Let winter holidays begin

A sunrise to start the weekend.....We rarely get to see one here so it is a big event when we see the sun :)

Our neighborhood with a dash of snow on it
The beautiful clouds with a bit of blue sky behind them....That was as much blue we saw on Friday
Our patio
Catching snow flakes on the tongue. Yummy!


Having so much fun!



Being tickled by a snow flake
Taking down our "thankful" turkey

It was so nice to have snow....not as much as you Idaho folk but good enough to play in an put smiles on our faces. We are excited for the Christmas season to begin. This next weekend we will be able to go and get a tree from one of those people on the side of the highway (if it isn't too much) and be able to ecorate and have a tree. I was really wanting to put all my Christmas stuff up on Friday but we are still waiting for our things so we settled for Christmas books from the library and I got one set of Christmas lights that we put in our stairway. So it is starting to feel more like the holidays. I even started playing Christmas music on our computer so that has been nice.
Gideon and Bridger are so much fun. They have been playing so well with each other and if they yell at eachother and start beating each other up, usually they will resolve it on their own. They love to draw sing songs, watch movies from the library, make things and read (look) at books. Their favorite songs right now would be I am a child of God, wise man built his house upon a rock, and silent night. They still want me to tell them the bunny story every night which I shoul just make into a picture book with how much they like it. They are a true Joy to me and I am so grateful to be their Mother.
We had our neighbors over for inner this week with the missionaries and she said she wanted to go to church with me but I woke her up this morning so this week didn't work but I look forward in having them find out more about the church. The Frankfurt mission came out in letter form at our ward today saying that they will be having a fast this upcoming sunday for missionary work and that they hope that every set of missionaries will baptise at least one peson before the end of the year so that means that us members need to be more bold and invite and speak up about the truth that we know. They also shared a letter from President Ucktdorf (spelling) stating that now is the time to be missionaries as members of the church and be more bol in our beliefs with the people here in Germany. I am excited about these things and I look forward to Wednesday for Personal progress with the Young women to be able to incorporate missionary work and listening to the Holy ghost in my activity on Virtue.
THings here are going pretty well. Joseph was able to do some training with his squadron yesterday and he got to come home and put civilian clothes on and do excersizes on the flight line, entering the base and a few other spots. They ran scenarios and him and another girl were the bad guys and they got to run away, fight back and get slammed and han cuffed. It seemed that Joseph enjoyes it besies the soreness. He likes knowing more about what to do in certain situations an now he does. He enjoyed the change of pace yesterday.

So what does this look like to you?!

So last night the boys were drawing pictures and doodling and I saw this picture and thought, "oh Joseph must have drawn that or something and then I asked around and it was Bridger. Bridger doodled what looks to me to be a music staff. The only place where he could have seen them is on Little Einstein and in the hymn book. I saw this and was amazed. My 2 year old drew an almost perfect music staff. I was amazed!

Hiking in Devils Canyon

A type of mushroom growing on a tree...a ery WOODY mushroom

Some more!

The canyon of Luxemburgish Sandstone we hiked through
the Lancasters and Gideon. They have 2 other kids but they were at school. LOVE this family! He is a A10 warthog pilot too.
Beautiful!
The boys
Holding Hands
So cute!
Hiking

Another cool sandstone formation

Kings of the rocks
about to cross the pretty bridge


Our good friends here took us hiking on the Luxemburg border and we went to a place called "Devil's Canyon". It was Beautiful!! It was a beautiful forest we hiked through and over a river on a walking bridge and then in the middle of a forest on the side of a hill were these rock formations of Luxemburgish sandstone that is Millions of years old. It was so fun and on some of the rocks they even had anchors for climbing and some of the rocks looked perfect for rapelling. I could spend all day up here exploring and climbing and just haing fun. :)
It was a fun day and then we both had families we were babysitting and so we got together and let all 12 kids play together while we talke and played a game tha t of course we had to finish early due to kids bedtimes but it was still fun :) They are so nice and we have really enjoyed being around them.

My lil goones and my Christmas craft

My boys were so excited when our "unaccompanied" baggage came. We now have some things in our kitchen some more clothes and bedding. We are really looking forward to the rest to be here soon. Yeah for our things!!
The boys were playing with our new garbage can lid. They were some space dude. Buzz lightyear I think ;) They are so fun and their imaginations are truely WILD.

I made these Christmas Squares Nativity for a relief society craft we had today. It was fun and we had a good time. THe boys played and played with the other kids. Good times!!

GIdeon's Letter to his dog

Gideon was missing his dog and decided to write her a letter and draw her a picture. He wants Grandma and Grandpa Jarvis to make sure Akina see's her picture :) He sounded out the words and wrote them by himself. I only helped him with 2 letters. He really enjoys writing lately.


This was our first sunrise that we could see in like 2 weeks. It was a heaven send and Beautiful. It is usually too cloudy to know.

Ramstein on Veterans day

They grow vineyards here

Lots of clouds full of rain
Windmills
and solar panels even when we hardley ever see the sun :)
These are just some pictures we took on our way to Ramstein Germany.

