Arizona Beachfront Property

My good friend Juli and have a code of sorts. When one of us is having a horrendous day or is under a lot of stress, she will call up the other and ask, "I'm running away to Mexico, wanna come?" 

Let me assure you that being in the middle of a intercontinental move qualifies as being under a lot of stress. So after being back in the United States for one week, the kids and I decided to leave it once more - to go to Mexico. My parents had a week scheduled at their shared condo and invited us to go with them.

We've been going to Rocky Point since I was a teenager. First camping at Playa Bonita and then later staying in the condo.  My husband has never once been able to come with us. Initially because of school demands, then because of deployments and now because active duty members can not go into Mexico. But if you know me, you know I am pretty independent and don't stay home just because Geoffrey can't accompany me.

The last time the kids and I were all at the condo was in 2006 while Geoff was in Iraq.

Here's my cuties 7 years ago. Rory was just a baby.

I visited a few years later with all my sisters and some cousins for a great girls trip. And during our move from Utah down to Texas, my oldest two spent some time with my folks and got to visit the condo then.

But it was great to be all together again. We did all our favorite things - eating pollo asado (roast chicken) with fresh corn tortillas, cabbage and limes. Buying warm tortillas from the tortillaries by the dozen and making quesadillas with chihuahua cheese. My kids though this was hilarious and immediately renamed it puppy feet cheese. And of course we had to go buy paletas nearly every day. Paletas are Mexican popsicles. They are good sized, come on a rough thick wooden stick and are available in flavors like mango, lime, coconut, strawberry with chili and pistachio to name a few. They melt quickly because there is nothing artificial or weird in them and they are delicious!

And of course we spent lots of time at the beach.

The water was warm and shallow. It took us a few days to figure out the tide schedule but once we did we went tide pooling and collected crabs, slugs, tiny fish and weird worms in a bucket.

My mom and I took long walks on the beach in the morning. One morning we came home with this:

As I was still doing school with the kids whenever we weren't at the beach or in the pool, we turned it into a science lesson. Gotta love homeschool.

One Saturday we went shopping in an area we call Shacks Fifth Avenue.  Years ago it was really just shacks along a dirt road but lately its been developed with pavement and sidewalks. It's still the best place to find souvenirs. I bought a hammock chair, hoping our new house has a back porch. Delaney, Brannick and Carson all bought hats. Carson's was a bit unusual but he loves it.

For those of you who watch Studio C, we decided he could dress up as the Awkward Avoidance Viking for Halloween. Evan got a necklace and Rory settled on a back scratcher. Yeah, that was a weird one but whatever makes him happy.

My most interesting find was these bracelets:

Yep, that is the Turkish nazar boncuk and a khamsa!! But what are evil eyes and the hand of Fatima doing in Mexico!! Mexico has its own set of home guardians and superstitions but they don't include these. We asked the shop keeper about them but she didn't know much about them. I got the impression they were just another bead she could buy to make bracelets out of. Crazy, huh?

Sunday we went to church at the local branch and tried to sit quietly through the Spanish service. A little boy in front of me was fascinated with my Kindle. I had it out reading through a Sunday School lesson. He could not take his eyes of it. When I handed him a pen and a piece of paper from Evan's notebook he drew a perfect replica of it, right down to the small icons on the bottom of the screen and the cut out of the case for the speakers.

Monday Mom took the older boys and I to a shrimp place for lunch. Delaney and the younger boys don't care much for seafood. We sat on the top patio of the restaurant and watched the pelicans dive into the water and engulf huge beakfulls of tiny fish. The seagulls pestered them, picking at their mouths as they slowly let the water escape. Then the pelicans would throw back their heads and gulp down their meal, wagging their tail feathers in satisfaction before taking flight to repeat the process.

No, that's not a margarita. It's just the world's best lemonade - which in Mexico is made from limes.

My hot lunch dates.

