The Kids go to a Minnie Mouse Party

Today Addison and Harrison were invited to Robyn Gerrard's 5th birthday party which was a Minnie Mouse Party. I was so amazed how many of the little girls had Minnie outfits. Addison came dressed up but not in "fancy dress" so Ella (Robyn's sister and Addison good friend) got her sorted with a mermaid costume. And how amazing, but Minnie Mouse herself came to visit all the children at the party as well. They were all so amazed! Minnie came to visit and have a little dance with all the kids, before heading back to Mickey's Playhouse.

Here are all the little ones in a big circle playing "Pass the Parcel."

Addison finally has a go at getting a sweetie. Her best friend Louisa is on the left and other friend Leanne is on the right. Both of them are in reception now, but both used to be in preschool and playgroup with Addison.

Back to School

Today Addison started back at preschool a little late as our cruise ran over into her first few days. She was so excited to go, but I was a little nervous for her as all of her closest friends were now in Reception. (Reception is like a pre-kindergarten as they start going all day everyday at the age of 4!!!)Having her little buddy Louisa everyday at preschool was what helped Addison settle in so well, and I didn't know of many of the remaining children to get her buddied up with. Looks like I've got some leg work to do to get play dates lined up....

Addison did have a great time her first day back. She got a brand new school bag that she carries her books back and forth that they pick out each day. She also is quite enjoying wearing her little school "jumper" (sweatshirt) that matches her bag.

Final Days on the Ship

We are on the home stretch...two days of cruising left in our wonderful 12 day holiday. You know, I thought that after 5 days we were going to be struggling but this was a brilliant holiday. I think we did a good job of breaking up the hard core adventure stuff and totally chilling out times.

On Monday morning, Harrison thought it would be fun to wake up at 5AM again, but to his credit he's passed through 4 different time zones over the past couple of days. We all just sat in bed together until about 8:30 watching TV.

Today was a big day at Kids Club, because they were having a cupcake decorating contest that involved mommies and daddies. It was really nice because Kevin and I were the only parents who showed up and it was essentially us, our kids, the counsellors and one other little boy. It was crazy though because they had about 50 cupcakes and 3 lbs each of M&Ms, gummy bears, chocolate chips and 1 gallon of whipped cream.

We all decorated our cupcakes up nice and then the eating competition began. The big catch was that you couldn't use your hands so we had to get on the floor and eat them off of our plates. Now the only thing that got super challenging about this was that the gummie bears were quite chewy and Harrison took about 2 minutes to chew each bear and that's all he put on his. We had quite a good time. We left the kids to have a little more fun while Kevin and I did a bit of reading and journaling. The weather was actually pretty warm so we thought we might try the kiddy hot tub later on with the kids, but first we had to take naps because Harry was all out of sorts. The thing is that our nap went almost 2 1/2 hours long!!!

We quick got our suits on and ran up to the pool deck and popped in the hot tub.

I tried getting Addison to go down the water slid but it wasn't quite her thing.

Granted it was only about 68 degrees outside and getting more overcast and chiller over the 45 minutes we hung out in the water, but we quite enjoyed our bit of getting wet.

What a beautiful day and night on the ship....the kids went to see the Peter Pan show with kids club and we had dinner and went to the night club to watch a couples game show that was absolutely hillarious.

Kevin being goofy in the library as we head off to get a game to play.

Last day of the cruise was a totally different story. I woke up feeling a bit funny. The boat seemed to be rocking a bit and that was a bad sign when you are only on the third deck and your bathroom door slams open and shut. Well, what happened is that first we were making our way through the North Sea which is already kind of tough, but then the remnants of some hurricane that just terrorized the Atlantic coast of the States had made its way across the pond. The waves were so high that they were splashing the windows in the kids club at the front of the boat on the seventh deck!!! After a rough breakfast the kids wanted to go to kids club of course, but when we got there all the counselors were laying on their sides with barf bags next to them. They probably thought we were horrible parents bring the kids there but they were begging. Kevin brought me down to get a ginger ale and I laid in the lounge chairs as he read some, before the pager went off. The kids started feeling icky so we had to go pick them up. On the way back to the room it everything we had to just walk upright getting to our room...everyone was weaving back and forth and they had sick bags placed all over the ship. We all went to our room and I just tried to sleep. It wasn't until Kevin got on the floor with the kids in our room to play a game that he got really sick. So from 11 AM - 4:30 PM we stayed in our room trying to sleep off the wooziness. The kids and I went up to get a little something to eat at the buffet, but all the old people were just sitting in there reading books and playing games..not letting anyone who actually wanted to eat be able to sit down. But here I was feeling like I was going to throw up with two kids who were hungry and it took over 10 minutes for someone to see how desperate we were to help pull some chairs together so we could eat.

