A couple weeks ago I started a blog to catch you up on our summer, and had it waiting to add a couple pictures when one of the boys needed the computer for their school work. So I didn't save what I had written and let them work on their stuff when low and behold, they somehow froze the computer:( So as you can guess everything I wrote was lost and now I'm back to square one:/ Since I am not a typist in any sense I begrudgingly will start this again and catch you up on our family's doings these past couple months.

So after looking at the last blog I told you what we were planning to do since that was written before we headed off for the last part of sumer. I think it would be better to break it up into the trips that we took!

Germany Trip July 2010

We headed to Stuttgart Germany after church on the 25th. Christian had to be at his EFY conference Monday morning and we wanted to get a jump on the drive. It was a nice drive to Stuttgart and we stayed at the TLF there. We were abel to be in our rooms by 9 pm so that we could relax the rest of the night. Monday we got up early and headed to where the EFY conference was to be help. It ended up being a little over an hour from where we stayed so the drive there was not rushed at all. Once at the drop off place, we got Christian all settled in and signed up and left him with his group counselor. The kids that attended this camp came from al over the eastern European area's. Some where from Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic...... there was also a few German kids too. This camp was great making sure the kids had translators to help with the language and was small enough that it was more personal than the ones I attended at BYU at his age. We left hoping that he wold have a wonderful time.

After dropping off Chris we headed to Grafenwohr to spend the week with Jon. He has just returned from is TDY to Hawaii....... yea....... I know, rough huh;) Monica and the kids were able to go out and visit with him during his time there:) So we got to Jon's about 4 in the afternoon. We went food shopping, ate dinner at the food court and then went to his place to relax. Now you have to remember that Jon lives in a 400 sq ft apartment with one bathroom and a small kitchen isle. We were able to make the sleeping arrangements work for us tough. Shel, Jori and I slept in the living room on mattresses and the two other boys slept on the floor in Jon's room. We were able to make a walkway in his room so her could walk to the bathroom and not on the boys, and there was a small 10 in gap between Jori and my mattresses that Jon could squeeze through in the morning to get to the front door. It did really work out good for all of us.

During our time there we were able to visit with Jon, go to a neat place called Pottstein and also took a quick run to the city of Prague in the Czech Republic. In Pottstein they had a place where you could ride bobsleds, like the kind you ride for the olympics. Granted, since there was no snow they ran a a metal track, but is was pretty neat. They also had a slide that ran on a track more like one of the rides at Six Flags, and that was fun too. The day we were there they had only the track ride open because it was raining and there would be safety issues with the bobsled track but the boys really enjoyed the ride. After that we headed to a small cave they had in the area and Shel and the boys took a tour on of it. Jori wasn't interested and I knew if there was too much walking up stairs I wouldn't survive the tour. While the men fold went on the tour Jori and I drove to a roadside fruit stand to buy some berries. The berries were so tasty and we loaded up on blueberries, raspberries, cherries and blackberries. Talk about some yummy dessert!

One of the days there we decided to drive to Prague since it was under 2 hrs away from us. We didn't have any problems driving through the two countries, we parked at a monitored parking area next to a mall and train station and once we figured out the rpice for our tickets we headed to the city center. Once we got off the train it took us awhile to find the area we were looking for, but eventually with some other American's that were vacationing there they got us to the square we were looking for. It was so neat to be there. They had this old church that was so cool, and a really neat clock that turned 400 yrs old this year. We were able to hook up with a gyuded tour that showed us all the interesting area's but we had gotten there too late so this tour we couldn't just hop off to se everything. Once there we had realized we made a huge error in only going for the afternoon:( We now are planning to go back and visit another time when we can spend a couple days there and take in some of the cool architecture and other sites. That night before we left we were able to get some really neat pictures of the Tyn Church. DJ kept saying he expected a Dragon to be sitting on one of the spires, it was that creepy looking at night. We got the two boys some neat sweatshirts that had "Czech Me Put" on the front and some other souvenirs then we headed back to Jon's.

On Friday, Jacob finally flew in to be with his Dad. He had landed in Frankfurt around 11 am and then took a shuttle to a neighboring military base. Jon drove there to pick him up. He arrived, super tired, but excited to be there. We all went out to dinner, that ended up being a disaster, but it was fun to spend some time with him before we headed back home.

Saturday rolled around and we were off driving back to pick up Christian. We needed to get him by 10:30 that morning and arrived pretty close to that time;) He was pretty happy about this week, and talked about all the people he met. On the drive home we though about going to Ramstein to get a couple things and thought about getting a room there. Of course there were no rooms available so we told everyone to get comfortable and we headed for home. We got in late and decided to sleep in the next day. We were tired and needed to rest up after that day of driving:/ It was a good thing we rested up because, we only had 2 days to prepare for our next adventure......... England!

This is a look of the sleds from the bottom of the hill area. That yellow car has one of my kids in it.

This is the Tyn Church. At nights its pretty creepy looking but it's beautiful when the sun is starting to set!

Here is the Astronomical Clock that turned 400 yr old this year. When the clock strikes the top of the hour, the openings at the top have statues of the Disciples from Christ time rotate through them. It's pretty neat to see.

Tomorrow I'll post about our time in London:)