Monday, September 28

These horses were the coolest part of Oktoberfest for Brenna - and of course when we could see them this clearly without the crowd all around, she was asleep! The HofBrau Munchen was one of the beer tents we were able to get into (security is crazy at Oktoberfest - be prepared not to see the inside of lots of tents if you don't have a reservation!!!) - it was a crazy party and very loud - but I think I preferred that tent to the second one we went into.

In the picture above, I wasn't at a great angle with the sun (it was nice weather, but the sun made getting some pics harder!!), but I love that you can see it is the entrance for Oktoberfest (or at least one that has a great big sign!!)

Another pic of Brenna sleeping at Oktoberfest! Below some barrels on the horse drawn carriages.

Brenna actually did get to touch this horse here - she really liked him!!

Inside one of the beer tents - this was the second one we went to. It didn't seem as crazy as the first one - more order here (and not so many people standing on their seats with beer steins in hand, lol)

The first beer tent we went into below - hmm, this is what I would have expected at Oktoberfest and I wasn't disappointed for the party going on at 1 pm in the afternoon!! As you can even see from the picture - voices were raised with the beer, lol!!

Trying to get a picture to show how many people were there - my pics just didn't do it justice, lol!!

Olympic park in Munich

Brenna racing me up the hill - I love her face!! (although you might have to click on this picture to really see the laugh!!)

The BMW museum in Munich - really cool building.

Thanks for taking this pic Noah - I love how cheesy Brenna was in it, lol!!

After our long day in Munich, the only picture of my uncle while he was here and it was in front of our car in the parking garage - how sad is that!!

One of the statues in Baden-Baden - she was happy to pose for this picture for my uncle, but wouldn't take one with me, lol

Brenna wants us to know that she wants a pink bike, lol. She was ready to take this one home and go try to ride it, lol!!

Pictures in Strausburg while strolling around

Brenna is all about these feet shots now - I have at least 10 more on the camera from various times, lol!!

Below, is my very upset daughter after her cup went over one of the locks in Strausburg. I was blamed for losing it, and promised a replacement at the next stop (boy did I get hosed on the replacement one - it was 7 Euro!!!). Don't you just love the hand on her hip!!

Hello All!!!

Hope all is well out there!!! Things are going good here - just tired for all our wonderful travels for the weekend!! We had a very nice visit with my uncle when he was here - the weather was absolutely perfect for his whole visit here!! (btw - Justice is missing him already - he was very spoiled with the extra attention!!).

So, what have we been doing??? On Friday evening, Dustin ended up working later than expected, so we went to one of our favorite restraunts here in our town and had supper - yummy!! My uncle had a chance to eat some wonderful french fries here - I'm pretty sure he agreed that you could make a meal out of the fries here!! On Saturday, my uncle and I took Justice for a long morning walk and then we went to Strausburg, France, Baden-Baden, and Kappelwindeck (here close to our town). Our visit to Strausberg was great - I think we all could have strolled around for quite awhile!!! And - other good news - Brenna is pretty much over her fear of the potty over here :-) What a relief that she is getting excited about going while we are out and no more tears (from her and me!!)!!! We made a quick stop at Cora on the way out of France - had to show my uncle all the cheese and meat counters there (and pick up a few yummy french items :-) From France, we went straight to the Kappelwindeck/Burg Windeck (old castle ruins here) with a great view! Our camera got buried in our back-pack (but the battery was almost dead anyway - oops - we only took one picture in Baden-Baden before it died - guess we were lucky all day in France!) - so our second trip there without any pics from our camera!! We came home really quick and gave Brenna supper and Justice too, then back out to Baden-Baden. We spent a short amount of time in Baden-Baden showing the downtown sites (which seemed so few after our morning adventures!), but we all really enjoyed our cold treat there. My uncle had chocolate ice cream with rum and cherries - I think he was pretty happy with his selection - like Black Forest cake in an ice cream version!! Brenna shared Daddy's spaghetti ice - she loves getting to share that with him (and I ended up with Brenna's cone - she didn't want it as soon as she knew what Dustin was getting, lol). Brenna was spoiled with stuffed animals all weekend - we added one on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday to the family - she loves being the new mom to the gang (o.k. - funny story here - Brenna only really, really wanted one of these animals, the other two I believe are really ones that Dustin and I couldn't live without her having, lol. She picked out a new "pet" raccoon on Thursday (I really wanted the skunk - which started the whole stuffed animal weekend, lol) - she named him Ricky. On Saturday, we found a cute stuffed store in France - they had a really adorable train track growth chart (umm - not sure why I didn't take a picture, but I will have to see if I can find it on line, maybe I could make something similar) which got us into the store. I think all the grown-ups in the store that day wanted to buy more stuff than Brenna did - she ended up with a new pet snail that can come home and stay with us (and he is on wheels and can be walked around the apartment) - I believe she has settled on the name slimmey - hmmm, wonder where she got that name, lol. That was Dustin's bday present for Brenna for his bday, lol (he was the one who had to buy it for her!!). On our way to Munich we found some inexpensive stuffed animals at one of the rest areas, so mommy rewarded her with a new pet alligator - her name is Patches!! I'm going to have to get a picture of this new crew soon!!!)