Finally by 6:30 or so the seas had calmed a bit. The kids went to kids club for a PJ party and Kevin and I went out for dinner for our 8th wedding anniversary!!! For the first time on the whole trip we had the most superb service and best food. Kevin was so impressed that he actually got the gal's name who served us and wrote up a little thing for her to turn in. We went to see the Beatle's cover band who was playing that night since we were making our way back into London (Dover) the next morning. They were excellent and all of them were really young and all actually from Liverpool.

We picked up the kids at 10:30 PM after the show and they were having such a great time. Thanks to Kit Kat, Popeye, Mambo, and others for all making ours and our kids' trip so wonderful!!!!

What an amazing trip...7 countries in 12 days is a lot to do but cruising it one the the best ways we've been able to see lots of places and have a relaxing holiday as well!!!!

Fun Fall Adventures in Iowa

It ended up being very nice getting to come back again in the fall eventhough we were just back a few months earlier for a summer visit. Other than my brother's wedding I was horribly anxious to meet my newest nephew, Brock, who I just fell in love with!!!

Addison and Harrison just adore their cousin Bo and we spent as much time as possible with him as we could. The boys just hang out together....

But it's Addison who wants to dominate Bo's time, but he loves it! We got to go antique shopping at the Amana colonies which we've never done before in the 20 some years that we've lived only 15. miles away from them. The kids got to do some playing while we took a break.

It was so funny being back in the fall time and it being so warm. I only brought 2 short sleeved shirts for the kids and it was in the upper 70's/80's everyday!!! They loved getting to run about in all the fall decorations around.

My sister, me and our kids!!!

Another thing that I had missed about fall was watching the harvest. We've always been around farming eventhough we didn't really farm. My mom and dad had about 5 acres of tillable acres in their front yard that they've been rotating each year. While we were back they came to harvest the soybeans that the kids had seen growing this past summer. They were so excited to see the big combine going through the field.

Addie loves her new baby cousin Brock as well.

Two peas in a pod...Addison never leaves Bo's side when he's around.

Uncle Casey and soon to be Auntie Stephanie came to see us the weekend before their wedding so we could hang out a bit. It was great to get to know Steph a little more as the rest of my family knew her so well already, we had some catching up to do. It was great to see Casey, but so different to see him with his future "wife." In my eyes he's always been my little brother and I still have visions of him being that little wrestler out on the mat, but now he's an uncle to my kids and getting married!!!

Even Harry gets to love on baby Brock!

It wouldn't be a trip home if we didn't get ice cream with Grandpa Jeff!!!

Ahhh...yes, my dad has many interesting characters roaming around their place Harrison is just enthralled with his coyote cap. Lots of fun at the Schafbuch ranch had by all!!!

Stockholm, Sweden

Bright and early we got ready for our adventure in Stockholm. Tendering into shore went better than expected but things got a bit corny when everyone kept going "ohhhh" when the boat would rock. You'd think that the grandma and grandpas on the tender boat had turned into their grandchildren...silly, silly.

Our coach ride was an interesting one as we sat at the top of a double decker tour bus, which was great for seeing stuff but horrible if you wanted to keep your breakfast down. There were lots of new roads being built but they were really curvy with lots of round abouts. I worked really hard for 45 minutes not to throw up.

When we arrived into the city it was amazing. Very modern but once we hit the city centre the old world charm set in, if not Old World, just really nice and comfy. We kind of tagged up with newly found American friends, Amy and Shawn, to make the trip into town. They were one of the very few other young couples on the boat who had a 1 year old son, who were American and they actually lived in Oxford. Shawn is in the US military and his tour right now is to get his PhD in organic solar energy. What a cool gig!!! We hit it off from the beginning and it was fun to hang out with them. Amy was just like me in that we had our little sheets with all the sites we wanted to see in each country.

