The Hills are alive in Germany

Jenn and Aaron came to visit!

 This boy has grown!!!!

 To attempt to keep them up we stopped at Castle Reichtenstein on the Rhine.

 Aaron was super excited to see a castle.  This little room had a skeleton.

 Aaron is quite funny.  On the way home, he asked me why I kept laughing at him.  I told him he was so funny.  He said, "Yeah.  I am funny all the time!"  

 We have a fun week ahead of us.  We plan on doing fun day trips every day!  

Birthday Boy

 Lincoln, crazy man Leap, turned six on Saturday.  

He told me that he no longer wanted me to call him Baby Bear.  He is now Medium Bear!  

 With a tiny bit of encouragement from Nate and I, he decided to have his best buddy from school spend the night instead of a full blown b/day party!

 So, Friday night we opened presents and had cake!  He is so easy!  Link is honestly happy with everything he gets!  He makes such a big deal of each present and is so happy!   You should have heard the screams and squeals when he opened this Batman visual dictionary from Memaw!  

 This is another example of how easy going this kid is.  He told us he wanted a yellow cake.  We asked if he wanted a score bought or homemade.  He chose homemade.  I make the cake and Nate made the icing.  Let's just say.....thank goodness it tasted good because it is UGLY!  

He and his buddy stayed up until 9:30 and then woke up giggling and screaming at 6:00.  

They had such a good time!  

I can't believe he is six!  Let's just stop time now!  NO more growing!

He knows who he is

Yesterday
Lincoln:  I can't wait for summer!!!  I am going to play VGs (his new acronym for Video Games) all day!
Me:  NO!  The 30 minute rule works for summer too.  You are going to be too busy for VGs.  We are going to the playground, to castles, to museums!  We are going to be outside all summer!  It's going to be great!
Lincoln:  I am more of an inside kind of guy.

This morning ( I am in the bathroom getting ready.  Nate and Ethan are downstairs eating breakfast.)
Lincoln: (just woke up) Mom, at least when I get up you are still in the bathroom.
Me:  Yeah.  You and I sleep later.  Ethan and Daddy like to get up earlier.
Lincoln:  Yeah they both just get up early to watch Curious George.

Baseball

The Muckdogs and the Lugnuts had their first game on Saturday.

 Lincoln has been practicing ALL week and it showed!

 He made it around the bases twice!

 We had YUCKY weather and it was freezing.  When he was on the field, he shivered the whole time!

 He stood like this for a few minutes.  

Nate and I just crossed our fingers that the ball didn't come his way!

 After Lincoln's freezing game, we let Ethan wear his coat during his game!

 Nate helped out as First Base coach. 

We are all hoping for warmer weather this week!  

Faves

I took so many pictures.  

These are a few of my favorite things or favorite photos from the trip (that I haven't already blogged).

One of our FAVORITE things about Spain was that we were able to communicate so much easier than here in Germany (or even Italy and France for that matter).  

 This city was so pretty.  The architecture was gorgeous!

 THE SUN!!!  Oh how I have missed you!

Europe in general is so rich in history.  

 The museums were great!

 It's silly, but watching my boys run and play in a park are some of my favorite memories.  

 They can say that they have played in Retiro park in Madrid!

 Our day trips to Avila, Segovia, and Toledo let us see other parts of Spain.  I love how Mary is smiling at Jesus.  You very rarely see her smiling in pictures or statues.  

You know he had to have brought her so much joy!  How could she NOT smile all the time!

 The doors in Spain are gorgeous.  

 The country side is so rocky.  It is so different than Germany.

 STARBUCKS.....oh how I have missed you, too!  We had Starbucks at least twice day!

Here is Nate saying, "Donde esta la biblioteca?"  AQUI!  AQUI!

Last day

On our last day we had plans to meet up with the Gabrielskis for some shopping and playing, but Nate and I slept in on Friday and we weren't able to meet up.  

We did a little shopping and saw a few sites that we missed this week.  

Church Jeromina is one of the prettiest churches in Madrid.  

Many Spanish royals have been married here.  

We stopped to get a picture of the the Christopher Columbus monument.  The sun is right in our eyes!

We let the boys play at the park some more and then walked across the city back to our hotel before dinner.  I took this picture at 3:45 on a workday.  The place is packed.  

The Spanish know how to take breaks!

We all met up again for dinner in a cave restaurant.  

It was really cool and the boys were happy to have dinner one more night with each other. 

 Everyone came back to our room for a goodbye hug!  Jessica and I went out for a girls shopping night before heading home today.  The shops closed at 10:00 and as I was walking home I looked around.  The streets were so packed I could barely move!  It is so funny how they do everything so much later than us.  Overall, Madrid was a blast!  We loved Spain and were so happy we were able to experience it with good friends!

Toledo, Spain

 I have been wanting to go to Toledo for a few months now.  I just read the Last Queen and Toledo played a big part in the book.  We booked another bus tour and this time the bus stopped outside the city for some photographs.

The city is surrounded by a river which creates a natural moat.

 Toledo is famous for its sword and knife making.  On every block, shops were selling jewelry and swords.  NO we did not buy the boys a sword!  

 The city has lots of churches.  We stopped in most of them.

One of them had a treasure room.  It contained lots of gold!  

 Lincoln fell asleep after the first church.

 We stopped at a museum and were able to take some pictures from the balcony.

 The boys were such troopers today!  They walked and walked and walked!

 I asked him if he was praying or sleeping, but he wouldn't answer me.

 Cervantes was from Toledo.  We walked down the route of Don Quixote.  

We stopped at Alcazar.  Alcazar was once a 3rd century Roman Palace, 

a military school, and now a museum.

 We somehow picked up a fifth fella.  He was with his mom on vacation from California.

 After a long day, we stopped at a factory that made the famous Damasquino jewelry and swords. 

We were able to watch the artisans making a pendant.

The boys kept asking Nate to pull the swords out.  This was definitely the highlight of the day for them.  I am so glad we took a couple day trips out of Madrid.  The Spanish country side is pretty and the outlining towns are full of history!