Kherington 18 Months

My how she has changed. She is between 16 and 18 months in all of the pictures below (pictures in age order). She is a silly silly girl and we LOVE her!

Cologne and Frankfurt

To celebrate the end of Ryan's busy season, we planned a short trip over to Cologne and Frankfurt Germany. Kherington and I were in the US until mid September, so we waited a while to make sure Kherington would be adjusted (happier traveler).

Day 1:
We left at 4:00am in hopes that we could just move Kherington to her car seat and have her go back to sleep, however she stayed up the entire drive. As with most trips, our plans once again changed. After getting out of the car at a rest stop just 30 minutes from Frankfurt, we decided to backtrack an hour and head to Cologne first because it was FREEZING and our plans had been to do a 4 hour outdoor walking tour. Everything worked out great.

We found parking directly under the Cathedral (made is super easy to find the parking garage when we were done). We decided to climb the tower with Kherington, but minus the backpack carrier. The ticket salesman was like you realize that is 523 steps (or something like that). Ryan was amazing and carrier her the entire way up the steep, twirly staircase. She was able to run around a bit before we finished the last 50 stairs or so to the bell tower area. The view was amazing! We then headed over to the Chocolate Museum. It takes you step by step through the chocolate making process (my favorite part was seeing the actual machines and mold making).

From there we made a quick stop in Bonn at the Haribo outlet store to stock up on gummy and marshmallows (who knew they sold normal 'campfire' marshmallows?). Then continued on to Frankfurt where our hotel was located just a short walk away from the temple. We had hoped to be able to have one of us do a session that evening and the other the next morning, but that didn't end up happening. We did go over and walk around the temple grounds.

We decided to eat at a mexican restaurant that was packed...I'll never do that again...my mexican food is way better than German mexican food...Kherington was sitting on my lap and helping herself to my food and I didn't see that there was a whole pepper in the salad. She too a huge bit and started screaming (oops).

Day 2:
Kherington was really happy to be in the car with her bears this morning. It was still a little chilly when we got downtown, so we opted for checking out the mall. It had an escalator that when up SEVEN stories and had some fun/artistic areas to relax in. Since we skipped out on the organized walking tour we just wandered around the until lunch time, grabbed bratwurst from the local outdoor market and headed home.

Kherington was very content with snacking on Cheetos the whole drive home. She learned how to pull the lid off of her snack cup so she could stash them away in her seat.

Colorful

While I continue to update the past I figured I should throw in a current post.

This morning I decided to do some coloring with Kherington. I turned my back to turn on some Disney songs (on youtube...i need to buy some soundtracks) and when I turned back around here's what i was surprised with picture #1. As a solution I made #2 (too back she LOVES peeling the tape off).

Cooking Catch-up

I’ve been experimenting with some new recipes since moving here. I like to cook (well, more bake than cook) and there are some thing you just can’t buy here. For a couple weeks I had a friend to bake with (baking Friday’s), but they moved back the US so I’m on my own again.

So here’s some pictures of a few of the yummy treats I’ve made here:

And here's some treats that I wish I could make:

Gardening Attempt #1

When we moved in half our backyard was torn up because they were working on the pipes that happen to run right there. Since it was already torn up and had no grass, we sectioned off a piece and kept it as dirt so we could plant a few things. I missed the most opportune time for the tomatoes but sprinkled the sees our anyways. It wasn’t until we pulled up the plants this last weekend that we saw we actually had about 30 tomatoes on the vine, oops.

We did get a lot of Zucchini. The downside being that they came and went in the 3 weeks I was in the states for Dana’s wedding so Ryan was nice enough to pick chop and freeze them. We also got 14 pumpkins J. The vines invaded a lot of the backyard. Next year I’ll translate the instructions on planting instead of just sprinkling the seeds.