Summer 2012

Thursday after school I set down the kid's book bags and all their stuff and we headed out to Germany.  We met one of Jason's friends for dinner there and then spent the night at a hotel.  The next morning we got up and flew home!  It was a long flight, but the kids did well.  Here they are crashed in the limo on the drive home from the airport.

We had a great summer at home.  The kids got to see their friends and have lots of playdates and sleepovers. I got to visit with my friends as well!

We got to see our families.  Here are some photos with my family.

Jason and the boys and his parents went to see a Cubs baseball game.   We got in all our Dr. and Dentist visits.  The boys went to a waterpark.

We also went to WI to visit with my Grandma

and then spent the weekend with some good friends that moved there. 

Some pictures of the kids on some rides at an amusement park we did in WI.

Other things we did at home, was eat all our favorite foods, probably too much!  We did the annual pub crawl, and I had my high school reunion as well. 

Here are a few pictures from dinner before the reunion with friends.

We went and saw a bunch of movies, and we didn't have to wait for them to come out in English!  My wash got done so fast I couldn't keep up with it, loved that!

I did enjoy not having the blog to do as it is quite time consuming, but of course I will still do it when I go back.  I took all the blogs and made them into a book and had it printed out.  It turned out very nice and something to remember what we did while we were here.

 

I did spend quite a bit of time at home putting all this year's pictures into everyone's photo books.  I think each of the boys had around 700 pictures, Amber had to be more around 800 and ours probably 900 or more.  So that is over 3000 pictures I put into books!  I ended up running out of time and wasn't able to label any of the pictures.  So next summer hope I remember what they were of!

I got to do lots of shopping.  I only went to target 3 times, I couldn't believe it!

We had hot weather and no rain for days.  We got in lots of pool time.  Amber did swimming lessons and finally put her face in the water and learned how to swim!  That was great to see!

The boys did a Bulls basketball camp which they loved and I also signed them up for an educational class as well.  And we did BBQ's at friend's houses.

Unfortunatly Jason didn't spend much time with us besides the weekends as his company's office is not the same place we went so he would drive there and stay during the week and then drive home on the weekend and only once did he have to fly back to Europe for a week. 

We went bowling and to a fun center with friends.

Then the day finally came when I had to pack up our suitcases and get everyone ready to come back.  I had everything crammed in there so tight.  All the kids would have rather stayed there, but our life is here so we had to come back.

On the flight back we got split up and I didn't remember to give Sean his retainer case.  Can you guess where this is going?  So dinner was served, fine.  Breakfast in the morning was served and he must have put the retainer on the tray and then was watching a movie and they picked up the tray and he didn't realize it until a bit later.  Jason went through the trash but the little blue retainer was no where to be found- welcome back to Lux!

Friday we landed in the morning in Frankfort, Germany and then had to go back to the hotel and pick up the car and drive 2 1/2 hours back to Lux.  Well that was a hard drive home.  Jason and I had to take turns b/c of course we didn't sleep much on the flight back and so we are having a hard time staying awake.  We got in in the afternoon and stopped at the gas station grocery down the street and picked up a few things.  We just had an early dinner, relaxed and went to bed!

Sat. I had to start empting the suitcases as we were leaving for vacation the next day and I needed the summer clothes and some of the suitcases for the trip.
I also needed to get a new washing machine as mine had blown up and blown the plug as well before we left.  So we headed to the store where I had bought the dryer and we found one.  It is a 9kg drum.  I don't know what mine is at home, still larger then this, but this is nice.  The prior one I had here was a 5kg one!  So I ask when they can deliver and he shows me either 2 of the days we are on vacation next week or not for 3 weeks!  Are you kidding me?  So Jason said we will just pick them up as we had bought a small freezer as well.  So he picks everything up and unloads it and plugs everything in.  I do one load empty and one load with clothes as I was running out of time.  The machine moved around a bit, but since it was the first time with clothes in it I didn't think too much of it.  (wait until later)
In the afternoon I had signed us up to tour the Grand Duke's Palace here.  It is only open for a few weeks in August to visit while they are on holiday.  So it was a nice tour.  It is in the middle of our city center so it isn't huge like a castle.

It is the building here on the right side.  In front of the main entrance you can see 2 blue guard houses where a guard will normally be walking around.
We only saw the first 2 floors as the third is their private quarters and we couldn't go up there.  They did have some china on display and it is the same Villorey and Boch Luxembourg pattern that I have started collecting as well!  I finally finished packing everyone at 11:30 and went to bed, exhausted.