Cappadocia, Turkey - Day 1

For Mother's Day, Trek sent me to the Cappadocia Region of Turkey with 7 of my girl friends.  (All the husbands sent their wives for Mother's Day.  It was AMAZING.)

We hopped on a plane (Correndon Airlines) & flew the 5 hours to Turkey.

We landed at the Kayseri Airport & got our first look at a typical Turkish bathroom.  I learned how to squat for all 5 days.  It was difficult at first, but we got used to it.

We were surprised at the airport by our wonderful tour guide Erkan!!!

I'm throwing his contact info on here for ANYONE wanting to use him as a guide because he was beyond amazing!!!

Erkan Vural +90 533 745 9743 - r.erkanvural@gmail.com

He arranged our transportation from Kayseri airport & even met us there to pick us up.  He drove us to Urgup to our hotel & continued to make reservations for our dinner that night, helped us get settled, & showed us how to get to the marketplace.

Suloman was our driver our entire stay there & we came to love him as well.  He was always there to bring us water, laugh with us, & make sure we always felt safe.  He was wonderful & got us where we needed to go the entire weekend.

We stayed at a hotel recommended by Erkan.  It was such a GREAT choice.

SOTA Cappadocia Cave Hotel

(https://www.sotacappadocia.com - +90 384 341 5885 - info@sotacappadocia.com)

I'm adding everyone's info on here because I seriously fell in love with the people in Turkey.  I loved how they treated us.  I loved their stories.  I loved them with all my heart & if I can get their names out there to help with business, I'm going to do it because they truly became family during our stay there.

SOTA Cappadocia was a great hotel.  The hotel rooms were built into the actual caves in the rock structures of the Cappadocia valley.  They can been updated so that they could have bathrooms with running water, etc. . . but the hotel rooms themselves were carved into the rock walls.  The staff (Nile, Barrack, & Eros) were absolutely incredible & the two ladies who cooked breakfast were the sweetest ladies ever.  They went above & beyond to make our stay amazing. . . from surprising us with dessert every night after a long day of hiking to giving us roses for Mother's Day, these guys made our stay incredible.

I got to share a room with my friend Cindy.  We loved our little cave room.  It was so beautiful & SO MUCH FUN.

The top level of the hotel was a general meeting area where we could go relax each morning & evening.  They served an incredible breakfast in the mornings, & shared homemade desserts & baklava every evening with us.

The views from the hotel were spectacular.

For dinner, Erkan got us a reservation at a restaurant in Urgup called Largato.  It was absolutely delicious.  Because there were 8 of us, we ordered one of everything on the menu so we could try everything.  It was fancy & amazing.  The cost of the entire meal (all main dishes & appetizers on the menu) was about $90 US dollars total.

After dinner, we made our way down to the Urgup market area.  It was amazing to walk past the mosques & hear the prayers being read/sung over the loud speaker so everyone in the street could hear & participate in them.  We explored all the little shops taking in all the colors & smells of dried fruit, nuts, & spices.  It was incredible.  Every shop offered us apple tea & we bought TONS of turkish delight to try.

At about 11:00 pm we made our way back to our hotel for the night.  The area is so beautiful when lit up.  The stars were clear in the sky, the caves were gorgeous.  It was just a sight to behold.

We were in for an amazing experience & it had only just begun.

 

May Happenings

May was a wonderful month full of end of school activities & fun, my darling adult daughter coming home, & more.

Craiger & his best friend Ryder got to make a temple out of toothpicks & marshmallows. . .

Cadence had some BIG events happen in April/May.  She finished her 2nd semester at BYU Provo!  2 semesters down, 3 years to go.  She also turned in her mission paperwork to serve an 18 month mission for The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Once that paperwork was turned in, she received her official mission call 2 weeks later.

Cadence has been called to serve in the Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia mission!

MONGOLIA!!!

WHAT?!?!

She is so excited.  She will get to spend a year & a half teaching English, building gers (yurts/tent homes), speaking Mongolian, & serving the amazing people of Mongolia.  She is very very excited!

She came home on May 2nd & Lorien & the kids made her the ugliest hedgehog cake I've ever seen.  (they made it that way on purpose).  We all had a good laugh!  It's so nice having her home until September.

I can't reiterate enough how beautiful the sunsets & sunrises are here in Germany.  They are like literal paintings in the sky.

And of course, May is the time for fabulous bikerides.  Trek is always finding friends to go bike riding with.  Sometimes I go with him & other times Bladen or Cadence will ride with him.  It's his favorite hobby & I love that he's found something that he loves to do.

We've been busy getting everything situated for Cadence's mission to Mongolia.  We had to update her drivers license, passport, & military id card.  Now we're working on all of her visa paperwork & shopping for her mission clothing.

Cadence got the cutest haircut for her mission.  A lot of the areas of Mongolia do not have running water so they told her to keep her hair at a manageable length to shower with a water bottle.  We figured that hair down to her bottom wasn't the best idea for water bottle showers.  Now her hair is shoulder length & it's adorable on her.

Trek & I decided it was time to get a new TV for our bedroom.  Ours has been dying for years & it no longer worked.  We happened to find one at a huge discount on base so we bought it.  However, we didn't have our van with us so we had to figure out how to get it home in our mini cooper.  We thought we were doing great until we got pulled over by the Politzei saying we were obstructing the view of cars behind us.  30 minutes & a $40 ticket later, we made it home with our new TV.

This sums up my kids every time we get them in the car to "go on an adventure."

We celebrated Star Wars Day on May the 4th (be with you).  We made Jabba the Hutt Dogs, Han-Burgers, & grape light sabers.  I also did a jello Han Solo in carbonite too.  We always watch Star Wars on Star Wars Day.

Bladen hit another enormous growth spurt in May.  He is now equal with Taya & 3 inches taller than Cadence.  He's pretty excited about it. . . the girls . . . not so much.

May was also filled with MANY trips, but I'll save those for individual blog posts so stay tuned. . .