After we got back from lunch,  the whole crew headed down to the beach one last time.  We were leaving the next day and had decided that our final hurrah would be to take a banana boat ride.

Here we are, all loaded up and ready to go.  We ended up paying $5 per person for a 5 minute ride. That's a bit steep but it was a fun and made a great memory.

Tuesday morning we packed up and cleaned, got our last hits of pollo asado, fresh tortillas and paletas and then hit the road.  Adios and via con Dios!

Cochem Castle - Last visit to Germany

 Yes, I am back in the United States preparing to lead a much less adventurous life in Nevada. But things moved so fast at the end of the summer that I never got to blog about our last trip to Germany. And as my new life is going to be depressingly devoid of European travel, I have to maximize the memories.

Back in early August I took Brannick and Delaney up to Germany. We flew up in a C-130 - their first time doing a Space A hop in a military plane.  Delaney had been invited to attend Girls Camp with the Kaiserslautern Stake and Brannick just needed to get off base for a bit. We were able to stay with our good friends Mark and Karen Bowen, who had just moved from Incirlik to Spangdahlem.  Since we arrived a few days before the camp started, the Bowens took us to a castle festival they had heard about.

This is Cochem Castle. It's a darling castle on a hill overlooking the Mosel River.  It was built around the year 1000 by a count. That nasty Frenchie - King Louis XIV, aka the Sun King, pretty much destroyed it in 1689 and it lay in ruins for almost 200 years. Then in 1868 a German businessman named Ravene bought it and rebuilt it in a Neo-Gothic style. As was the fashion, he used it as a summer home.  Can you imagine? Forget a villa, or a beach cottage, let's go summer in a castle.  Since 1978 the castle has been city owned and every year they have great little Medieval type festivals.

Me and my peeps.

 To my everlasting disappointment, there were no knights skipping around banging coconut halves together. (Is it wrong that my image of history is influenced by Monty Python?) But they did have these guys:

The cheesiest sword fighting you can possibly imagine. We decided that WWF wrestler rejects get jobs as festival swordsmen.  Not only were they completely unbelievable but in manliness they were a pale second compared to these guys:

Bare chests, long leather skirts, big drums and bagpipes. Yep, it doesn't get more masculine than that. Brannick loved them and I'll admit the music was pretty rockin' even in another language. Too bad they weren't selling CDs. 

Eventually we took a tour of the castle, which advertised an English tour guide. I have no doubt that he could speak English but the tour was most definitely in German. He gave us a paper with a short English description of each room and left us on our own. 

Boy armor.

Girl armor. (Just kidding).

And Goliath's armor.

 Seriously, that guy was tall. Too bad there were no pro basketball teams in the Middle Ages.  Maybe it would have been too hard to dribble a basketball and bang your coconuts together at the same time?

We really enjoyed the festival. It was a beautiful day, good company and good fun.

Here's the crazy part. Stay with me cuz it's a bit convoluted. Last October the whole family visited Burg Eltz (this post) and for Christmas Carson found a small resin plate depicting Burg Eltz at the base thrift store.  He was so excited to give it to me.  Then just in time for Mother's Day he found a similar plate with another castle on it.  I hung it on the wall next to the Burg Eltz one. After I got back from this trip I happened to look at the plates and realized that the Mother's Day plate was of Cochem Castle!! How's that for a coincidence?

Finally - just to prove that I really am in Arizona - here's a picture of two javelina we saw in Saguaro National Monument one morning. Kind of a smaller version of the one the boys shot in Pozanti.  And see those mountains in the background? Those are the Catalinas, an indelible part of my childhood mental landscape. They say 'home' to me.

Lucerne - Last Switzerland Post, I promise.

So I've been holding off on that whole announcement thing for a while. Yesterday felt like the right time and I'm glad its posted and out there. But I still have one more day of Switzerland to blog about. I considered skipping it but it was too awesome not to share.

After trolling all around Lake Lucerne and its surrounding mountain peaks for several days we spent our last day in the city of Lucerne before heading to Zurich to fly back to Adana.

