Christmas in Colorado- Butterfly Pavilion in Denver

Last Christmas, it was Dad Petty's turn to host the family (Mom Beth, Grandma Petty, Anthon and me). We did many fun things that Dad had planned for us. We went to the Iron Springs Melodrama Theater in Colorado Springs and watched one of their comical Christmas shows (http://pikes-peak.com/attraction/15.aspx), went to the Ballet "The Nutcracker"(amazing!!!), made a short trip to the "Garden of the Gods" that you can see from Dad's living room (http://pikes-peak.com/attraction/15.aspx), had a great dinner at the Flying W Ranch and enjoyed listening to many Christmas songs played and sung in Western style (that was pretty cool!), took a tour through Coors Brewery and spent a day up in Denver.
We really had a great time in Colorado- thanks to Dad! ;-)

As a present, we bought groupons for us and Mom & Dad to stay at the nicest Bed & Breakfast in Denver.
Anthon and I decided to do some fun things around Denver and decided to go to the Butterfly Pavilion there. (http://www.butterflies.org/)

It's a fun place to go with your kids- or to take some nice pictures as I did.

Enjoy!

    (For those, you have wondered how butterflies multiply and replenish the earth...) ;-)

Baby Shoot with Nathan

Yeah, I know... I'm a slacker when it comes to regularly posting something new.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a baby shoot- yeah! Nathan is the baby's name and he was about 2 months old when we took these pictures. This shoot was a challenge both for Tonya (his mom) and me because Nathan decided that he was not gonna be happy during the shoot and cried a lot. But his mom was sooo patient und understanding and calmed him down with her motherly instincts.
I had so much fun taking these pictures and luckily, I was still able to get some great shots of this cute little boy.

This is just a small selection of my favorites:

 Sweet dreams, little guy...

Rebecca's and Chris' Wedding in Germany

I just saw that I never posted anything about my sister's wedding.

First of all, I'm soooo happy for Rebecca, Fynn and Christian!
As many of you know, Rebecca was already married. After being married for a while, her husband (LDS) started anti-ing the church at lot, and denigrated the bishop and other members in their ward. He started getting interested in Neo-Judaism and started drinking wine on Sabbath and stuff, continuing to argue about the church with Rebecca on a regular basis, which was really hard for my sister who is really strong in the church. Later, Rebecca found out that he took drugs and he often lied to her. He was a student (almost 30 years old) but was still not nearly done with school because he always quit his program and decided to do something different. There are so many other bad things to tell about this guy, but to make a long story short- he turned out to be the total opposite of what Rebecca wanted her husband to be.

Out of his marriage came my nephew Fynn (6) who brings so much joy into my family's life.
So, being a member of the LDS church in Germany, being divorced and already having a child, it is not easy to find somebody who wants to marry you. But we are so happy for Rebecca and Fynn that Christian was able to look beyond this and decided to marry Rebecca and to adopt Fynn.

I'm glad that I got to fly to Germany for her wedding to be her witness at the civil ceremony.
Because plane tickets are pretty expensive (I think we paid $1600 or more for my ticket), Anthon was going to stay in Las Vegas and finish his internship there. One day, he came home, gave me and envelope that I had to open and I saw his plane tickets. Tickets got cheaper, which was the only reason why he decided to also come. I was soooo happy that he would come to the wedding, too.

I and Anthon had a great time there. It always feels good to go back to Germany and spend time with my family, see the members of my home ward, meeting up with friends and eating German food.
Living here in the US is great, but of course home is home and it will always be.

Anyways... here are some pictures that I took at the wedding...

                                                                         Bridals...