Frankenstein Castle

Overwhelmed? I'll cut out the chatter and keep to the pictures. I'm almost updated... well, these were on July 17-- so only a month left!! ;)

The kids and I brought Tamar to our Frankenstein castle. Always a crowd pleaser. :)

yeah.. looks like I got some sun at the pool the day before. ;)

Practicing being peasant folk working in the castle gardens... haha!

Locked gates are always so intriguing...

I miss summer

One day after our busy two weeks of adventures Tamar stayed at the house with Andrew so Cameron could get some rare only-child time (W was at school).

He's such a fun kid! This was a rare sunny day! We had a very spring-like summer here with really very few days hot enough to go to the pool.

Aww, my silly Cameron. I love you so much!

Linderhof Palace

Driving from Garmish back home, Nathaniel saw a sign for a castle. I was not on board for another trip-- I was so tired and just wanted to get home.
I'm glad I relented.
Turns out, it was the palace of King Ludwig II, a reclusive king who built many castles (including the famous Neuschwanstein-- or more recognizable as Cinderella's castle since Disney apparently used it as inspiration). Linderhof Palace was the only residence completed before his death and he spent most of his time there. It's incredibly small, especially by "palace" standards.. only 10 rooms, if I remember right. I remain annoyed that they didn't allow pictures inside... but oh well. ;) The most outstanding thing to me was that this crazy king was so private that he had his dining room built over the kitchen. The dining table was built to serve only one (by a king's standards-- 6 by the rest of ours...) and it could be lowered into the kitchen to be served and then raised up so he could eat without seeing any servants. Bizarre. The palace was lovely though-- and it was really fascinating because everything was original and more or less as it was when it was in use.

The little chapel on the grounds. Apparently Ludwig II had a thing with peacocks.. maybe for their arrogance ? ;) At the palace he had two peacock statues that would be placed outside the palace doors when he was in residence, and brought indoors when he was not.

Tamar's profile. haha!
Okay. Seriously, the weirdest part of the whole place was that Ludwacko II had his own private little grotto built! This guy was way ahead of his time (perhaps this was another inspiration for Disneyland...)! He even had different lighting that could be set up to listen to music of the various operas from his favorite composer who had inspired this craziness.

Fancy boat, right? He'd have his servants row him around in a circle in it.

It's all so impressive... and all so, so bizarre.

What an adventure. Here is my littlest guy burning off energy before getting strapped back into the carseat.

Travel with children part 2.

Lake Eibsee

Family photo fail. Notice a trend here? I'm embracing them. Look forward to our Christmas card this year (that is, if we get motivated to send any out-- we might be lazy like last year and send only all the love in our hearts your way *love*!).

Oh man. I'm such a sucker for sun-flare.

Baby Heaven: rocks, water, and sunshine.

It wasn't half bad for the rest of us either. ;)

I think our next vacation will be more like this-- more chill time, and less go, go, go.

Aww.. I melt. Love the baby. Love the lake. Love the sun-flare.

I *might* haul around my reflector next time I go out so I can get some light back on that beautiful face.

Deep thoughts, by Tamar.

Nathaniel, the adventurous, took us all out onto a pedal boat. He asked the guy in charge if we needed life-vests for the kids. Guy-in-charge kinda looked at us like we were crazy and said "it's not necessary". This is why I *love* Europe... they leave so much of the responsibility with the parents to be wise and take care-- so much less hand-holding here. We opted to not use them given our ratio of one adult per kid. With Andrew stuck on Nathaniel and a good talking to with the other boys (who were really well-behaved!), we called it good. If it had just been me and Nathaniel, we would have used them.

Good Auntie!

Eeek. You guys are lucky I posted this family fail photo. I look seriously ugly. But it was too funny... Look how tiny William's head looks since he was at the far end of our little boat! haha!

Yup, Tamar. These mountains got nothin' on you!

Dragging toes in the water. A highlight of any boat trip. Good thing we weren't going faster than 5 MPH (no offense to the boat motors N and T!).

Ha! He's hilarious.

Self portraits are really hard with DSLRs. Check out my defined "smile lines"! Not bad.. must have had a lot of smiles on my face to get those badboys! ;)

Andrew was restrained in the bjorn the entire time... and tried to get loose the entire time too. haha. What a sweet baby!

Zugspitze

Zugspitze (pronounced in Felicity phonetics "zuug-shpits-uh".. technical, right?) Isn't it beautiful (the mountain, not the name)? It's the highest peak in Germany coming in at 9,718 feet*, with a cable car that takes you all the way up to the top of it.

*Utah friends, don't laugh at it's lack in comparison to your mountains! ;)

Blissful kid-- with no idea how high above the ground we are and how high we are going... though, he probably wouldn't care even if he did. His mother, on the other hand, had a minor anxiety attack. Nothing traumatic, just tears streaming down my face for most of the ride up. I blame the jerk-face standing next to me who blocked my access to holding onto the wall like he was blocking a game ending soccer goal. I was totally fine on the ride down.


Seriously... can you blame me? *shudder*

My sweet man.

Tamar hiked out to the literal highest peak. I'm content to say that I was about 20 feel lower than the actual point. haha! Go Tamar!

View of Lake Eibsee.

Of course as we were cooking down at the bottom of the mountain, we were freezing our bums off at the top. SNOW, people-- in mid-JULY. It was awesome. Freeeeezing, but awesome.

What a good aunt-- she had both of my big boys throw snowballs off the highest peak in Germany. How many people can say that? Right? That can be one of their random things to use in those "get to know you" games that they'll play for the rest of their lives!

Family photo fail #... 4? I'm losing track. :)

In the winter they have skiing in a bowl at the top of the mountains. We just might have to visit again-- though, maybe we'll take the train up instead of the cable car. ;)