This is Us: 39 Years Old, 9 Years Married

Brian and I are 39 now!

This Is Us is still one of our go-to shows to watch after the kids are in bed, that and The Chosen!

We had fun celebrating our birthdays, which are less than 2 weeks apart.  In addition, we enjoyed celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary, which is 5 days before my birthday!  It's been a very celebratory time!

For my birthday cake we had to improvise with the candles we had... 

This is what happens when you have a 3 year old, 8 year old, and 1 year old... and your 5 year old (almost 6 year old) doesn't get his number candle on the cake!!

Everyone was happy when they ate the cake though!  I've learned to make cakes from scratch over here because boxed cake mixes are not a thing here - but nothing can replace the yellow cake mix from the USA - so that's what I brought back last summer to make for this occasion :)

Beautiful flowers from our friends for our anniversary!

For my birthday, I got together with my friends for cake and great fellowship!!  So thankful for these ladies!!!

For Brian's birthday, we got to go on a hike!  We started in the nearby town of Lunz am See, and hiked from the Lunz lake up to two other lakes on the mountain... Mittersee (which literally means "middle lake") and Obersee (which means "upper lake")!  It was a beautiful hike, concluding with a lot of snow at the top - but it was worth it to see the beautiful upper lake!  It was about 3.5 hours roundtrip.















































Here's to a great year ahead! :)

Loop Around Lunz am See

One of our favorite nearby places to visit is Lunz am See!

What makes going there even better - is going with good friends!

And getting ice cream.

And feeding the cows!

Frozen Lunz am See: Site of a Miracle

Our family loves visiting the nearby town Lunz am See (Lunz by the Lake).  This is the lake we can see when we're at the top of Maiszinken mountain.  It's warmed up lately, but most of the lake is still frozen over.  

Today as we were walking by the lake, we noticed a sign that a miracle took place here in 1786!  (At dinner tonight the kids said the favorite part of their day was seeing where the miracle happened :)

A rough translation of the sign pictured below says: a man fell into the lake with horse and sleigh in March 1785, and was saved by a request of Our Lady Mary of the Wild Alps.

Thankfully we didn't find ourselves invoking Mary to rescue anyone from the lake today!  

And yes, the boys are ready for the Chiefs to play in the Super Bowl tomorrow!

"Ski Week" Hikes

This week is officially the kids "ski week" holiday.  

Now this is ironic for several reasons.  First off, Ellie hasn't officially been in school since the last week of October.  Second of all, we've got no snow in Gaming!  Some of the nearby slopes still had snow earlier in the week, but with our temps hitting 50 degrees in Gaming I don't imagine the conditions are too great up there.  

So instead of skiing this week, we spent it getting outdoors in the afternoon!

With friends we walked to the "Beer Well" in Gaming...

And another afternoon, we hiked to the top of Maiszinken.  This would be used for skiing - but they don't make fake snow there and as you can see most of it has melted.  However, enough was still there that it made it a bit of an adventure to hike up with our friends!  And the kids had a blast "sledding" down on their bottoms on the way down!  We walked down as the sun was setting and it was gorgeous! 

So yeah, it's been a great ski week so far!