Thanksgiving

We LOVED having everyone home for Thanksgiving. Here is the family picture we had taken while we were altogether.

This Weekend

This weekend we had a couple of events happen. 1. Jana, Steve, Sophia, Ella and David came to visit and 2. Deborah's parents reported on thier mission in church on Sunday and we had the Scott Family Reunion at Doug's place.
It was a good weekend. We had fun, especially Deborah with the grandkids. Ella is really attached to her Grandma. We played on the swings and slide. We then took them to the petting zoo where they got to see the animals. It was fun. David especially enjoyed feeding the goats.

Elder and Sister Scott gave a great report on their mission in Sacrament meeting in Annis. The dinner after was also great. We got to see a video on Cove Fort. It was really interesting. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

Castle Day

Now to continue with our travels in Europe with the Luthys.

Saturday Morning, July 28th we got up early and said our good byes to Munich and headed south. We let "Nancy" direct us on our way and even though we got there we took some interesting roads on the way. We got in the "back" country and saw some beautiful Bavarian farms. We were heading to the Bavarian Alps to see the two castles Neu Schwanstein and Hohen Schwangau. Both castle's of "Mad" King Ludwig's era.

Our first tour was Hohen Schwangau which started at 11:00 am. Though not as spectacular as Neu Schwanstein it was beautiful and interesting just the same. King Ludwig grew up in this castle - so it was lived in. From the windows of the Castle you can see New Schwanstein perched up on the hill above.

After our tour we headed over to Neu Schwanstein. The tour there was to start at 1:00 pm. It was interesting to go through. This is my third time to tour the castles and Deborah's second. The castle was only about a third of the way completed when King Ludwig mysteriously died and the construction halted immediately. There were some interesting rooms in the castle. One was made up to look like a cave. King Ludwig was a great follower of Richard Wagner and much of what he had followed the opera's of Wagner. We unfortunately could not take any pictures inside the Castle because they want us to buy their books and pictures. You had to go through the gift store on the way out. It is interesting that Disney used this castle as a model for his Magic Kingdom and now this Castle is using Disneyland as a model for selling its wares.

After touring the Castles we hiked over to Mary's Bridge to see spectacular view of Neu Schwanstein from a short distance. The bridge crosses a very high gap. The views from the bridge were very beautiful. After the bridge we hiked back to our van and had dinner.

We then headed out to Salzburg, Austria via the southern Bavarian Alps. Our first stop was the Wiess Church. It is a Catholic pilgrimage church that was built in the middle of a meadow in the middle of no where because someone found a woodcarving statute of Christ and there were tears running down his face. It was deemed a miracle and the church was built in its honor. It is very beautiful and very baroque. The outside is plain with cows grazing in the pasture around it, but once you walk inside it is almost another world.

After visiting the church we headed through the back roads to Salzburg. There were some very beautiful sights to see and it took most of the rest of the day to get there. We arrived later in the evening and checked into our Pension. The rooms were beautiful and we had dinner at the restaurant, which was our best meal yet. After dinner we drove around Salzburg and got back after dark at about 11:00 pm.

Kambri and Julie time

We will continue on our travelouge later today but I wanted to post some photos of Kambri because Kiera can't. (She can't find the charger for her camera.)

This past week we went up to Post Falls to see the Madison Girls Soccer team play at state. The weather was cold and windy but the girls played valiantly against some very good teams. They first drew the top team from the Boise area, Eagle. These girls were all pretty good, so good that many of the players of the Eagle team already have scholarships to some very good college girl soccer schools. They were defeated but at times they showed that they could play with them. The next day they played Sandpoint which also has a reputation for being a good soccer school. Sandpoint was the number one seed from Northern Idaho. They were also defeated there and they played against a 40 mph wind in the first half and the wind died down in the second half. Julie played well as the captain of the team and she did it with her injury to her foot and her knee has never been 100% since her operation. I believe that if the team had been full of Julie's it would have been able to do very well against those two teams and played them straight up and could have beat them.