Brenna and I stopped on Friday on our walk home for cake from Cafe Schnurr here in our town. It is the favorite pastry shop of a lot of the local German's here. We sampled one of each kind of cake they had made that day (I should have taken a picture of these - the cakes/tortes here are beautiful - but I didn't think about that (nor did I think about getting pictures of the enormous pretzels/hot dogs at Oktoberfest!!!)). So, that was our cake for Dustin's bday for the weekend. I am still hoping to make some no-bakes for him today. I didn't expect Brenna to have a long day at Kindergarten today, but I don't leave to pick her up for another 40 minutes - they are feeding them lunch today (hmm - reading the signs outside her door in German is not going so well for me...). Hopefully, Brenna is having fun with that as she was exhausted from our weekend (she didn't really nap yesterday except for on Dustin's shoulder - maybe 30 minutes, and then she didn't fall asleep in the car until about 11:30 last night).

Yesterday, we went to Oktoberfest in Munich. I wish I would have had my video camera to capture the people, noise, food, etc. Pictures just can't do it justice on the atmosphere!! Brenna was wiped out from the early morning and car ride, so she slept through about 30 minutes of the walk around - but she still was a good trooper with all the travel! I could not believe all the people dressed in traditional clothes (o.k. - I have to admit that I was stunned by the amount of cleavage that I saw yesterday - it was crazy how many dress to expose, lol!!) - but it was really neat to see!! After we walked around a little bit at Oktoberfest, we took some subway stops to some other sites of Munich. We stopped by the BMW museum (and Brenna and I used their nice restrooms, lol), Olympic park (although we didn't get too close to it), and the English gardens. Brenna really enjoyed running up the hill (and then she rolled down too) - she was ready to get out and move!! We parted ways with my uncle in Munich (hope he had a good train trip back to Munich and than to his final destination). It should only be about 2 hours 30 minutes home from where we parked our car (we parked and then took a train into Munich - smart thinking), but with traffic around Stuttgart it took about 6 hours to get home. Poor Justice was trapped in his crate for a very, very long day (but he did o.k. - he is either pouting today or really missing my uncle - not sure which, lol).

I think that about covers our travels - we had really great food and fun while my uncle was visiting. I really enjoyed showing him the area we live in and I'm extremely glad that the weather was as nice as it was! Hope you enjoy the mass number of pics from this weekend - rather than break them up in posts, I'm just going to try to put them all up today!!

(btw - it was a good thing I had extra time today, I was able to get laundry going, german class done, and the long blog post up today!!)

Take Care!!