Family Picture

 We needed a new family picture with Nyah in it and so today we threw on our pretty Christmas clothes and took some pictures. It was pretty funny 'cause when I was setting up the camera I looked over and noticed some people who had been working but now stopped and were just staring at us. A little bit later a car stopped right in front of us and just watched us. We were all nervously laughing and trying to not make our teeth chatter too much and just carry on. I only took 4 pictures so it's not like we were there for hours and hours….It must be because our kids are THAT cute!!! People just can't stop staring at them. :D

New Year's Eve 2011

 A couple of years ago we had a chocolate fountain to dip fruit in for New Year's eve at my parents' house. Now every year the kids want to have a chocolate fondue or FUNdue as we like to call it!! ;D

 Yep!! We love it! Especially the mustache that comes with it.

 Laney doesn't like fruit….or vegetables……or meat…….or very many other things for that matter. But when there's chocolate involved she can eat a whole banana.

 The lovebirds on New Year's Eve.

 Oh what a mess…..

I can't remember what was so funny, but this boy couldn't stop laughing while he was showing me all the chocolate he had everywhere. After this we watched "Mr Popper's Penguins" which we really liked and then it was off to fire off the fireworks. This was our first New Year's eve in Germany where we have not been with my family. It was pretty funny 'cause Ben had to asked me about several fireworks and how he had fire them off. Oh, my innocent Utah man!! :D

Stubernis Ishou's

We love the movie "How to Train Your Dragon" and a couple of lines from the movie have become personal mottos for our family. For example, "We are Vikings. We have stubbornness issues". It just fits our family so well. We are all so extremely stubborn! Anyway, one day I saw this that Ty had written for Laney on her whiteboard. It says, "you have stubernis ishou's" ("you have stubbornness issues") It just made me laugh so hard. First of all that Ty would write that to Laney. Second, I can only imagine the debate (or fight) that must have occurred that made Ty write this. And third, that Ty used an apostrophe. We have talked about them a little lately because he loves reading and writing so much these days.

Christmas 2011

 The day before Christmas Eve my mom, dad, brother Zak and my aunt Pia came to our house. We were all pretty busy preparing for the Ward Christmas party that night and Ben just getting home from Hohenfels where he had been filling in at the Pharmacy, so we didn't treat them very well the first night. But we got everything ready and headed to the party. We just stayed to eat some yummy food and then left when all the games started. The next day we just hung out and relaxed and enjoyed being home and then later on started getting the food ready. It was so nice having my mom and aunt here, all though I felt like a slacker and like I wasn't doing very much. But it was so nice to have so much help. We had a traditional Danish Christmas dinner with a couple of added American things. Anyway, this was our Christmas table.

 Laney started taking piano lessons this past September and really enjoys it. She had a Christmas recital and my parents were planning on coming to it but then it got moved to another day and my parents unfortunately couldn't make it on that day. But Laney and my mom treated us to a wonderful Christmas concert on Christmas Eve. It sounded beautiful and Laney just loved having a concert with my mom. She already planning the next concert!!!

 She gave us all tickets to the concert and punched them "Polar Express" style when we arrived.

 My dad and I trying to film the pianists at the wonderful concert. I had to crouch down so I wouldn't get my dad's arm in the shot.

 And the crowds at the concert.

 The photographer and his helper. And can I just say that I'm amazed that Ben actually could find and dig out a double chin for the picture!!! I mean, who knew he actually had one?!

 After dinner and the concert we acted out the Nativity story. We recoded it all so this is the only picture I have of it. But I love it!! Pia was a shepherd with a bunch of sheep, Laney was Mary, Zak was Joseph, Ty was the angel, my dad and I were the wise man and woman, and my mom was the narrator and the piano player. Ben had found a fun play online where we had to sing Christmas songs every so often so my mom was running back and forth between the piano and the living room. But it was a lot of fun!!!

 Christmas morning picture of the kids on the stairs in their new jammies. Since Christmas morning was on a Sunday we had to kind of hurry and open presents, eat breakfast and then follow our predetermined shower schedule. But it actually went really well and I, at least, didn't feel rushed. We even had time to curl Laney's hair! :D

 My mom and dad asked if I could take a family picture for them while they were here. This one is probably my favorite one of all of them. I was laughing so hard the whole time because Zak and my dad were being so silly. Good times, good times. :D

Schloss Guteneck Weihnactsmarkt

 We heard about this fun medieval Christmas market in a town called Guteneck. When we got there there were a drama group who acted out the nativity story and you kinda followed them around until they got to the stable. They did a really good job I thought. This picture is of Mary and Joseph knocking on the door of one of the Inns.