Just a tiny aside here - one evening we rented kayaks and paddled around a portion of the lake. I really enjoyed it, we saw the schamncy vacay homes and the tiny beaches people climbed down to from the hills above. The water is a gorgeous turquoise color and the shoreline has so little development on it due to the height of the banks. We also saw a couple of naked people. Old people. Out on their boats just enjoying the sun shining where it normally doesn't. Now ask yourself, if you are a retiree who enjoys going au naturalle while on your boat and you see some kayakers approaching what do you do? Do you stay seated, maybe casually throwing a towel across your bits and wave? Or do you stand up, turn around and bend over to retrieve something that really could've stayed on the floor for a few more minutes? Yep. You just can't unsee that.  And not to press the point, but if you are another retiree of a similar mind-set and you are enjoying an evening swim off your boat without the encumbrance of swimwear and you see kayakers approaching, what is your best option? Do you stay in the water until they pass? It's not like we were kicking up dangerous wake waves. Or do you climb out of the water, stand on the platform in all your shriveled glory and then pull on your speedo? It boggles the mind.

Anywhooo. . . . Lucerne. A pretty awesome city.
 We stashed our big backpacks at the train station luggage check so we could walk around unencumbered. (But with clothes on. Definitely with clothes on.)

This bridge is called KapellBrucke or chapel bridge. The lake pours out into a river here at Lucerne and the bridge crosses this river and leads to, you guess it, a church. It is the most photographed site in all of Switzerland and was built in the 14th Century. (I know some of you are thinking that I'm crazy, rivers pour into lakes, not the other way around. But I'm not. Well. . . anyway, the lake really does drain out through this river. It's a gravity thing.)

I'm sure it's lovely any time of year but the spring flowers made it so picturesque.  Inside the bridge's roof are triangular paintings depicting "important events from Swiss history and mythology." They were semi-interesting but not nearly as cool as the paintings in this smaller bridge down the river a ways.

This one is called the Spreuerbrucke. Built in 1408 (33 years before Chris Columbus made his mortal debut) its paintings are called Dance of Death and depict how the plague affected all levels of medieval society.  The plague is represented by a skeleton in all the paintings. They were creepy and amazing.

After the bridges we walked on the intact city wall for a bit and just wandered the city. At the cross roads of two streets we came across this little shack. Can you see the date on that big dark stone? 1689.

 And it was somebody's house. No kidding. There was a sliding glass door in one side with hanging blinds and a tiny entrance on the back end complete with a pair of wellies sitting by the door. But there are dorm rooms bigger than this. It's like an ancient chicken coop and some guy lives there.
Europeans are the best recyclers I know.

Our last stop was the Lion Monument. This 10 meter long sculpture was carved into a rock wall in 1820 to commemorate the Swiss soldiers who were killed defending King Louis XVI during the French Revolution.

The lion has a spear tip in its side and is dying. It's hauntingly beautiful. Mark Twain called it the "saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world." Yeah.

What are men compared to rocks and mountains? - Lake Lucerne and surrounds

 See that room on the top left with the balcony? That was our room in this cute little hotel in Vitznau. I'm so glad we ended up staying in this darling little town instead of in the much larger Lucerne. The hotel was right across the street from the bus stop, the ferry dock and the cogwheel train that ascended Mt. Rigi.

This was the view from my hotel window. Don't you just want to breathe in that mountain air?

 This is the electric cogwheel train we rode up the mountain side of Mt. Rigi.

It was a short hike from the train station up to the summit. Despite how it looks in this picture, we did opt for the young man (steeper) trail.

 The scenery was green and gorgeous and we could hear the sheep and cow bells from animals fathoms below us. It was so peaceful at the top that we actually snoozed on the grass for a bit.

Seriously, why does my hair have to look so horrible on vacation?

After we went down the mountain on the other side we took the ferry back across the lake. The views from the lake looking up were just as breath-taking as from the mountain summit looking down.

