Nancy, France

We went to Nancy, France on Saturday!

We spent the day in the heart of Nancy.  It was beautiful.

We had to stop at our first pay bathroom.  Twenty euro cents to open the door.

We walked and came upon what looked like a mini-Champs Elysees.

The gates into the courtyard were amazing!

The Stanislas.  

We have been blessed with interacting with Germans that speak a little English.  We were not so lucky here in France.  We stopped at a restaurant to eat.  We thought they had pizza.  The waitress spoke NO English and we guessed at our order.  Imagine our surprise when quiche arrived instead of pizza! 

Ethan liked the quiche Lorraine and the tomato quiche.  

 After lunch, we found an amazing park called the Pepiniere!  The trees and flowers were gorgeous.  Everything was so green!  Lincoln was bound and determined to hang or climb in this tree!

 It was so big!  All four of us stretched our arms around it and were barely able to touch fingers!

 We found some climbing structures in the park!

 Ethan needed some encouragement from Daddy to jump across these things.  The other kids in the park were climbing and jumping.  Our guy was a little more cautious!

 BEST PARK EVER!  We found slushies and crepes!!

 Chocolate and Nutella Crepe!  DELICIOUS!

 This park was huge!  We also found mini-golf!!!

 This kid is so competitive.  When we finished, he asked Nate what the score was!  Nate told him he was not scoring the cards!  We are just having fun!

We spent a good five hours exploring Nancy, playing golf, playing on the playground, and eating!  Someone was a little tired at the end of the day and so were the kids!  haha!

Tour de France

We had high hopes of seeing some of the Tour de France on Saturday.  The tour made a stop in Tomblaine, which is about an hour and a half from us.  We spent all week kicking around if we should go or not.  We decided to give it a try, but if it didn't work we would just go the extra ten miles into Nancy, France.

 On the way, we noticed this bus.

 Followed by this car.  People were slowing down and honking at them!  We got super excited that we may just be able to follow them right into the heart of Tomblaine!

 We got closer and closer, and then we saw these cars!  About the time we saw these cars, we also lots of stopped traffic!  We quickly realized that our hopes of making it into Tomblaine were probably not going to happen.  A police car zoomed up on the shoulder and waved the Tour de France cars over to the shoulder so that he could give them an escort!  We, on the other hand, sat in stopped traffic for about twenty minutes.  

We got right behind one of the cars.  Look how tiny those seats are!!!  My behind hurts looking at them.  The wheels are so tiny, as well!  Maybe next year!!

Just bragging

This is the view from our back patio!  You can't see past the bush on the left, but there are two beautiful white horses grazing on some German grass!
 We have a huge weepy tree in the corner of the yard. The boys are always hiding under there.  So, I climbed under there with the kids today.  It was pretty cool under there!

 Does anyone know where Lincoln is?  We played that game all afternoon!

Ethan and I were playing soccer when crazy man came out with an enormous stick!  Of course, he found a sword!  It's Lincoln!!!

Happiness

 We bought the boys two soccer balls yesterday.   It's all Ethan ever wants.  A ball.  Any ball.  

 The problem is that he likes to structure play.  He likes to have rules and everyone has to follow them.....especially when playing ball.!  That is my nice way of saying "BULLYING!"

This little boy is sooo unstructured.  He would rather lay on the cow thingy or hunt for burried treasure in the sand box.  Our trip to the playground, to cool off, ended up unsuccesful!  Ethan was mad.  Lincoln was mad.  I was frustrated.....and maybe mad!

Fourth of July

We took full advantage of Nate's day off today!  We went SHOPPING!  On Tuesday, we move into the new house.  Our household goods will not be there, but we will be able to get some loaner furniture from the base.
We knew that our lamps and small household appliances would not work over here and we didn't want to run everything on a transformer, so we went to four big German stores and got pretty much everything we needed.
It was funny to go into the German stores and hear so many people speaking English.  I guess a lot of Americans had the same idea we did.
As we took the purchases to the new house, we noticed that Hermann and his wife were there working AGAIN.  They are putting so much energy into getting the house just right for us.  When he learned that we had two little boys, he decided to get new carpet upstairs instead of just cleaning it.
We bought the boys two balls to play with today.  As Nate and I started moving the stuff inside, I told the boys to go play.  We looked out the window and Hermann's wife was playing soccer with Ethan.
I am really excited about moving in on Tuesday!  I think we have two sweet landlords!!

Work

Nate started work today.  Since he was working, I thought we would all do a little work today.
PLUS, I am sick and tired of video games!  So, after finding their new school (which is right next to the commissary), we went and bought groceries (my work).
Then, once we got home, I busted out the school work books and the boys did some work.  Surprisingly, Link was the easy one!  I think it was easy for him because he and I have been doing this for a year.  Ethan threw the biggest fit when I pulled the MATH workbook out.  He loves math.  I even gave him an easy subtraction page.  Not sure why he was so mad.
While Lincoln and I worked on reading, I gave Ethan three choices:  read for 15 minutes, write a page on word about our trip, or send an email to a family member.  He chose the page on word.  Little does he know that he will have to do all three sometime this week.  I am so mean!  haha!

Aachen, Germany

 We went to Aachen, Germany today.  Achen has a very famous Cathedral.  It was a favorite of Charlemagne and was a popular place of king coronations.  The Dom (Cathedral) was gorgeous!

 Inside the gold boxes were the remains of King Otto I and Charlemagne.  

The fellas enjoyed loving on each other while we were looking around at everything.

 

We found this great little cafe outside the Dom.  They had the most amazing salad and pizza.  We ate GOOD this trip!

I wanted one more picture.  Little bit was getting cranky and tired of walking!  On the drive home, the gas light came on.  We were SUPER nervous about finding gas.  Lets just say....gas stations were few and far between.  Public restrooms were also sparse!!!  We had a great time on our first European getaway....with kids!!