accused of committing sexual sin or dirtying the environment. A couple of trouble makers if you ask me.
The Mask of Shame. I think this Torture, eh, I mean Criminal museum had some great ideas for dissuading criminals. Make someone walk around in this for a while and they'll think twice before committing that crime again.
Holly and the kids in the town square.
Super Josh and Maggie having a blast walking around the city wall.
A typical street in Rothenberg
Here are a couple of my "artistic" attempts

The weekend after our trip to Rothenberg was another three-day weekend and so we decided to fly down to Sardinia, Italy with a couple of friends from work to enjoy some R & R at the beach.

Josh and Maggie loved burying Mom in the sand.
Josh also loved being turned into Sharkman!

With our friends enjoying a delicious Italian dinner overlooking the harbor.

Here's the harbor at night
And here it is at dusk

It was a great trip and we enjoyed getting to know our new friends. As you can tell, we've been busy having a lot of fun here in Germany. I promise, I do work. However, we had four three-day weekends in a row and we tried to take advantage of them. Arrivederci!

Time to catch up (Part 1 of 2)

So it has been a whirlwind couple of months (not like the previous ones were any less so) and we have totally neglected our blogging audience. So here goes:

Frankfurt Castle and Rhine River Cruise

After moving into our house (see last entry) we decided to get out and see a little bit of Germany. Our first real outing was to go up to Frankfurt on a Friday evening to see a nearby castle, stay the night with my Dad and Julie and then wake up Saturday to take a Rhine River cruise with my dad, Julie, and Grandma Haycock. The kids loved being on the boat and seeing the other boats and castles. We probably saw a dozen or so castles during a couple hour cruise down the river. Here are some of the highlights from the weekend.

Josh was excited to meet his first "real" knights. Notice that Josh dressed up appropriately for the occasion.

Sir Joshua (officially knighted at the castle) and his best buddy, Grandpa.

Some of the beautiful scenery from our cruise:





Here are some bonus pics from our "cruise":



At the end of the cruise we arrived in the village of St. Goar where we took a tour of the amazing Rheinfels Castle. Josh, as usual, was the biggest fan of the castle. He and Grandpa spent most of their time exploring all the nooks and crannies of the castle in search of dragons. Fortunately for us, all the dragons they found were already locked up behind closed door. The first few pictures are of the train/shuttle ride up the mountain to the castle.

Coltonhaus

Willkommen zu unserem Heim! Welcome to our Home!

We are so glad you could come. First things first, let us give you the grand tour. Come on in! We'll start on the first floor. Where you are standing now is our entry way. Our landlord lives downstairs, he has his own entrance around back, so we have this part of the house all to ourselves. On the main floor you will find the kitchen/dining room, living room, guest room and 1.5 bathrooms. Additionally, there are three bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms upstairs, we'll show you those in a minute.

As you walk through the door and take an immediate right, you come to a half-bath.

If you next walk straight in from the door, you will enter our kitchen/dining room.

First is the kitchen looking from the dining room.

Next is the diningroom looking from the kitchen. This is much bigger than we need for a dining room so we are thinking that we will put the kitchen tabel on the right and our computer desk on the left. Now, you may be wondering what kind of view we will be enjoying as we sit at our table for dinner. Wonder no longer...
If you look at the picture of the dining room above, if you were to turn to the right you would have this balcony.
We are hoping to put a BBQ out here.

If you come back inside and turn walk through the dining room you will be able to turn left into the family room, right into a full bathroom, or continue straight into the your room (a.k.a. the guest room). Let's take a look at your room first.

Of course you'll have a bed. And from that bed you will have this view to enjoy when you wake up in the morning...

From your room and from the hallway there is access to the guest bathroom. You may have noticed that even the bathroom has a stunning vista out its window. This is definitely a loo with a view.

Walking out of your room and turning to your immediate right you enter the family room. This is where we plan on putting our couch and T.V.

Next we will go up stairs. This is a picture looking down the stairs from the second floor.

When you walk up the stairs and turn left you will see the two kids' rooms, the one to the left is the biggest (first picture) then one to the right (second picture). Josh will be in the room on the left and the room on the right will be used as a nursery for Maggie now and for any future kids (no, we're not announcing anything).


If you go straight from the top of the stairs you will run into two bathrooms next to each other, the master bath (first picture) and the kids bathroom, a half-bath (second picture).


And finally, we enter the master bedroom. It is much bigger than we expected. We heard from multiple sources that we would likely not be able to find a house that would fit our King mattress so we decided to bring a Queen instead. Moral of the story... could have brought the King. Oh well.

Since I've shown you the views from every other room, I can't pass up showing you the views from our room. Along with the same back views other rooms in the house enjoy, we have a french patio on the side of the house looking out on this...


Well, we hope you have enjoyed the tour of our home and we hope to be able to show it in person to as many of you as possible. If you've ever wanted to come to Germany, now's the time! We hope to see you again soon!