It was the two of us working together to try and find a cash machine to help us get on a Tram to get out to the VASA museum. It took us about 45 minutes to sort everything out and finally get on a tram (#7 for future notes just behind the Opera House). Later we found out that we could have paid with a credit card at a machine at the stop or there was a man on the tram that would have taken cash from us. In actuality it only took us about 8 minutes by tram to get there so we could have walked it in about 30 minutes.

The VASA museum was really amazing and we got there right as it opened so we got about 1/2 hour to ourselves before all the tour groups got there. A 17th century ship that capsized in the middle of the bay on her maiden voyage stayed preserved in the muck of the waters for over 333 years when it was raised back out of the sea. The whole boat fits inside the museum which in itself looks like the masts are raised out of it on the roof. It's pretty cool.

Amazingly enough over 95% of the boat was actually preserved. They used different colored wood to show where they put new but it's amazing to see how perfect it looks. We watched a short film from the 1950-60's that shows exactly how they raised the boat and reclaimed the items and remains in it. It was super cool to see them use all the old scuba gear with the big hose sticking out of the top of the space suit looking garb (like that Cuba Gooding Jr. movie).

It was amazing to see all the things they recovered from the ship. Addie shows off the beer stines, plates and cutlery and buckets used on board.

Harry was more into the heavy artillery.

They said that the reason the ship sunk so quickly is that it was horribly engineered. They wanted to to look very grand so the hull of the ship was set too high out of the water. The underwater hull was too small and the ballasts were insufficient for two gun decks in this warship, so when the first big wind took hold of the sails, she blew over and filled up the boat with water through the canon doors.

We left the museum well after lunch time and decided to walk back towards our rendevouz point with the cruise line. We hoped that as we walked we would find a nice place to eat along the way. Stockholm is such a beautiful city, and Kevin and I loved seeing all the boats. It so made us miss our boat soooo much!

The buildings along the water were so colorful and pretty and we had a beautiful day to walk around and that's exactly how we love to explore new places.

Now if we didn't have the kiddos with us, this is how it would be super cool to explore any city.

All of a sudden we heard a big commotion going on...a band was coming down the street. We happened to remember our friends talking about the changing of the guard at the palace and we figured this was the big pomp and circumstance that went along with it...how cool! They have the whole police escort just like the guards do in London.

Then we saw the old school tram rolling through town amongst the hustle and bustle of the new city.

After loads of walking and walking we couldn't find anything we could agree on for lunch so we relied on old faithful - McD's...just thought you'd like to see a shot of a real life McDonald's in Sweden!!! We spent 230 SEK on lunch (that translates to about $30US)...at McDonalds!!!

We did quite enjoy our little lunch outside and honestly we didn't have time to sit in a nice restaurant to eat a full meal as by now we only had 2 hours left to eat and make it up to see the Old Town.

As we walked down towards Old Town, just behind the Opera House (our meeting point), there was a huge Viva Brazil concert going on with hundreds of people all over the place. Just 4 hours earlier when we were hunting for any one person to help us sort out the trams. This was a beautiful fountain in that park.

We made our way across the river to the Royal Stockholm Palace which is said to be the largest palace in world still used by a head of state - King Karl XVI Gustav.

We checked out the guard stations like we always do at palaces to measure them up against the Brits. These fellows are pretty good, yet not as rigid as our Brit boys.

We somehow made it up to the palace in time for the changing of the guards...totally a coincidence, but we felt so lucky to get to witness it.

Harry and Kevin standing out in the courtyard as the guards are going through their changing process.

Old Town was beautiful and I so wished we had more time to explore it. Our main goal was to get our souvenirs and get back to the bus. We loved all the narrow streets with tall buildings and cobblestone streets.

The shops and cafes were so quaint. I managed to find us a really cool Christmas ornament, but struggled to find Addison's doll so Sweden will be the only place I will not have gotten her a doll from...shucks! I do still have 70 Krona left over if anyone else ends up going to Sweden and can pick up a porcelain doll for me (it's only worth about $10US).

