Christmas Eve!!

We decided to do Christmas American style: we opened gifts Christmas morning instead of Christmas Eve. Nonetheless, we had a nice night before Christmas. The boys admired the tree for a while,

then the elves (sneakily) got into our apartment and left pajamas for us all.

Asher was especially excited.


I played Christmas songs on the guitar while BreAnne and Gayle half-heartedly sang along, and Micah played with a little nativity scene...

and Asher spent most of the night hanging out with Oma.

The highlight of the evening was when we opened up a gift. Micah was excited to open one up and kept asking, in German, if it was a train, or "a car, maybe?" He opened up a new collared shirt with a matching tie. He looked very disappointed and just sort of tossed it to the side and wouldn't talk to us for a while. I've never seen such an ungrateful 2 1/2 year-old!

Good Times

As you can easily see, we're all very happy, especially Gayle. I actually don't remember what she was laughing at, but it's my favorite picture of Gayle and I just wanted an excuse to put it on our blog.

More time with the grandsons

After our trip, we were all tired and we spent the next day just hanging out.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

With school out, the tree set up, and a good part of Heidelberg visited, we made our first big trip: a day trip to Rothenburg o.d. Tauber. Rothenburg is a medieval town that was left fairly untouched in WWII and has had little changed in the downtown area in the last 700 or 800 years. Gayles iPod proved a valuable travel asset in keeping Mikah occupied. I think he watched "Wild Hogs" at least 7 or 8 times while she was here, no lie.

We basically just walked around town and saw the major sights. It was REALLY cold, so we enjoyed some nice German cuisine in a restaurant across the street from the neat-looking town hall. The town still has a wall all the way around it. If you have the time and energy, you can walk around the whole thing (or almost all of it, at least). There is a medieval incarceration and torture museum that we wanted to go to, but you know how museums are with kids sometimes. Besides that, Gayle needed some time to spend in Käthe Wohlfahrt, a popular Christmas store chain with a particularly large store in Rothenburg. We looked around at Rothenburg's Weihnachtsmarkt, enjoyed the sights and caught the train home that evening.

One of a few gates to the Altstadt.

Lookout tower that was in the background of the last picture. Gate and tower are 13th Century construction, I think.

BreAnne and Mikah up on the city wall.

A view of the Altstadt from the city wall.

This is the wall that goes around the whole city (the downtown anyway).

Shot of the old downtown area.

Fun mix of medieval and 15th Century half-timber architecture.

Neat building next to the Rathaus (town hall) with a Glockenspiel.

The hybrid Rathaus. The older, white part was built in the 12th Century (again, I need to check the dates), and the front during the renaissance.

Another downtown shot. In the background is a different gate and tower.

Cool half-timber buildings to the left of the Rathaus.

I forgot the name of this church, but let's face it, you probably don't care anyway. It reminds me of the Heilig Geist Kirche in Heidelberg (architectually).

This is on the edge of the Altstadt in an area where the town is level with the top of the wall. To the left is a 50 ft drop-off.

BreAnne and I sitting on the wall. The view from there made it one of my new favorite places in Germany.

Gayle with Asher and me.

This tower was on the opposite side of town that we came in on.

This is what's left of a chapel that was originally part of a palace built in the early 12th Century.

Gayle and Asher by part of the ubiquitous city wall near the chapel above.

This is the other side of that tower and gate you saw a few pictures back. I'm not sure, but I don't think this gate was quite as old as the first ("front") gate.

Asher was happy to get unwrapped on the way home and get some fresh train air.

A Taste of Heidelberg

Gate and Old Bridge
Oma and Micah with the castle in the background
A view of the Neckar river from the Old Bridge
Micah and Oma enjoying the evening out

While I was doing some homework, Gayle went with BreAnne and the kids to see the Altstadt area, especially the old bridge and gate. BreAnne faithfully documented the tourist activity for all to see...
When they got home, they came bearing Bratwurst, Feuerwurst, and Frikadellen. They tasted good.

