Settling in Update

After visiting Niagara Falls.....

And our family in New York.....

Finally, we are here at our final destination: "home" for the next three years! Actually it feels like we have returned "home" after a three year vacation since we were here just before we went to Germany. That mostly has to do with the fact that we are now living in the exact same house we moved out of three years ago. It just so happened that our old house was available for a new family and we had a very agreeable housing representative that made it possible to move back into this wonderful house! All thanks go to God though, because it is obvious only His hand could have made all of this possible.

Though we are back in our most favorite house, we are still waiting on our household goods to get here. Trust me though, sleeping on air mattresses and trying to cook dinner with one pot and paper plates is nothing compared to staying in a hotel room. They are predicting our stuff to get here at the end of the month. Good thing I packed our school books in the pre-shipment, much to the boys disappointment, that has already arrived. HAHA!

We think we have found our new church. We haven't joined yet, we're taking things slowly, but so far we have enjoyed each time we've spent time there. It is a small and intimate church, much like our family in Germany, with its own charm. The pastor and his wife have 7 children (6 of which are boys) and our boys hit it off immediately with their boys. It seems most of the children are home schooled in that church as well. There is a whole lot of love and support there.

For now, that's it for the updates but stay tuned, we have several surprises up our sleeves and new things to tell when the time is right. But for now I have to go wrangle these kids up for bed because we have an early, busy day in store tomorrow.

The Creation Museum

As we are traveling across the U.S. we took a break here near Cincinnati to go to the Creation Museum!

We first went into the Planetarium (sorry no pictures allowed) but it was a GREAT show! It displayed how great the universe is and how BIG out God is! All of us enjoyed it (Elizabeth too).

Then on to the fun dinosaurs!

The boys were given a scavenger hunt to do as we went through the museum. Here they are filling in their "finds" in the Old Testament display: that's Elijah, Moses and David there in the background.

Then we moved on to the Garden of Eden, you got up close and personal with the animals and dinosaurs there. The displays were beautiful! Notice the dino eating fruit, this is the "before the first sin" scene.

Here, is the "after the first sin" view. This dino was fully animatronic. I wish I caught Sean's facial expression the first time he heard it growl. It was great!! Elizabeth was concerned about the dino with a "boo-boo" - you know, the one about to get eaten.

Adam and Eve and family:

They had a great Noah's ark exhibit. In the future they have plans on making a full size Ark to go into and view instead of dioramas.

Ryan riding his favorite type of dino!

And Sean too! We tried to put Elizabeth up there but she was too afraid.

Outside they have a huge garden with petting zoo.
The boys took a Camel ride (twice).

This tortoise was amazing! Ate right out of their hands!

Elizabeth loved all of the animals

These two are a zonkey: zebra donkey mix (the lighter colored) and a zorse: zebra horse mix (the darker). They were incredibly sweet!!

We had a wonderful time and definitely would recommend anyone to visit. We will probably be back.
Oh and they had a HUGE book store at the end, all of the books and home schooling curriculum Answers in Genesis sells. We could have spent WAY too much money there. It was great to thumb through some of that material I had been debating to get for school.

Visiting Nana and Pop-Pop

We made it home!
God has been good: gave us a safe, smooth flight back to America and we have had a wonderful (storm free) time with Nana and Pop-Pop here in Oklahoma.

We have gone swimming, did a little practice bike riding, and even some fishing.

The boys are up early in the morning here at a doughnut shop on their way to go fishing.

We had to take a quick stop at the bait shop to get some minnows.

Sure, we lost a few fish....

But we caught a few too..
Sean's catch:

Ryan's catch:

We went fishing on a little pond that was a part of a friend of Nana and PopPop's property.
There was an adorable, curious little colt that wanted to come fishing too.

He was so friendly, and apparently liked the taste of our van as well...

What a great time we've all had! Tomorrow we start on the next leg of our journey: traveling through the USA, stopping here and there to see some sites.

Keep us in your prayers for our safe journey and we will update again as soon as we get a chance!

Our Last Days in Germany

We've have been very busy our last week here in Germany. Of course, there's the normal packing out, cleaning house, checking out stuff to do; we've also been saying good-bye to a lot of dear friends whom we will miss.

On Saturday, we went to a place called Sensopolis to say good-bye to a good friend to the boys. This place is a giant warehouse full of things for kids to touch, jump on, climb on, hang from... a child's dream!

They have a giant spaceship, a climbing tree house sort of thing.....

a castle with all sorts of fun things to explore. Elizabeth with fasinated with the sleeping king who had a bed in the clouds! lol

It was hard to capture those boys on camera, they were zipping and zooming all over the place. I finally was able to get them to sit for 1/2 a second to snap this picture.

For Memorial Day, we had our annual church picnic. This time we all drove about 45min south to a little castle. Castles are all over the place here. You have to watch the mountain tops and you usually will either see a castle or the ruins of a castle up there somewhere.
This castle is called Lichtenstein. (click the link to learn more about it)

Mrs Thornsley told me later, these little gargoyles under the bench here were there to "look" up lady's skirts..... : /

The boys waiting for our tour to start, that bridge there was a little riggidy... didnt give me a warm and fuzzy feeling walking across.

This armor here was just about the right size for the boys to fit into. LOL

A little chapel inside.

I missed what room this was but, like all the rooms, was decorated from floor to ceiling.

View from the window.

The Knight's Hall.

Everyone outside exploring after the tour was over.

After, we drove a little further out to have our picnic.

The adults all rested in the shade.

And the children all had a massive water gun fight.