We only got about 45 minutes in total to look around the Old Town when I could have spent a better portion of 3-4 hours looking around. We did have a bit of time to get a quick photo in the picturesque Stortorget - the Old Square in Gamla Tor (Old Town) - filled with colorful 18th century buildings.

The kids wiped out on the bus ride home and we almost did too. When we got back to tender back to the ship the line was seriously 400 meters long. It was insane how when new busses got dropped off how people totally budged in line in front of us. We made the time go by, by visiting with our friends who we split up from after VASA to explore on our own. It was really great to get to know another couple in a similar situation as us but yet so different. We compared a lot of notes on life in England and just really enjoyed them. By the time to boat started back off through a beautiful cove, the kids were already asking to go to kids club. Again they had a blast and we enjoyed dinner on our own again.

Helskinki, Finland

Today we woke up to a very cold morning - 9 C (46 F)!!! To our surprise the ship ended up docking in a completely different part of the port than we anticipated (at least what was listed in port reviews) so all the maps, bus schedules and info I had was all out the window before we even started the day. But we are adventurers and we sorted it all out.

We at first thought we might try to walk into town but we finally found a bus stop outside the port and with it being so cold we sorted out how to get a ride into town. The fun part was trying to talk with the bus driver to sort out our bus fare. After a minute or so I figured out that we only needed to pay for one person (2.50 Euro) as the other one of us who had the pushchair was free to ride all public transport....sweet!

Since everything seemed a bit off kilter we decided to find the closest Tourist Office to sort out how to do the things we wanted to do while in Helsinki. We had run out of Euro so we needed to get some cash. It was totally cool but weird that to gain access into the bank to use the ATM we had to swipe our ATM card in a reader outside the building as the door was locked.

Next Addison decided she needed to use the toilet and of course the city hall who has free toilets was closed for yet another hour. The TI office sent us down a half block or so to a public pay toilet that we didn't have any change yet to pay for. Luckily it was unlocked, so I had Kevin hold the door open while I held Addie up to go and we found a way to get the water to run so we could wash our hands. The kids were a bit wound up as they were up at 5:30 AM today and not being in the best of moods with us.

Next we walked up a block to Senate Square which is dominated by the amazing Lutheran Cathedral.

In the square as well was the International display of Tolerance Bears. They were all painted in themes of all the different countries taking part. The bears make their way all around the world and are quite a site.

We found the USA and UK bears right next to each other!!!

Next we headed on a ferry over to the Suomenlinna Island which is Europe's largest sea fortresses.

Not being super touristy, the island still had it's quaint charm about it and had it's unique features like this massive anchor on display.

You could tell by the remains of the barracks and buildings and the massive stone structures that still exist that this place was pretty sophisticated for the 17th century when the island was in it's glory days.

The terrain was pretty hilly so navigating the pushchair was a bit difficult at times, but it cool seeing all the hidden bunkers right on the water's edge.

We love "shoots" (canons to all of you outside the Dea children's lingo)!!! Still in pretty good condition these large canons we stationed all along the waters edge.

We loved the view back at the city as well!!!

As we made our way back to catch our ferry we let the kids have a little play time. We felt kind of bad because the other little kids were all decked out in winter gear with hats, gloves, boots and winter trousers and our poor kids had spring jackets and hoods to keep them warm...didn't expect winter conditions though in August, but I did not take in affect far north were we exactly getting, did I? To make matters a little worse, poor Harrison smacked his head straight into the door jam as I was letting him out of the baby changing room. Poor kid was scream-ing at the top of his lungs and to top it off he got a horribly big bump on his cheek.

We made it back by lunch time to explore this massive market right on the water's edge. Yes, we were in Finland home of the reindeer and Santa (way up in Lapland that is), so you can get your antlers, fur hats and posh carrying bags all at one place!

At this stand we did find Harrison's souvenier knife that encompasses his whole trip to the Baltics as it is a hard type of souvenier to find in every country. We picked out a really nice one that was made of reindeer antler and also has a flint stone attached to it so that you can spark up a fire. (Now for all you animal lovers - don't worry - the antlers come from the ones that have already fallen off the deer).

