An update! Finally!

Every year I promise to blog more, and every year I don't, so no more promises, just surprise updates!   This year has been going well so far, getting excited for our cruise in June, staying busy with MOPS and shuttling the boys to school. Here are some photos because that's anyone really wants to see, right!?

MOPS Playdate: Making our own play dough. It wasn't exactly like play dough but it was fun to make and fun to squish.

We watched a movie called The Boxtrolls when Brice had a sleepover, so of course the next morning look what invaded our house!

These are from today; Brandon got me a new camera for Christmas and I have been playing with all of the settings. 

The sky when we left this morning

My favorite house in Nuenen

Garland that I just made! 

Kyle's First Haircut!

Not such a little baby anymore!

Before:

During:

After: He won't let me take a picture of the back, but it's all gone! 

 

Pfungstadt (Yes I spelled that without looking it up!)

A few years ago Brandon's mom, Sandy, started looking up the Marsteller family history on Ancestry.com, and eventually found out that the family Brandon descends from started in Germany. In a town called Pfungstadt.  So of course we had to go check it out when his parents came to visit!!  They moved from there to Pennsylvania, and out from there.  We were able to find city hall (luckily I knew Burgermeister meant Mayor) and from there they directed us to to town archives, where we added our family to the Marsteller book and family information that was already there. We just walked around the town, saw the old city hall, the church, and had lunch at a restaurant that had delicious snitzel.  We also found the old Marsteller Mill, but sadly they were almost done tearing it down. All that was left was some rubble and big hole in the ground. I reached through the construction fence and saved a few pieces of brick to bring home.

It was pretty amazing!

This is the original bell tower with 3 our of 4 of the original bells

And they're off!

Today is the first day of school!  Cody is in Group 6 (4th Grade) and Brice is in Group 2 (Kindergarten).  We met their teachers last Friday at orientation, they each have two that work different days of the week. Today we were ready early so we got to school early and waited in the car for about 10 minutes; Brandon was able to come too, and then we waited outside for the teachers to come out. Each class lines up with their teachers and then they all walk in together. We dropped Cody off first when his teacher came out, and then walked Brice around to the other side of the building. He was the first in line for his class and he had a huge smile on his face!  I was worried he wouldn't want us to leave but he did great.  I am excited to hear all about it this afternoon!

In front of his classroom

One of his teachers is from Australia

Camping Weekend!

All of the camping trips we have done here so far have been at the resort type campgrounds, complete with playgrounds, swimming pool, bowling alley, restaurant and grocery store. This time around we wanted to be in the woods and just enjoy nature. (and show the boys what camping is actually all about!) After much searching and researching we found the Nature campsites. The ANWB store has a little book with the green card required to use these sites, plus the listing of the 139 Nature campsites in The Netherlands. We picked Groesbeek since it was an hour away and looked the most 'woodsy'.  It was a little cold at night for Kyle, but there were blackberry bushes EVERYWHERE which was exciting for all of us, and Saturday we found a dirt bike race and watched a few rounds of that. Brice could have stayed all day to watch if we let him.  We didn't take any cameras with us so these photos are off of Brandon's phone.  One of the best set ups we have ever had I think, and a great campsite overall!

Fort building!! 

Lots of rain cover :)

This is the face of pure trouble...

Camping Selfie! 

The Aarle-Rixtel Castle

I don't remember how we found this, I think I just Googled castles close to the house so we could go take photos of the boys. Vickie took a TON of pictures of them and she is working on them to give us some for the living room.  They haven't been updated since we 2001....oops!

There is a list of castles in The Netherlands (and other countries) here.  Deurne is on my list to go soon and a post for Helmond is coming up!