We went to Ramstein Air Base on Veterans day with some new friends of ours. This is the base we flew into and a farely large one. This base is where all the wounded soldiers go and when troops are processing over to Iraq and Afgahnistan they go through Ramstein. So it is a farely large base and we decided to just go walk around a mall for most of the day window shopping and seeing the sites. When we were coming in we saw "event" signs everywhere leading you to a celebration they had for Veterans day well after looking at the "stars and stripes" news I found out this was no ordinary vetrens day at Ramstein. The headline read....
"First lady serves steaks to troops, families at Ramstein" and "visits the wounded during her stay on Veterans day" So it was just funny to learn that because I was there and had no idea. It sounds like no one had any idea about it. She snuck into the room and just started serving steaks. Anyway, that was just a little something I thought was new and different.
We went to eat at Chilies here on base with our friends and hung out a little more. It was fun and they are really nice. They even gave us when of their strollers that has 2 seats. We are sure grateful for that.

St.Martins Day in Germany

St. Martin getting ready to lead the procession down the street

Ready with their lanterns...Thanks Erin!

The procession: During the procession there is a brass band that plays songs and the people sing along to it. It is really fun and I really wished I could understand and sing them too. I recognised somewords and some of the songs were about thanking St. Martin for the deeds had done. They march through town and up the hill where they light a HUGE bon fire and the hill across from that is where they role wagon wheels on fire down the hill. After that everyone goes to the community center and here's talks given by St. martin and towns people, they sing more songs, have soup (goose soup probably) and juice and then Sugared pretzles at the end for the children. Germany is famous for these. YUMMY!

Ken Preparing the "tall" bon fire in their backyard

Bridger digging in Vole holes... By the way we saw one the other night in Bitburg crossing the street..Kinda cute! :)

Yes this is a picture of a wagon wheel on fire being rolled down a steep hill

The boys having fun with their lantern lights

all the kids joining in now

There are 6 different wagon wheels rolled down the hill in the back ground

Joseph and I getting rained on
The sweet little bon fire stand Ken made

Some friends... Erin Lancaster with her son and daughter then Ashley Olsen and her husband Mark with their two daughters.

Me and the boys after they recieved their sugar pretzels...1/2 of Bridgers is in his coat trying not to get too dirty. They were HUGE!

Bridger, Anna, Seth and Gideon


The back ground for St. Martins day
(Insert from the Local newspaper on line)
Celebrating St. Martin's Day in Germany
Each November 11, Germans celebrate St. Martin's Day. But what exactly are we celebrating and why are there kids with paper lanterns in the streets? The Local has the lowdown.
What exactly are we celebrating?
Martinstag is named after St. Martin of Tours, a Roman soldier who became a monk after being baptised as an adult. He eventually obtained sainthood from the Catholic Church for being a kind man who cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm.

What do the lanterns mean?
In many parts of Germany it is traditional for children to participate in a procession of paper lanterns in remembrance of St. Martin. They make their own little lanterns in school or kindergarten and then gather on city streets to sing songs about good old Marty and their lanterns. Often a man dressed as St. Martin with a long red cloak leads the parade on horseback.

So this is actually a big deal then?

It's officially a Catholic holiday, but in recent years the lantern processions have become widespread even in Protestant areas of Germany. So just like Santa Claus has little to do with the birth of Christ, these days St. Martin Day's is probably better known for the luminous procession than the saintly history.

So what do I do on St. Martin’s Day?

If you have kids, you’ll probably spend the evening outside with a bunch of other parents and their children. You’ll be busy frenetically relighting the tea candles in those fiddly little lanterns with cold, stiff fingers and drying tears because, as upsetting it is for the kids, paper lanterns lit by candles tend to catch fire quite quickly. Who would have thought...

Heavens! That sounds dangerous. (we had flash light lanterns)(courtesy of ERIN lANCASTER)

Well, definitely worrying for the parents, forced to prevent their little ones from accidentally setting each other on fire during the procession.

But on the other hand, it wouldn’t really be a proper St. Martin’s procession without someone stamping out a flaming lantern, or a sad-faced child clutching to a charred stick.

What do I do if I don’t have children? Is there anything else to it?

Like most holidays, St. Martin's Day is also about eating food. The traditional victuals are goose with red cabbage and dumplings.

Yummy! But why goose? (OK SO WE SAW A GOOSE IN A CAGE COMING INTO THE COMMUNITY CENTER AS WE WERE LEAVING.....I AM NOT SURE IF THEY WERE GOING TO KILL IT AND EAT IT OR IF THEY BROUGHT IT FOR THE KIDS TO SEE.??!!)

According to legend, Martin was reluctant to become a bishop as an honour for all his good deeds, so he hid in a stable filled with geese to escape from Church officials. Martin might have been a very kind and gentle man, but he apparently wasn’t the smartest. Otherwise he would have considered a better hiding place than a pen filled with gabbling geese - who ended up giving away his location.

And the geese had to pay for that?

Perhaps, but the more likely reason is that November 11 is the beginning of Advent fasting and hardcore Catholics get a last chance to feast before they abstain from greasy food and booze until Christmas.

And if I am not Catholic, don’t like goose and have no children?

Then you might want to huddle around one of the many Martin bonfires, eat something else or simply celebrate the beginning of carnival, as it starts on November 11 as well.