Oh does it feel good to be home again after a trip! Two weeks feels like a long time when traveling. Overall we had a nice time and I liked Germany even if it was colder than usual and it snowed a couple of times. The roads stayed clear and the snow on the ground usually melted the next day. Cory is glad he can say he skied in the Alps but he says skiing in Utah is better. It is also more fun when you can just ski all you want instead of waiting on kids. The runs were long and Lidia and Aiden kept falling down and only completed two runs in the whole day. Cory did let them rest at the ski lodge while he did some runs himself though. We never did take Avery and Tristan for a ski lesson. They were not crazy about the idea.
We had fun exploring Innsbruck, going to castles, monasteries, Munich, and such. It is a beautiful area. I think the big season for them is summer but we were able to do everything we wanted to except hike Partnatch gorge which is closed until May because all of the snow melt running down in there right now. We did a great hike up to some falls in the area though and hiked all the way around a big frozen lake after me and the younger boys went to the top of the Zugspitze. The cable car ride up and down made me really nervous, almost sick. I was going to take the train back down but it was slow and not coming for an hour so I braved it back down. The annoying guy yelling that we were all gonna die and other crap on the way up didn't help. Too bad he wasn't an annoying German guy, because then I wouldn't have know what he was saying. I was surprised how much German we could figure out though. Once again much easier if its written than said but a lot of words were spelled crazy but if you said it fast it sounded like the English word. It's kind of like that game mad gab. Lol
Some days on the trip, mainly the nature days or play at the hotel in the pool or hot tub, the kids had fun but other days, like the ones walking around cities, they complained a lot and made me wish they were not there. Cory and I need to take a trip by ourselves sometime. It would be a lot cheaper to pay someone to stay with the kids than pay to make them travel. But we have no one to leave them with so I will just try to balance out our trips so that we all get something we like.
One thing I did like was that the place we stayed at in Garmisch was on a base, run like American places, had a few restaurants and entertainment for the kids. Cory and I even ate dinner downstairs a few times while they stayed up in the room and ate pizza and watched movies. It makes a huge difference when I can get some time to myself to reset. I wasn't worried about Avery running off either. He has gotten better about that and since we were on a base there was no where for him to go. I really liked staying at one place for over a week and just seeing sights from there on day trips so we felt at home there and didn't have to leave the resort to go eat or anything. I really think a cruise would be good in this way, go see some sights on shore then come back to the ship for everything else. The problem is the water. We don't want to get stranded like the stories in the news lately and I've read other scary stories and Cory gets motion sickness. I would like to try it out though and just see what we think about it. I would like to see Italy and Greece that way. For now though we are going to focus on sights here in England and Scotland. Cory has driven enough for now, or I have been in the car more than enough. Cory has not complained about it. We drove 13 hours yesterday and only stopped to get gas and the few minutes on the train. We left at 6:30 am and got home at 9 pm. Long day. Tristan slept almost half of the time. I think it is cute how he always falls asleep in the car. Lidia held the cuckoo clock box in her lap the entire trip home because Cory couldn't see well when it was on top of the suitcases and he nearly merged into a semi truck carp nearly gave me a heart attack.
I am glad it is conference weekend. We watched one session at church today and two at home. I love to listen to the general authorities speak and it means I don't have to prepare a sharing time lesson until next week. Hee hee Maybe I will get pictures from our trip posted next week. The kids go back to school Tuesday.
