Brayden's 2nd Birthday!

It's so hard to believe that time really goes by so quickly! We celebrated with cake and ice cream on Sunday where we gave him a new bike. Our neighbors came over to enjoy the Thomas the Train cake with us! Today we celebrated his actual birthday with lunch out, a trip to the park, a visit to Daddy at work, more cake and ice cream and presents from family. We were able to have Brayden's Great-Gramma Thelma and Great-Grampa George watch Brayden open their gifts over Skype. I was able to catch the rest of the gifts that he opened on video! I think that he had a great day for a 2 year old! :) Happy 2nd Birthday, Brayden!

Schwarzwald (The Black Forest)

Yesterday, we took our first USO tour to The Black Forest (Schwarzwald). We had to board a bus at about 6:30 a.m. which was no fun at all, but it was great to have a guided tour since we hadn't been there before. The trip was about 3 1/2 hours by bus and we started in Niederwasser at a Cuckoo clock shop, which is one of the things that the Black Forest is known for (along with Black Forest cake!). We actually learned that it's believed that a mechanical clock was brought to the Black Forest from Bohemia around 1640 and the gears and workings were copied with wood. Within 20 years, the first clock workshop was opened and the first cuckoo clock was made around 1730. The owner of the shop is very nice to all of the people that come on tours and greeted everyone with little cups of wine. We ended up buying a cuckoo clock and Brayden loved playing outside near the giant one!

After cuckoo clock shopping we traveled to Triberg, the home of Germany's highest waterfall. It was beautiful and the view from the top was awesome! We didn't go all the way up to the last part because it costs an extra 5 Euro a person to get up there and the view was great from where we were anyways. We had lunch outside at a place called Cafe Lille where I had Black Forest Ham and Jeff had pork and noodles. Everything was delicious! Brayden ended up taking a nap in his stroller so we walked around to a couple of shops then sat down for a bit to rest before we had to get back on the bus for part 3 of the trip.

We traveled to Vogtsbauernhof Museum which is the open air museum (Freilichtmuseum) with houses that show you what life was like for people in the area. Houses in the Black Forest were both house and barn all in one. It was interesting that only rich farmers back then could afford balconies and windows on the front of the house. They were impractical for everyone else because they had to try to keep their large houses warm in the winter. There were horses, cows, ducks and goats there which Brayden loved! We went right up to the horses and fed them hay and Brayden pet them on the nose. There was also a great play area for kids with places to climb. Brayden called the sand "snow" but he had a blast. They had a rock structure that they had smoothed out a portion of it to create a slide. He loved it! Here's Brayden and Jeff on the top of it before Brayden slid down!

All in all it was a great trip, but we were exhausted by the end of it!

Busy week!

Earlier this week, Brayden and I took a trip with the MOMS Club of Kaiserslautern to the Neurkircher Zoo. He really liked watching the monkeys and meerkats! We saw porcupines, seals, bears, zebras and elephants. I must say that I've never seen porcupines so close up like that and they were HUGE! One of the bears came right up to the fence to greet us, too. He looked so friendly, but I still wouldn't touch him! :) Brayden also got to be up close and personal with a pony that stuck his head out of the fence. I got a workout pushing the stroller up and down all of the hills in the zoo! We had a great time!

Today, we went to Burg Lichtenberg in Kusel. It was about a 40 minute drive from our house. It's actually the largest castle ruin in Germany. It was built in 1200 and was never conquered or destroyed by assaults. It was severely damaged in 1799 by a large fire and it was declared a national monument in 1895. It was wide open for Brayden to run around and climb! It also had an amazing view!

When we left the castle, we headed to lunch at a place that I had heard about called "The Big Emma". I knew that their portions were big, but never imagined that our 1/2 sized portions would be this big! Delicious food and we definitely have enough to eat for the next 2 days! Jeff got a schnitzel sandwich and I got sausages, sauerkraut and salad. Brayden had schnitzel and french fries.