 Looking up at the castle with beautiful lights on it. There were so many little stalls everywhere around the castle.

 The inside courtyard of the castle. While we were standing here an angel and two little angel kids came and handed out candy for all the kids.

 Ty happy to be at a medieval Christmas market.

The empty manger. We had a lot of fun and there were also horse rides and camel rides. The kids really wanted to ride a pony but Nyah was getting really grumpy and tired of sitting in the stroller and just wanted to run around so we finally had to leave……but not until after we had some yummy burnt almonds.

A quick update in the middle of all the Julehygge :D

 Laney's picture of Ben chasing me with hearts in his eyes!!! Yep, that's how we roll here in the Campbell household.

 Our Thanksgiving feast……and the kids pretending to be eating.

 For the month of December, on top of the kids' usual advent calendar where they get a little present in their slipper every morning, I also did an advent calendar where every day the kids and I (and Ben when he can) will do something fun and christmas-y. On this day the kids made pebernodder.

 On this particular Saturday the activity for the day was to pick up a Christmas tree.

 Laney and Ben carrying the tree home that was popping out of its net.

 The next day we decorated it. Ben was trying to figure out how the German Christmas lights work. Two big loops of lights! Good thing he has a university degree otherwise our tree might not have lights on it. :D

 Ty trying to distribute the ornaments evenly around the tree.

 Nyah was very excited to be part of the ornament hanging. Luckily Laney was there to assist.

 And Laney hanging her own ornaments once in a while.

 "Yay, lots of ornaments and tinsel for me to pull off later when nobody is watching!!"

 Nyah recently discovered the Jessie and Woody dolls from Toy Story. So the other day i decided to let her watch the movie. She loved it! And she was so cute holding Jessie and Woody the whole time.

 For one of our other Christmas activities we made a gingerbread house and decorated it a few days later.

 Both kids had a Christmas concert at school. Ty was really nervous and really didn't want to do it. He had to do a practice run for the rest of the Elementary School in the morning and I think that helped calm his nerves, because there was no problem when he had to do it in front of all the parents that night.

 Here's Laney rocking out!!

 My two little munchkins after the concert!! So naughty and yet so cute.

 I think they did a great job on the gingerbread house. We're going to eat it tonight for movie night and I'm pretty excited because I'm told there's a surprise hidden inside the chimney. hahaha

 Yesterday it was snowing all morning and I showed Nyah. She was so intrigued by it and would sit and stare out at the snow for a long time, just pointing at it. Then she would walk into a different room and realized it was snowing out that window too. She walked around the whole house and was amazed that it was snowing out all the windows in the house. She wasn't so impressed this morning when we walked the kids to the bus and the snow was getting on her and it was wet and cold.

 Yesterday we made Klejner for our Christmas activity. The kids did such a good job. Ty would cut them….

…and Laney would fold them. And they are quite delicious as well…yum yum yum

Rothenburg ob der Tauber for Ben's Geburtstag

Since Ben always has the day off on his birthday (it's Veteran's Day) I decided to surprise him with a little relaxing trip to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We had been wanting to go for a while but Ben didn't want to drive back and forth the same day so I thought this would be a great opportunity to stay close by and enjoy some R&R. I found a vacation apartment at a farm and Thursday night after Ben got home from work we told him where we were going and loaded up the car and took off. Nyah was kinda grumpy in the car and kept whimpering and crying. Her molars have been coming in so I figured we would be there quickly and could comfort her better. It may sound mean but I knew that if we stopped and got her out she would NOT want to get back in her car seat and would start really screaming....she has been practicing and perfecting her screaming lately. That girl's got some well functioning lungs!! Anywho, we were about 10 minutes from the apartment when suddenly Laney screams, "She's puking!!!" and jumped out of her seat. oh joy! Anyway, we were there shortly after and got out to clean out the car and Nyah. The owner lady came out and we said 'hi' and i thought I motioned that I was ready for her to show me where to go. Apparently my motioning didn't work 'cause the lady just stood there and waited for the whole family. Finally I grabbed Laney and mumbled something to the lady about the others coming in a minute. She finally got it and showed us the very nice apartment. The rest of the evening was uneventful fortunately and the kids got really excited when the owner offered that the kids could come help out with the animals the next evening. (Finally I'm getting to the above picture. Sorry!) The next morning the kids got ready quickly and ventured out in the cold to play on the swings. Nyah still gets really upset when she sees people going outside without and so she climbed the bench in the kitchen so she could yell to the kids, repeatedly wave to them and watch them.

