For the Fourth Time

 I have approximately 40 gazillion things I could/should be doing instead.  And another 40 gazillion  things I should blog about before this, but, to be totally honest, I'm deeply tired.    And today is not going to be one that gets noted in the annals of exceptional productivity.  

So, I'm just going to post this collage  of me visiting the same statue in Brienz, Switzerland for the fourth time in my life.

1975:  my Dad was stationed in the Army in Germany and this was taken on a little  roadtrip my parents went on
1987:  I was 14 and this was the first trip overseas (besides when we'd lived there).  We camped and drove through Europe
2016:   the first time we brought our family to Europe
2025:  a C family reunion in the Alps

   
Never mind the cutoff numbers on a couple of the years in the collage.  I'm too tired to care, and if you think  I've been alive since 987, then YAY to me for figuring out this whole long-livedness thing.   I look pretty average for a 50-something year old, but I look dang amazing for someone who's over 1000 years old!  

I note with a touch of sadness, that my Dad would have been the biggest fan of this collage!   I did not grow up in a wealthy home, but my Dad knocked his socks off to make sure us kids were exposed to other cultures.   That meant that he saved his frequent flyer miles from his business trips for many years to save up enough points to take us overseas when I was 14, where we camped the whole way through Europe.  He was so excited to recreate that photo in 1987 and he still remembered exactly where the statue was.   When we took our family for our first overseas trip in 2016 (besides Spence's Make-a-Wish trip the year before), he very excitedly explained to us exactly where to find the statue again.   It was one of my brothers who noticed we would be close to Brienz on our most recent trip....thereby making this a perfectly squared collage.  

See here for my 2016 blogpost about it and stay tuned for the other 40 gazillion things I need to blog about...

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The OTHER Missionaries in Our Lives

Cami's been on her mission about 8-months now and we miss her more than ever, but have found that the more time we spend with the missionaries from our ward, the more connected we feel to her across the miles.   

Sisters Calvert and Inman are not only excellent missionaries, but I think would be great friends with Cami if they all knew each other.    We see them at least a couple of times a week and, as you can see,  they love Rocky (probably more than I do).  

 Nicole (the girl in the center) joined the church in December and is one of the reasons why we spend so much time with the missionaries.  Her dad, Billy, is taking the lessons and is scheduled to be baptized in April!  They are all at our house most Wednesdays for the discussions.   

It really has been a cool experience to be a part of the missionary effort here at home, while Cami is doing her part in France and Switzerland.  

Nicole recently gave a talk at a missionary fireside.  A few youth from the ward came to show their support! 

The sisters have come over a few times to do family history at our house.  

And they even brought over a birthday present for Ellie!  Speaking of which, Ellie, in particular, has a really special bond with them.  

We all went to watch one of Nicole's lacrosse games, but she ended up with a concussion and didn't play.  

So, we just froze together....

and enjoyed being together.  

Meanwhile, our sweet missionary is doing great things in Lausanne, Switzerland!  

We miss her.   

1975, 1987, and 2016 versions

   Back when I was a young child, my family lived in Kassel, Germany.   While we lived there my parents took regular trips to the Swiss temple and while traveling there, would always pass through the cute little Swiss town of Brienz.   One time they got out and took a picture of me in front of this statue in the center of town.    

Our family visited Switzerland again (and several other countries)  in 1987 and my dad remembered the other photo and took this picture of me as a very awkward fourteen-year-old.  

Flash forward almost 30-years, and when my dad found out that we were traveling through the general vicinity of Brienz on our trip, he very excitedly gave me exact directions on how to find this statue again.      

So there you have it....a very cool reprisal of the same photo over a 41-year span!  

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Sick in Switzerland

May 20:  After a disappointing and tiring finish to our day yesterday in Lucerne, we were more than a little excited to wake up to this glorious alpine view just outside our cabin in Emmetten, Switzerland.