We had brought along sandwiches and nibbles for the kids but Kevin and I wanted to try some of the lovely food we saw being cooked up in the market. We stopped at this place.

They had lots of yummy food to pick from...

We sat next door at these lovely tables...trying to avoid the black birds who loved to share lunches with the people who sat at the tables.

And this is what we ate - grilled butterflied salmon with potatoes and veggies with a large side of breaded calamari with a can of Coke - only cost 19 Euro!!! Whoa doggies...expensive for a bit of lunch that could have really fed one of us, but oh so yummy!!!

One of our final destinations was the Temppeliaukio Kirkko (Rock Church). We navigated our way on the Trams the best we could but were uncertain to which stop to get off on...like a true man Kevin made me ask someone directions. There were two girls chatting away in Finnish on the tram and like a super-tourist I asked if they spoke English and they replied "Yes" in clearer English than most Americans.

Now apparently on Saturdays the church hosts several wedding each day. So a sign posted outside said that the church was only open for 15 minutes between each wedding that seemed to be scheduled every hour on the top of the hour. So we had to wait 30 minutes for the current wedding to finish up. So while the kids napped, Kevin and I explored around the church and climbed up on top.

Well, no wedding goes right on schedule and people slowly filtered out as the wedding party finally made their way out to a crowd of hundreds of tourists trying to get in to see the church.

And while we waited we ended up striking up an odd conversation with some Texans who were on our cruise with us. They had obviously recognized us with the kids since we did stick out a lot...the one guy kept threatening to make his wife leave since he didn't want to wait 30 minutes, but I stuck up for her and said "you may only get this chance once and I heard it was pretty cool." He perked up then and didn't mind waiting...I felt like Superwoman helping out my fellow female travellers!

Finally I made my way in with about 200+ other people trying to steal a glimpse of this amazing church built into natural granite rock that exists right in the middle of the city. We weren't allowed past the glass as another wedding was to start in about 15 minutes. All the shoving and pushing people did really put a downer on my whole experience and I lost the ahh factor, but it was still well worth the wait to see it.

But for another amazing site, Santa's Minimarket was just across the street from the church!

As we made our way back to Senate Square we happened to make it into the Lutheran Cathedral about 15 minutes before it closed...those darn Saturday schedules really threw me for a loop from my plans.

The inside of the church was elegant, but smaller than what the outside lets it on to be. We thought it was kind of funny but at the end of the pews there are little doors with latches on them, guess they really want to make sure you stay in church when you get there.

Outside one of the tourist shops on the square was a stuffed reindeer and kids were just fascinated by it and said that it looked like the ones that Grandpa Jeff has on his wall in America.

We rushed down to the market again quickly as we finally made up our mind on which things we wanted to get - a doll for Addison, the knife for Harry and a Christmas ornament for our family. Then again, Addison had to use the toilet during the not best time as we needed to catch the last bus back to our boat or we weren't going to be on it. We rushed to a different pay toilet that we could figure out how to pay for but again the door was unlocked so Kevin held open the door. This time there wasn't any toilet paper as it was a men's toilet and Harry had to walk in the wipes for me to clean things up...what craziness!

We made it to the bus stop just as a bus pulled off so we got nervous, but then after 10 minutes or so we saw a few more people we recognized from our boat so we figured we were okay. We ended up making it back to the ship with 20 minutes to spare. We obviously had to check our knife in at security, but instead of returning it to the bag we had it in the guy taped the paper directly to the nice leather case of the knife which ended up scuffing it up when they pulled the tape back off...it's the little things that count you know.

During our dinner we came to the realization that our plans to take the trains into Stockholm the next morning were not going to work very well. You see the ship doesn't actually dock right in the port in Stockholm, we have to tender at Nynäshamn which is a good hour drive south of Stockholm. Plus if you didn't have a booked tour you were last to get of the boat and when tendering it's a total hassle. NCL wasn't the most accommodating or helpful in finding alternatives, so we hooked up with a couple of other people we had met and all decided that we should probably book the "on your own" bus to make sure we get see Stockholm.