You're Killing Me

That was one of the things that came out of the mouth of our kids on Monday as we again made them trudge along hills on one of our grand adventures. One of our favorite things to do is take walks or go on hikes. So Monday we went back to Fredricksburg to hike around the battlefield there and the historic district again-to earn a Historic Trails patch for David's scout uniform (he's collected quite a few of those through our travels). The kids like to go on our hikes because usually it includes a stop for ice cream somewhere-bribery to keep their little feet moving.


Anyway, I was laughing because even though they always want to go and they do have fun...the funny comments made along the way-if a stranger heard them they would think we were torturing our kids. Here are some of the things heard on Monday:

you never give us water (from one of the older kids)

When is lunch (at 9am)

My feet are on fire

You're so mean (after being told for the 100th time not to climb on the historic wall)

When is lunch (at 1pm-and yes they were fed already)

I just want to sleep

Why does Benjamin get to ride in the pack (from Bella & Savannah at different times

Here is what they do when we've gone too far:

The good thing to come out of our trip to Germany is that our kids are REALLY good in the car, even without watching DVD's (our DVD player is broken at the moment) they are still great. I think it comes from driving and driving everywhere. Dave and I are now car whiners because we have to drive 75-who made up speed limits??? They are SO LAME!! So the ride up to Fredricksburg and back (about 3 hrs total) was super hard for us and great for the kids. The walk was great for us and hard for the kids.

So on our walks lately we have been missing our lovely home in Kitzingen, the trails through the vineyards. I don't think we will ever live in a place so charming, where you can walk out your back door around the corner and you are on a trail through beautiful country. Germany is criss-crossed with walking trails-wanderwegs- and on Saturdays and Sundays you will see tons and tons of people out walking, or riding bikes on the trails and we totally miss that.

This path was literally around the corner from our house, even in the winter the vineyards are beautiful.

This path we had to drive 20 minutes to get to-in the summer lush green with tasty grapes to sample-beautiful fall colors of yellow, orange and red and in the winter the snow...so gorgeous.

We had a regional stake conference broadcast on Sunday and Elder Uchtdorf spoke. Hearing his accent just made me miss Germany-so I've been thinking about it lately-the brats, the great markets, bakeries with the best bread and pastries, the autobahn, the mountains (as we sit in mountainless Virginia), donor kebaps YUMMY, the people, the architecture, the cheese, the church bells-I totally miss hearing the bells, and oh did I mention the brats, cheese yummy bread, pastries and donor kebaps yet?? Oh and German DIET COKE-I almost forgot! It is different than American diet coke and it is SO YUMMY. If I could I've have someone mail me a case then I'd savor it all sip by sip. Anyway, I'll sign off now, auf wiedersehen....I'm going to sit here and think of German DC and donors all night long.