Happy New Year everyone! Sorry its been a little while since I've updated this... we've been fairly busy lately. Eric has been off work since Christmas day so its been nice. He has to go back on Monday though. This past week we took a day trip to the Rhine River which was a lot of fun. There is a 35 mile stretch of about 30-35 castles along the edges of each side of the river. We had fun driving along the river and seeing the huge castles. We wanted to stop at a few but it was soooo cold! We ended up trying to go to one and after we hiked up to go see it, we realized it was closed through the month of December. We ate lunch about halfway through the stretch where Michael decided to explode through his diaper :) so luckily we had an extra outfit and changed him in the car. (by the way, Germany rarely has a changing table in the bathroom... or even a counter to lay him on. So we've changed him on toilet seats, car trunks, dressing rooms, on my lap, etc haha) When it gets warmer we want to hike up to several more of the castles... thy were so beautiful. Here are a few photos...

Us with a faint view of a castle behind us-


Michael all bundled up to see the castles, its a little big, haha-



Some pics along the river...


Michael is doing really well- he goes for his 2-month old appt next week. Eric has been taking him once a week for me at night so I can get a full night sleep so that has been awesome. He ALWAYS sleeps better for Eric though! Last night he slept for 8 hrs for Eric!! For me, he only sleeps about 3 hours. I think its because Eric can sleep through his little cries... I need to learn to do that and just get up when he is really hungry. I plan to work on that :)

For Christmas, we just hung out most of the day and then went over to some friends house that evening. On New Years, all our neighbors were outside setting off fireworks. I guess EVERYONE buys fireworks here and sets them off at midnight. The sky was just lit up for about an hour and a half. When I went out the next day the streets was covered in paper and gray powder from the fireworks.

Well, I hope everyone had fun over the holidays! Love you guys!