I woke up early and took a gazillion pictures of the lovely mountainside surroundings...

The kids were fascinated that we looked like we were higher than the clouds sometimes....

<sigh>   isn't it lovely? 

Ellie woke up feeling  ill, so it took a little longer than we would have preferred to get out the door, but I didn't mind the extra time to enjoy the view....

At my dad's suggestion, we drove through Brienz (look for another blogpost on Brienz coming soon)....

and then onto Interlaken.

Interlaken was much more the charming little Swiss town that we were hoping for when we went to Lucerne and we very much enjoyed taking in the lovely alpine surroundings.

Too bad that Ellie was reallllllllllllly dragging by this point and we didn't get to explore quite as much as we'd hoped.    She vomited at lunchtime and was now officially full-blown sick

 Luckily for Ellie, it was a day with a lot more driving than walking.   After Interlaken, we headed to the Swiss temple in Zollikofen.

Then we crossed the border and headed to the mission home in Lyon, where Cami will be serving her mission in a couple of months.

It was evening time, so no one was in the office, but it was great to see a glimpse of where she'd be serving!

We walked around Lyon for a bit and found the famous Notre Dame of Lyon high up on a hilltop overlooking the city.  

Lyon was a bigger town than we expected...

and we loved visiting the place that will someday be a place that is near and dear to her heart!

After exploring for a bit more, we headed to our hotel, where Ellie and I chilled (and eventually slept) while everyone else went out in search of dinner.  

Other than Ellie being sick, it was a great day!

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Favorite and Least Favorite

May 19: Munich was a bit of a surprise to us.   We only added it onto our itinerary because it was so much cheaper to rent a car there than in Switzerland or Italy, but we really ended up enjoying our short time there.

It's a beautiful city with interesting history, reasonable prices, and many lovely buildings.   And best of all, it seemed like such a cheerful place.   So many of the cities we visited seemed entirely peopled with unhappy citizens who were unfriendly and rarely smiled, while Munich seemed to be filled with the nicest people.  

It was pouring rain while we were there (surprise!), but we thoroughly enjoyed our walk through the center of town, including  a charming little market that sold a fun variety of food and souvenirs.

Unfortunately we didn't give ourselves as much time in Munich as I would have preferred, but it was time to move on to the rest of our journey!     First stop:   Neuschwanstein Castle!   

Actually, this first picture isn't of Neuschwanstein, but of nearby Hohenschwangau Castle, which was one of the childhood homes of King Ludwig and a big part of the inspiration for him to build Neuschwanstein where he did.   

He was a bit of a recluse and was drawn to the idyllic and beautiful setting of these lovely mountains of Bavaria.

He built Neuschwanstein high up on a hilltop to be a place for solitude and repose.  The hilltop location, however, made it difficult to build and he never saw it fully finished in his lifetime.   

The architecture is stunningly beautiful and it's so picturesque that it's actually used as a model for the Walt Disney castle.  

For as picturesque as the castle is though, it's actually quite challenging to get a good picture of it.   You can either see it from far away....

Or from right up close...

It's quite a trek to get up the hill to the castle from the parking areas, but our kids are troupers and have finally reached a point in their development that they do not complain about long walks anymore!  Hallelujah!

Thankfully we had a bunch of umbrellas that we had procured during our rainy day in Rome!

And there were some hot pretzels to give us a little energy for the long wet walk down!

It ended up being one of our favorite stops of the whole trip, which was good, because after our visit there, we were off to one of our least favorite stops of our whole trip.

Lucerne, Switzerland.  

I thought I'd done my due diligence and picked a great city to stop in, but, alas, it lacked personality, was grossly expensive, wasn't all that pretty (the city itself), and the people were among the unfriendliest we met on our whole trip.   The best part about Lucerne was the scenic drive in and out of the city.

That is why I don't have a single picture of Lucerne and would not recommend it to someone planning their own trip to Europe.

Stay tuned for more European adventures to come!

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