Mr. Encyclopedia

Seriously this kid is Mr. Encyclopedia.  You  never know when he is going to spout off some random fact.  Here are the three he shared with us today.
1.) Did you know that the longest beard in the world was from a man named Hans.  The beard was 18 feet 6 inches.
2.) Jackie Robinson was born January 31, 1919.  He was an awesome athlete.  He was the first one to steal all the bases.
3.) 4000 J.J's (a boy in his class) would be equal to 5 billion peanuts.
I had to ask what the world is a J.J.  He laughed and said he's in my class...like I was supposed to know that!

We'll see

Lincoln:  Mommy, can I play your iPad after school or does that count as my video game time?

Me:  We'll see.

Lincoln:  Uhhhhhh, you know how I feel about "we'll see!"

Heidelberg in Winter

 Unintentionally, we've taken Memaw to Belgium and to France.  

She leaves on Sunday and I figured we should get to her see something in Germany!

 Heidelberg is about an hour away.  It's definitely my favorite castle so far!

 This view is amazing, but with the snow it was so much prettier.

 Ethan took the camera and took quite a few pictures for us!

 This was my third visit and Nate's second visit.  To see everything at the castle you have to take a tour.  It seems we see different parts of the castle and hear different things each time we visit.  

 This fella was in RARE form today!  He was a giggly mess!  Here he is playing in the snow after we have asked him about ten times to get out of the snow!

 This is an open air toilet.   This is something that they they tell us each time we go on the tour!

 We spent a good hour or so at the castle and we were thoroughly frozen through!

We left and stopped a local restaurant to eat and warm up.  Marsha, Nate, and I had the best soup!  The boys had their usual....schnitzel!  Once again, we ordered too much food!  

So, we had some yummy bratwurst for leftovers tonight!

Basketball Game

 Lincoln had a basketball game tonight.  I don't know why but he was so nervous. 

 He bit his fingernails the whole time.

 His coach kept encouraging him.

 In the last quarter, he got the ball and took it down the court.  

He shot the ball turned to look at us!  

This kid was so tall!  He was making threes!  At the very end, Lincoln decided to guard him!

Brussels, Belgium

 Memaw arrived on Saturday.  We learned our lesson from when Marilyn was here about starting a trip as soon as someone arrives.  We let Memaw have a day to rest and then headed to Brussels for an overnight trip.  When we left, the roads were snow covered and icy, but we trekked on.  The drive took us an extra hour, so when we arrived we were HUNGRY!  We started with mussels in Brussels!

 There was some serious snow!  Last time we were here there were flowers where they were standing!

The Grand Palace square was pretty even without the flowers. 

We had to show Memaw the Manneken Pis!

 Then, we started our food fun!  We stopped for waffles, chocolates, and beer!We went into at least three chocolate shops to decide what we wanted!  We left with lots of chocolate.  We were all cold and wet so we headed back to the hotel.  The boys snuggled up with Memaw and went to sleep.  Nate and I rented a movie and ordered room service next door!  It was nice!

For day two, we had planned on going to Mini Europe and the Atomium.  We figured doing the Atomium was worthless because of the foggy yucky weather.  We were excited to do Mini Europe.  We walked to the entrance and it was like Vacation.  We were the only ones running to the entrance, and it was closed......until March!  Yikes!  So, we got a early start home!  

We have a few fun day trips planned for this week.  It should be a nice week!

My boy

The boys were in video game heaven over Christmas.  The got the new Wii U.  They got the new 3DS and lots of games.  Their Daddy loves playing Mario with them so they have been best friends with him.  It's sickening!  :)  We got the new Nintendo Land and we have been playing as a family each evening.  I am hoping that I can be Lincoln's best friend again.  Apparently, all it takes is playing video games with him!
This picture is him walking around Vatican City.  

The face

For the past few months, Ethan has been doing the craziest voices and craziest faces.  It drives Nate and me insane!  I mean literally.....crazy!  We had been walking for over four hours during our Ancient Rome Tour and we just wanted one cute family photo before we left for lunch.  Marilyn took one with my camera and one with hers.  As we left the Coliseum, I look at my photo and this is the shot I got!  

 It is is a classic crazy Ethan face.  I was furious.  Nate was furious.  Mar was furious....well not really, but she was disappointed.  He tells us that he was yawning and none of us bought it.......until we got home that evening and put it on the computer.  Maybe he really was yawning.  After some apologies, we laughed and were super happy that Mar had her camera too!

This one is much better!!!!  Of course, that didn't stop him from making a ton more crazy faces the rest of the trip!

Luckily, most of the faces were not in our pictures!

Over

 I can not believe that Christmas break is pretty much over.  On our last week home, we (me and Nate) have taken MANY naps!  The boys have played MANY video games and watched many movies!  

 Ethan has put clothes on once or twice.  

 We had friends over to play!  

We've run lots of errands.  The boys have been troopers!  Today, we took them back to the Technik museum for some fun!  I am really sad that tomorrow is our last day! 5 1/2 more months until summer!

Castle in Germany

 After a few days of resting, we took Marilyn to a local castle, Burg Nanstein.

 The boys showed off their fake archery skills.

 Somehow, Nate had missed out on this castle.  The boys had fun showing him everything, too.

 More archery.

 Everyone had to take turns with this cute picture.

I am glad this castle is so close.  It is a great place to take our visitors!