Dresden, Die Basteibruecke, and the Freiburg Temple Open House

After Tropical Paradise, we headed over to Dresden.  What a beautiful city!  It was fascinating, to see the church that Elder Uchtdorf mentioned in his talk.  The one that had been destroyed in the bombings, and had been restored, but still had some of the blackened stones throughout it's structure. So cool.  We really enjoyed Dresden.  

We then drove to the Basteibruecke.  A huge rock bridge in the middle of a gorgeous forest and overlooking a lake.  I nearly died of anxiety while there (fear of heights and especially of my children  being up high).  In fact, I unintentionally rubbed off on Sawyer, who was even more anxious than I was and we had to talk him down several times.  But it really was beautiful!!

And finally, we were able to visit the Freiburg temple during it's open house!  It had been under renovation for the last while.  Another bonus--we ran into Sister Samantha Ellis while we were there--she was serving her mission in Berlin and got to be there for the Open House.  And of course, we took a picture in front of our wedding picture that just happens to be hanging in the visitor's center there (my uncle Sigi had a hand in that one :) ).  It was a pretty great trip, and it was special to take our kids through their first temple.  

Sawyer dropped a shoe...

Tropical Paradise

Ok confession--I am writing this blog 2 yrs after it actually happened.  But the good thing is, I can attest to how awesome this experience was, because my kids (especially Violet), still claim it as one of their favorite places ever!  Tropical Paradise is an indoor water park that was built inside of an old blimp hangar.  It was freezing outside actually (randomly a super cold week in August), but inside was truly tropical.  We didn't really know how cool it was going to be before we got there.  They even have hotel rooms inside!  Had we realized how awesome it was, we would have booked sooner so that we could stay inside!  We arrived there around noon (if I remember right), and we stayed till almost midnight!  We all had a blast!  And I remember Nate and I thinking, that it was one of the first vacations with just our little family, where we felt like we kind of got a glimpse of our future as best friends, and not just parents & kids!   

Berlin

After leaving the Brandt's, we headed for Berlin.  We decided to spend our one day there doing the hop on-hop off bus tour.  It worked out great!  We had a little bit of a guided audio tour, but also had the freedom to come and go as we pleased.  It was really fun to explore Berlin and all of the history there.

Hamburg and the Brandt Family

In August we went on a trip that began in Hamburg, at my dear cousin Jenny's house!  We had a great couple of days with the Brandt family.  They took us to see the city of Hamburg, and we went on a little boat ride on a river.  They didn't offer life jackets to the kids (which was kind of surprising to us, because in the states it would have been a requirement!)...so we asked about them and Jenny said, we're fine!  We don't need them!  Of course, 20 min later, Sawyer was goofing off and totally fell in the water.  I panicked for a second, not sure if he could swim or not.  But he did a great job swimming back to the boat.  Poor kid then sat in his sopping wet clothes for the rest of the ride (and it was windy and chilly!).  His sisters were whining the whole way back, but he was a champ and didn't complain one bit.  

Another day, Nate encouraged us all to go visit Miniature World.  The kids (and Nate) loved it!

We also made it up to the coast one afternoon.  The kids had a great time finding these washed up jelly fish (that were non-stinging ones).