Garmisch

Last weekend, Tom and I finally got to go on our weekend getaway to Garmisch! We've planning this since October, because the lodge we stayed at fills up very quickly so we had to make reservations far in advance. It's a really neat American lodge/hotel that's in the Bavarian alps. It's so gorgeous there, so we were really excited to be able to get away from everything and spend some quiet time together. On the drive there, we stopped at the Neuschwanstein Castle, which the Disney castle is modeled after. We got there kind of late so we weren't able to tour the inside of the castle, but we were able to take a horse carriage ride up to the castle and walk around a little bit. From there we continued on to the lodge, and had a nice dinner. On Sunday, we had planned to drive up to Munich and Dachau, but after spending about 5 hours in the car we didn't feel like driving anywhere, so we just stayed in town, relaxed, and window shopped a little bit. On Monday we made our way back home, and although it was a nice weekend, it was good to be back home! Tom was so wonderful, doing all the driving and everything, I always appreciate that :). We thought about the cats a lot while we were away, hoping that they were behaving...we had left a bunch of food for them in the food dispenser thing, and we'd left a couple days worth of food extra, just in case...and when we got home, all the food was gone! Jaegar looked a little chubbier, and Madison actually looked skinnier!

Koeln

In front of the cathedral

I'm married to the next Rocky?


Chocolate fountain in the museum...mmm

Just one end of the cathedral

Inside of the cathedral

A few weekends ago Tom and I went on a tour of Koeln with our friends Jason and Mariko. We've been trying to get in a few more weekend trips before Julia arrives :). Koeln is such a beautiful city, it sits on the Rhine and has an amazing and enormous Catholic cathedral. The cathedral houses the tombs of the Three Magi, which was also pretty incredible to see. It was freezing cold on the day we went and the tour we were on was a walking tour, so we all ended up splitting off from the group to do our own thing and try to stay warm! We got to see the cathedral, walked along the Rhine, and visit the chocolate museum! It was a good day, and nice to spend it with each other and our good friends. Enjoy the photos :).

Happy New Year!

A little late, but Happy New Year everyone! Tom and I had fun celebrating - I made scalloped potatoes for the first time, and they didn't turn out too bad. Much better than my pizza! I posted a picture of the pizza since I thought the "great divide" down the middle was pretty funny. Tom made sure to keep the pepperoni far away from my "poison" (a.k.a. tomatoes to us normal people!) and artichokes. It looked beautiful before I cooked it...but then when I went to pull it out it was a little burnt and VERY crispy. Tom is an angel for eating it anyway with no complaints; he always puts up with my experimenting :). I think next time I'll check on it periodically, rather than just setting the timer and forgetting about it...Anyway, for New Years we went over to our friends' house and celebrated with the usual group of friends. Everyone brought a ton of fireworks, so we had a lot of fun with that. Germans go nuts with fireworks! Nothing like in the states, so that was pretty cool.

I also posted a couple belly photos, this is about 30 weeks. We're getting close! We've been really busy lately, and Tom just came down with a bad cold, so we haven't made much progress on Julia's room...but, everyone has been so generous with gifts (THANK YOU!!) that we feel very prepared. I also signed us up for a crash course in child birth (it's a whole day of class, I'd rather have it spread out, but it's hard to work around our schedules), so that should help too. A lot of the guys at work have been telling me all the birthing experiences their families have had, and sometimes it makes me more nervous, but it also puts everything into perspective - at the end of it all, they went home with their precious baby! Julia's been moving around a lot, and sometimes I can feel her pointy joints through my skin. It's really cool, but can get uncomfortable. Tom and I like massaging her back too, it's really neat to be able to interact with her like that!