Gayle with a Feuerwurst and Micah with a Brat

Fun with Grandkids

Micah had to show off his random toy/dinosaur collection to Gayle to draw attention away from Asher. I was still in school for the first week of Gayle's trip, so they just hung aroung town and didn't plan anything big the first few days. Once school started wrapping up, we went shopping for the kids and got a tree. Yes, it is small, but it was only 7 Euros (about 10 Dollars) and it was the perfect size for Micah to help decorate.
Asher hung out on Big Babe while we got the tree set up.

Brothers

Micah has taken to being a big brother fairly well. He's usually concerned about him and if Asher starts crying he'll tell him ,"It's OK Asher, it's OK." Sometimes he gets a little jealous and his fits have increased in intensity on occasion. But the biggest difference is that Micah wants a pacifier and a bottle now and while Gayle was here, he'd spit out the pacifier onto the floor and start acting like a baby and crying until one us put it in his mouth. Yeah, that was fun.

Asher's Blessing

Although not a Fast Sunday, the Bishop let us bless Asher the next day (the 16th), so that Gayle could be there for it. I did it in English for Gayle, so the older members and little kids in the ward didn't understand it, but almost everyone else did. I wore my interview suit. I never wear a suit. Except for those interviews, that is. Mikah and I matched (orange and white), and Asher looked cute. Although he started out looking sort of like me, he looks more and more like Mikah and BreAnne.

Gayle in Germany!

So, the much-anticipated post is finally here! We'll start with Gayle arriving in Germany. She got a ride down here from a member in our ward, which saved us all a bit of cash and sped things up a great deal (Gayle confessed later that she was pretty nervous on the Autobahn, the member owns an Audi and is a German... in other words, driving about 120 mph or so was no issue for him). When she got here, Micah was excited to go down and see her, but when he did, he just sort of looked at her and smiled shyly with his tongue in his cheek for a while. After a minute or two he warmed up and didn't want to leave her side. It was cute. It was Micah's nap time, and Oma had jet lag, so they had a nap together, with Micah twirling her hair, of course, to fall asleep, just like old times.
That night, we went to a restaurant across the street from us called Essighaus (literally: vinegar house). It's popular with the locals, especially students. It offers traditional German food and it was delicious. Right before we were served, though, Micah decided to crap his pants. But instead of just a regular old dump, he had diarrhea and it got all over his clothes. I took him all the way back home (like I said, across the street) and cleaned him up and came back to a meal waiting on the table. The funniest thing is, we all smelled him the whole night leading up to the discovery, but didn't know where the smell was coming from. Gayle of course thought it was her breath.
After that, we set out to conquer the Heidelberg Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market). The Weihnachtsmarkt is a tradition sadly missing from the American Christmas. The entire downtown pedestrian area (a very large area in Heidelberg) is full of cabin-like huts selling everything from African sculptures and musical instruments to Bratwurst and Glühwein (hot wine with some other stuff in it; I'm not sure what all is in it, but I think it stinks). Micah went on the merry-go-round with Oma, then we were cold enough to go home. It's weird, the coldest it's been this winter was during the 3 weeks Gayle was her. Before and since I don't think it's fallen below 45 Fahrenheit.
With an extra set of hands there, we finally got a family photo of us, and Gayle got to spend some time with her two grandsons.
The next night, we went to our ward Christmas party. Gayle came along and demanded we take pictures of her drinking her apple juice [3753].

Gayle's visit, our future, and other things

So, Gayle is leaving tomorrow to go back home after a very enjoyable close to 3-week visit. Once our computer gets fixed, we'll make a monstrous post to commemorate the visit. One high point of her visit was seeing Ashlie in Berlin. We spent a day with her and it was fun. More details to come, so keep visiting. Most of you who read the blog have already heard, but if you haven't, I was accepted at Ohio State's medical school. What a relief. As long as I can finish my degrees here we'll know what we're doing for the next 4 years of our life after Germany. We still haven't heard from UT Southwestern. The student affairs guy says I'm competitive, but that he can't say if I'm in or out yet, so we'll see. Who knows where we'll end up. Either Columbus or Dallas, maybe. Maybe we won't have a choice and we'll be in Columbus. I love the school, but we'd be far away from family. Micah has had mixed feelings toward Gayle. One day he loves her and wants to cuddle and everything, the next day he tells her to shut up when she clears her throat (he seriously did, I'm ashamed to say). I'll detail some more stories later. Pictures (a LOT of them) are on the way.