 The next day we tackled a different peak - Mt. Pilatus (which is pronounced like pilates with a tus on the end.) This is the famed Golden Round trip which includes a ferry ride, two cable car rides (one much steeper than the other, and a very steep cogwheel train ride back down the mountain.

We stopped halfway up to do this:

 You sit on a sled like the one below. I loved it because that red joystick in the middle controls your speed. We went down two times. The first time I was fairly cautious - I'm not a fan of uncontrolled speed. Geoffrey was much faster. The second time I was braver and faster. And Geoffrey maxed out his speed, never using the brake at all. It was a blast. If you ever get the chance to do one of these courses, take it!

 

 Her's a portion of the course. It was pretty long. When you reach the bottom you get hooked backwards onto a tow rope and pulled back up the hill.

 The top of Mt. Pilatus is rockier and less lush that Mt. Rigi. We took an invigorating 45 minute hike from the observation building to a summit look out.  The view was different but you could still hear the bells from sheep so far below they were just specks on the hillsides. But the clanking jangling bells came up through the air unmuffled.

In the cogwheel train going down we chatted with a group who had hiked the mountain in just over 3 hours. It was a great day for it. But I glad we had taken the cable cars.

I like being on top of mountains. I'm not a mountain climber by any means but growing up in a family whose vacations usually involved mountains gave me an appreciation for the peace of a mountain top.  Standing on the summits of these two Alps reminded Geoff and I of standing on the peak of Huayna Picchu in Peru. Literally being 'above it all' helps you keep perspective. And I'm tickled to have the bells to remember too. Like listening to the underwater whale song while snorkeling in Hawaii years ago,  multisensory memories just stays richer and stronger in my head.

I love that line from Pride and Prejudice. What are any of us compared to the majesty and vast permanence of rocks and mountains?

Edited**** Today in Rothenburg I bought a bell that sounds just like the sheep bells on the mountain. I clanged every bell in the shop and only one had just the right sound.  Can't wait to find the perfect place to hang it.

Food of the Gods - Chocolate and Cheese - Switzerland Day Two

Did you know that the Swiss eat more chocolate per person than any other nationality? Yep, it's true. And our mission on day two of our visit was to find out why. With the help of a friendly train station attendant we purchased tickets to get us to the Cailler Chocolate Factory and for the tour inside. Since we had checked out of temple housing that morning, our travel was encumbered by our large backpacks but we managed. In about an hour and three trains later we arrived here:

Well, not really. But this is a pictoral representation of the factory's strategic location in the mountains of Switzerland. The tour was impressive and unexpected. I anticipated following a tour guide who droned on about the secret processes of chocolate making. What I got was more like the Pirates of the Caribbean Ride at Disneyland minus the moving boat. We walked through lavishly constructed rooms through which the history of the cocoa bean played out in audio and visual. The Aztecs used it as a pre-war energy drink, the royalty and aristocracy of Europe used it as an aphrodisiac, and finally a few geniuses combined it with cocoa butter and cream from Swiss cows and made the confections we love today.

 Once we were through the smoke and mirrors portion of the tour we did get to see the more mundane nuts and bolts of the thing. Big sacks of cocoa beans and a whole room of running machines churning out small chocolate bars were explained by placards along the walls and windows.

But this - this was the cherry on top.  The tasting room. I'm not sure what heaven will be like, but I do know they need one of these. 

 That lovely man in the middle just kept refilling the glass trays.  The only rule was that you couldn't take any chocolate out of the room. But you could taste all the varieties as much as you liked.

 They were all so divine. And brilliant as a marketing strategy because we exited this room into the retail store where we all immediately purchased our favorite morsels from the tasting room. Yes, this was definitely a highlight of the trip. If I lived here I think I could do my part in keeping up the nation's chocolate consumption figures.
    After purchasing enough chocolate to gorge ourselves on and still have enough to share with kids and friends when we got back to Turkey, we got back on the train and headed to our next destination - Gruyere.

