Moran Family Fun

We took the time for one last fun day trip to Kurpfalz Park before summer vacation ended.  It is a combination zoo/amusement park/playground and it was so much fun.  We skipped over the zoo part of things and headed straight for the more fun play areas.  There were paddle boats, bumper boats, two alpine slides, zip lines, and an amazing pirate ship themed playground. Bumper boats!  Madison was sweet and went on lots of rides with my friend's daughter  Ally since she was too little to ride alone. Emily was brave and rode this zip line like ride despite her fear of heights  This amazing hamster wheel for children was part of the pirate ship playground.   Abigail was happy that her new friend Aubrey was there as well.  Once they found each other that day I didn't even see Abby again until it was time to go home. This fun day really did wrap up summer for us - the very next day the back to school activities kicked into hig...

Natalie and Samantha once again kicked off the back to school season in our house.  Actually, it's also the end of school season here as well - Jared is finishing up the final class for his Bachelor's Degree this week! It's definitely an exciting time for our family. Natalie has finally moved on from Kindergarten and is starting first grade at the Grundschule.  She's been looking forward to this day all summer.  In fact, she was so happy to be going to school that she hopped right of bed that first day and was all smiles.  Typically Natalie is NOT a morning person at all. Part of the excitement was because she was looking forward to opening her Schultute, which was filled with candy.  She reminded me at least once a day for the week before school that I needed to buy candy for her Schultute and "maybe some toys too." We got to school and found her classroom where we dropped off her books and other supplies.  Then it was time for th...

We made our yearly pilgrimage to the barefoot hike.  You'd think after going there so many times before it wouldn't be that fun anymore, but it's still a pretty good time.  The only big difference this time was the crowds.  When we pulled up to the parking lot there were four buses with people just pouring out of them.  I have never seen so many people there.   We started, as usual, by walking through the long trough of cold, muddy, sticky, water.  It's gross and fun all at the same time. For the first time since our first visit in 2009 the river crossing was open.  You can see in this picture just how many people were there.  The line of people behind Samantha and Emily just kept going and going. We stopped at about the halfway point of the hike to play in the river.  The water was comfortably cool - just right for a hot day.  Madison waded out about half way, found a comfy rock, and settled in for the duration. Na...

We started running out of steam on the last two days of our vacation.  It is so fun to go and see all the touristy things, but it is also really nice to sleep in, sit and enjoy the scenery, play card games, and just spend time as a family.  We did make one last outing to Mittenwald, a small town not far from where we were staying.  The only reason we went there is because I'd heard it was a beautiful town.  There were no castles or anything on the itinerary, our plan was just to visit the town and see what we could find.  We wandered around admiring the buildings and mountains and stopped at anything that seemed interesting.  We ended up having a very Bavarian lunch, visiting a violin museum, and (of course) finding a place to have ice cream.     Many of the buildings in Mittenwald were beautifully painted.  They looked like something out of a fairy tale with the wooden shutters, elaborate paintings, and window boxes overflowin...

Jared mentioned just one thing that he wanted to do on our trip - visit Neuschwanstein Castle.  We've actually been there once before, when we took one last trip before we left Germany in 2003.  On our first visit we took the tour inside the castle so our plan for this time was to skip the tour (and the long lines) and spend our time wandering around the outside of the castle.  We got a later start to our day than we should have because sleeping in is more fun than getting up early.  By the time we arrived the town was crawling with tourists.  We ended up sitting in traffic for twenty minutes just to drive the last mile.  We found a parking lot with free spaces, but the attendant said our van was too big for the spaces and we'd have to park at the next lot.  We drove to the next lot only to find this sign waiting for us - apparently the lot was full.  At this point Jared was pretty much done.  Our van would have fit in the spaces in ...

Even though this is our fourth (fifth?) trip to Garmisch, we've never before made the trip to the top of Germany's tallest mountain, the Zugspitze.  As this is very likely our last trip here, we made sure to add it to our list of things to do.  We started our journey at Lake Eibsee where we got our tickets for the trip there and back.  We had dropped Madison off for girls camp at lunch time and we made it to the train station by the lake just in time for the last train going up that day.  The lady in the ticket office told us to run because they were holding the train for us and she wasn't kidding, as soon as we sat down the train started moving.   The ride up in the train was steep and slow going, but the views were fantastic.  The train made a three minute picture stop on the way to the top so we jumped out and snapped a quick photo.  It was already cooler than where we'd started our journey.  The rest of the ride was through a long, long...

Linderhof Palace was built by King Ludwig II in the late 1800s on the site of his father's hunting lodge.  It's actually a pretty small building as far as castles go, but it's still spectacular inside and out.  We actually toured the inside of the palace in 2009, so this visit we spent our time exploring the gardens and park around the palace. It's hard to see the palace itself behind the spectacular fountain, which we arrived just in time to see, but it's easy to see why the King chose this location to build his palace - it's beautiful.  The mountains surrounding the valley are so perfect they look like paintings. Despite the picturesque setting and the beautiful gardens, Abigail was not a happy hiker.  It was a hot day and it had been a long slog from the parking area to the palace.  We took a little breather in a nice shady spot under a tree (it was actually a hollow tree, which was pretty cool) until everyone felt ready to move on with our pla...