On Thursday afternoon Brad went to Boise because he had a meeting there on Friday. Because of that he was able to bring Kiera and Kambri home with him. Kambri is crawling, walking furniture and does a lot of talking. We don't understand what she says yet but she sure can say it. We had a good time on Friday and Saturday, just being with them. All of the Reed kids came over and we were able to visit. We celebrated Nathan's up coming birthday with a pizza dinner Saturday evening and had pumpkin pie for the cake. Everyone had a good time and Kambri was the center of attention most of the time. She only cried when Kiera went to the store and left Kambri with her Grandpa. I guess he still has to learn how to be a better Grandpa.

Kambri and Kiera left for home Sunday morning on the shuttle. The house is a lot less interesting without them there.

Munich

More from our travels. We stayed two nights in Munich and it was a very enjoyable time. After visiting Schloss Nymphenburg, a palace outside of Munich, we headed down town to our hotel in the middle of Munich. We were only about a block and a half from the "fussganger zone" the pedestrian walk way in the center of Munich. Thanks to "Nancy" our GPS we got right to our hotel without any problems. It even got all of the one way streets correct. The streets were so narrow that when we stopped in a parking spot by our hotel a truck wanted to get by us and he couldn't because our passenger side mirrow was in the way. So he reached out and folded our mirror in and drove by us. Needless to say it got everyone nervous about driving down town Munich. We unpacked our van and while everyone checked in I drove the van to the nearest parking lot where it stayed until we had to leave Munich.

The next day in Munich was both fun and very busy. We first got group subway passes so we could get around with the transportation and we headed to the Deutsches Museum. It was a museum that covered about everything - similar to the Smithsonian in Washington DC. We limited ourselves to two hours there. After the museum we headed to the outdoor market and had lunch. We sat with some "locals" and talked with them about their city.

After lunch we visited the St. Peter's Church and climbed to the top of the tower to see the view of the city. That is where we got the picture from above.

We then headed to the Neues Pinakothek Museum where we saw some beautiful artwork. This is Van Gogh's piece called "Sun Flowers".

We then went to the Allianz Fussball Stadium where the Bayern Fussball team play their games and the where the World Cup was played last year. Our soccer player,Julie, was especially excited about that venture.

We saved some time for the ladies to do s0me shopping and just walked around the fussganger zone and viewed the sights. We crashed late that night thinking what adventures would bring us the next day down in Castle country.

In the evenings (and during the day) the street entertainers came out to entertain and hopefully get some euros. Some even had CD's they sold such as the group pictured here. They were really good. I imagine some of them played or taught professionally. There was always some type of entertainment going on.

First Big Snow

I wanted to interrupt our travelogue to bring you news of our first snow here in Rexburg. Last week it snowed but did not stick. This week it snowed some over the night, then it really came down throughout the morning. So much that it is knocking down branches of our trees, which by the way haven't really turned colors nor fallen off yet. Deborah got out this morning to try to save what trees she could. Unfortunately the damage has been done and we will have to wait until next summer to see how our trees will survive. Here are a few pictures.

More on the trip

I thought I would add more pictures from our trip. From the last entry we have Rothenburg, where we spent our first night in Europe. The next morning we headed to Munich, stopping in Dinklesbuhl, the Dachau concentration camp and the palace called Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich before we checked into our hotel in downtown Munich. We stayed in Munich for two nights.

The first picture is from Dinklesbuhl, a very old and quaint village, where we made a short stop. The next one comes from the infamous gate to the Dachau concentration camp. The words say "Arbeit macht Frei" or

'Work makes you Free". This is the gate where all the prisoners entered from when they went into the concentration camp. The final picture is of Schloss Nymphenburg the palace which is located in Munich.

First Entry

Kiera set this up for us clear back in August and we haven't done anything with it yet and it is almost October. First of all we were out of the country when she set it up and next I have been busy with work and now I am writing something.

It has been busy this summer. We took a trip to Europe with Tom and Laura Luthy's family back in July and August. We went to Rothenburg, Germany, Munich, Germany, Salzburg Germany, Venice and Florence, Italy, Gimmelwalt and Basel, Switzerland and finished up in Paris. It was a lot of fun and we were going fast from early morning until late at night each day. We saw so many amazing sights and "walked our feet off" trying to do as much as we could. I hope to post a few pictures of our trip over the next few weeks so you can see some of the beautiful and interesting areas we visited.

I have posted the pictures from the first City we visited, Rothenburg, Germany. I will post more in the future.