Happy Last Day of Virtual School!!!

May 29th, FINALLY marked the kids' last day of school for the 2019-2020 school year.  It's been a doozy for sure.  The last 3 months we've been in quarantine doing virtual school through google classroom.  I'm not going to lie. . . it was HARD.  It was miserable for everyone involved, & we were SO happy for it to be over.  I'm grateful for the hard work under pressure the teachers put in to help these kids actually learn something for those 3 months.  I'm SO grateful to them & their time & sacrifices to make it work.  But I am grateful to NOT have 54 google meets to schedule & make sure my kids attended EVERY SINGLE WEEK.  I'm grateful that essays & annotations & science projects, & history videos are over.  I'm grateful I'm not having to watch youtube videos to figure out calculus & geometry anymore.  I'm grateful my kids are SO resilient & strong & still smile & find the positive in everything.  And I'm SO VERY PROUD of all 6 of them that managed to get straight A's these last 2 quarters regardless of the circumstances they were in.

Canyon's teacher made their whole class these adorable quarantine koala shirts for their last day of school.  HOW CUTE!!!

This big boy is going to middle school next year.
I'm not sure how I feel about this.  My boys have
always been my "babies!"  They're growing up too
fast.  I'm not ready for Bladen to be in middle school.
HE IS SO EXCITED.

I am especially proud of my high schoolers.  This was a tough transition to have to learn high school curriculum from home, especially for their AP & Honors classes.  They pulled through & even managed straight A's in the process.  Three cheers to them!!

Cadence is a Senior this year.  How is that even
possible?  I want to cry.  Why can't they be
our babies forever?

Friday afternoon, we invited a family over (we're allowed to do things with one other family in Germany right now. . . 2 households together is the limit) for celebratory popsicles & a big water gun fight.  We had a blast.

It was the perfect way to kick off summer vacation.

Welcome Summer.  We've been SO excited for you to arrive!

Burg Eltz

One of the most beautiful castles here in Germany is Burg Eltz.  We used to visit Burg Eltz all the time when we lived here 10 years ago.  It was one of our favorites.  The 3 boys have never been here, so we decided to visit on Memorial Day when Trek had the day off of work.

The hike down to Burg Eltz is beautiful.  There are so many trees & the valley is green & lush right now.  Burg Eltz is a remarkable castle because it's down in a valley, but still on a hill.  It's a perfect location for a castle.  It is still owned by the Eltz family & has been in the family for 33 generations.  AMAZING.

Germany is finally starting to open things with the quarantine.  For Burg Eltz, they were only allowing 100 visitors on the castle grounds at a time.  I've been amazed at how Germany has quickly organized & found solutions to follow protocols & laws regarding the social distancing measures.  At the castle they had exactly 100 badges.  As one person leaves the castle, their badge is removed, sanitzed & then given to the next person wanting to go into the castle grounds.  We had to wait for 8 people to come out before our family could go in.  The line to get in was almost an hour, & everyone was spaced in line 2 feet from each other.  I love how Germans follow rules & do everything they can to be honest & lawful.  I love that about them.

Once we were inside, we were free to roam the grounds on our own.  There are inside tours of the castle too, but each tour was only allowing 8-10 people per tour.  Our family got our very own tour with an English tour guide.  It made it SO fun because we could ask questions & talk one on one with them.

After our tour, we stopped by the outdoor restaurant & had some pretzels, chicken schnitzel nuggets, fries, & frikadellan sandwiches.  DELICIOUS.

The hike back up to our car was also beautiful.

Burg Eltz for sure is one of the prettiest castles in Europe.