After Ben and I finally got ready we drove the 10 minutes to Rothenburg. This is just outside the old city wall. Ty is our resident tree hugger and loves all the pretty leaves right now. He's always collecting them and storing them all over the stroller. He is also very good at picking up rubbish he sees and always puts it in the stroller. Now I just need to train him to remove the rubbish from the stroller and throw it out. :D

The birthday boy and his peeps (as Ty calls everybody these days....).

We walked up on the wall for this stretch and we noticed that there were some plaques with names on them. After we came home I read that parts of the wall were destroyed during WW II and the names are people who donated money to restore the wall.

Some people say that the city is called Rothenburg (Red Fortress) because of all the red rooftops.

Just a pretty little restaurant.

Rothenburg is famous for it's Schneeballen (snowballs). They are strips of dough that is formed into a ball and deep fried and then covered in different yummy things, for example, powered sugar, cinnamon sugar, chocolate and so forth. The kids tried one each. Laney got a powdered sugar one and Ty tried the cinnamon. They are very delicious.

Ben in front of the rathaus.

 Ty LOVES nutcrackers. And I would buy him a gigantic one if they didn't cost 2 arms and 2 legs. But we stumbled on this ginormous one and we just had to get a picture of Ty in front of it eating his snowball.

 Then we saw this gigantic bear and since Ty was on this kick where he wanted his picture taken in front of everything.....well, then of course we had to have a picture with the giant bear too.

You know how you always got all these stuffed animals when you were a kid and didn't really know what to do with them? And then your kids started getting massive amounts of stuffed animals and you still didn't know what to do with them all? After they started taking over your bed and you were left with only a couple of centimeters to sleep on, you had to load them into a bag and finally give them away to some other person who then didn't know what to do with them. Well, that's not how it works in our family. Our kids actually play with all their stuffed animals!! I would even dare say that they play more with stuffed animals than any other toy. It still impresses me when I see them play with their animals. Anyway, outside the giant bear store there were the cutest little hedgehogs and of course Ty fell madly in love with them. He had to have a picture with one of the cute little things.

And yet another picture of Ty and some thing he wanted a picture with. This time a Knight's Armor.

 "Santy" as Ty yelled when he saw him. Of course Ty had to have a picture with "Santy" as well.

 I think you have to have a picture right here if you ever visit Rothenburg. It must be a law or something. There are so many pictures of this little square called "Plonlein" floating around on the internet.

 We were all so cold and freezing that it felt so nice to walk around in Kaethe Wohlfahrt christmas store. And it's so pretty. We felt like we were in a Christmas wunderland. :D Unfortunately you are not allowed to take pictures inside the store so I snapped a quick picture from the outside.

Cute colorful houses. Notice Ty's little noggin in the bottom of the picture. He ran up so he could be in my picture. Funny little guy.

Laney pushing and posing with Nyah in the stroller.

These next pictures are our "posing pictures". First up we have......"Brrrr we are freezing and are so cold we can't feel our fingers anymore."

Oh, tricked ya'.

Next one is....."Oh my goodness, we are sweating hot. Why we are wearing winter clothes and so many layers I know not. But man are we hot!"

And last but not certainly not least....."oh yeah, we are hip and cool and like to pose!" :D

Ben was showing Ty how to jump up on the wall but leave your one leg down so you don't actually go tumbling down on the other side. I came over and asked what they were doing to which Ty replies, "Oh Dad is just showing us how to get killed!" hahaha

This was on the road going to and from Rothenburg from our vacation apartment. Ben stopped on the way back so I could get a picture of all the pretty fall colors. All in all it was a great little vacation and I think Ben enjoyed his birthday.