 Getting there was a long story involving a missed train stop and a "one minute walk" that turned out to be forty uphill minutes all while carrying our big backpacks. But we did make it. First to the chateau and quaint village on the high hill and then to the cheese factory itself.

 Look at all that cheese! Once again we did the tour, which this time was a less flashy audio guide walk through. Geoffrey purchased a wedge of two different kinds and some bread which we snacked on while we waited for trains to take us to Lake Lucerne.  That forty minute hike was probably fortuitous considering all the delicious calories we consumed in this one perfectly glorious day!

Bern - the city of the bear

So I'm finally getting to blog about our trip to Switzerland.  I'm a bit late as we've been back over a week now but you know how life gets super busy. The morning after Geoff finished (and passed, yay!) his ATLS course, we got up early and took a taxi to the train station in Landstuhl.

Our train riding experience is limited aside from the Frontrunner in Salt Lake so it was a bit of a learning curve. Example: the very first train we got on was the wrong one.  It was going to the right city but would making more stops along the way. So had we stayed on that train we would have arrived at Manheim too late to catch our high speed inter city train to Bern.

Luckily, Geoffrey figured out our mistake fairly quickly and we were able to change trains at the first stop. Our second train ride took us into Switzerland in about four hours and with one more small change at the Bern train station we arrived in Zollikofen, the suburb of Bern where the LDS temple is. Our Google maps walking directions from the station to the temple turned out to be WRONG but we didn't get too far off course before Geoffrey saw the angel Moroni on the spire of the temple.

 We checked in to the temple housing - which turned out to be very affordable but very basic accomodations. The clerk asked me if we needed a two bedroom. I responded that one bedroom would be fine. Then I realized what he said was a two. bed. room.  And that pretty much summed up the furniture of our very narrow room.

We had just enough time to change and make it to the 3pm session, the last session of the day.  This session happened to be in Italian, so we got to wear headphones for English translation.  Mine were stubborn and only spoke to me in French no matter how much I turned the language dial so a kind French speaking sister traded with me.  It felt so nice to be back in the temple. We feel blessed to have a little branch to worship with each Sunday there in Incirlik but we've missed being able to attend the temple. Sitting in the (very small) beautiful celestial room was so peaceful and I felt some of the worries and anxieties that I've been carrying around this summer finally lift off my shoulders.

After the session, we still had plenty of daylight so we took the train back to Bern and walked around the old town. We visited the high rose garden park with its amazing flower beds, then walked down the steep valley side to the river which winds through the city.

The name Bern means bear and the city keeps real brown bears on display. Until a few years ago they were kept in a small pit that I'm sure angered the PETA people to no end. But the bears now exist happily in a large riverbank habitat which even connects to the old bear pit in case they ever get nostalgic for the old pit.

We ate a hearty but expensive dinner at the bear pit restaurant and then walked around the charming old town.

Every building had window boxes filled with red geraniums. Every window. Every building.  At first we thought maybe they were fake. I mean, what kind of city maintains mass floral compliance? This city, apparently. We started seeing the red petals on the ground under the windows and realized all the flowers were real.

The old town had several fountains depicting various people and scenes. The above fountain is my favorite. I wish you could see it better. Its called the Ogre fountain and its a giant. Eating children. Around the bottom tier march a row of Bern bears, guarding the ogre and his pediatric feast.

We wandered until it got dark and on our way back to the train station we saw this. In a city of famous (and infamous) fountains, this water works topped them all.  The metal structure spanned the whole street. Every ten seconds or so droplets of water would fall from the cross beam.  They were lit from above and released in such a way that they spelled out words as they fell. Words from all languages. It was beyond cool.

With a bit more familiarity, we managed the train back to Zollifen just fine. We did get a scolding from the temple housing night guard for being an hour past curfew (we plead ingnorance) but all in all it was a fantastic day.