Leavenworth

No, not Kansas and we are not in trouble.

Yesterday we visited nearby Leavenworth, Washington. A quaint little tourist village that they have turned into a German town. I've heard about it before but have never visited there. I thought it would be nice for several reasons. One, mommy was born in Germany and two, daddy and mommy spent a lot of time together travelling there in college.

Mainly because of these last two reasons it was quite an emotional day for me. I posted on Facebook that "it finally hit me." Everywhere I turned around there was a reminder of mommy or something we did together. I couldn't walk 50 feet without crying over something. Some might say I was an emotion wreck but really I was just emotional. The hardest part was explaining to the girls why I was crying this time. If something made me tear up, explaining it to them in words made me bawl. They were pretty good about it though.

We walked through gift shop after gift shop and they behaved wonderfully. Sarah really loved the things we saw with our family crest on them but mostly they enjoyed the toys. Neither of them quite grasped the German feel of the place. For lunch we ate at a little restaurant that featured, you guessed it, German cuisine. We all shared a sausage, kraut and potato sampler platter and potato pancakes. Rebekah didn't like the spicy mustard on the sausages but did like the stone ground one. Sarah liked the potato salad and the one sausage that was "like a hot dog."

We found another little bakery that served pretzels. Every day when I would go from where I was staying to mommy's school I would stop by a sidewalk pretzel vendor. Asking for a pretzel with butter and cheese were some of the first "street words" that learned in German. The pretzels here weren't like what I remember in Germany, but they were good. We all shared one:



As I didn't want to completely confuse the girls as to which culture we were in we left the German village and did the American thing - we went shopping at Costco and Walmart. Not much but a few little odds and ends. Costco mostly because I was going through withdrawals.

I learned a couple of things today. Sarah did better learning more things today on her bike if I just let her go and didn't try and "instruct" all the time. She was more willing to try things if I wasn't leering over her. She is doing SO great and rode all of the 3/4 mile to the lodge last night. She kept looking over her should waiting for daddy and Rebekah to catch up. The other thing that I learned is that Rebekah's battery on her quad doesn't last as long as I might want when going at a constant drain - like the 3/4 mile to the lodge and back... For the first time ever I was able to ride my bike along side the kids without having to pull them in a trailer and that was pretty cool.

I expected some dirty looks from some campers as Rebekah's quad with its plastic tires can be pretty noisy on the gravel but instead got nothing but approval and a few comments about how cool it was. Rebekah even stopped to show her quad to some young kids that ran out to see it. I am surprised at how young the folks are in this campground. Most of the time you see big expensive motor homes and a lot of old people in these parks. This one has a lot of young folks and families in tents and small trailers.

Tomorrow we are going to visit some friends on Lake Chelan and actually get to take a boat to church. That sounds really fun and the girls are looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to some adult conversation!

Finally I will leave you with one of the things that made me cry the most yesterday. I saw it in the first shop we walked into and just had to go back and get it before we left. I don't know where it will go, but it will find a special place in our home: