Christmas 2010 pictures... finally!

Here are some Christmas pictures as promised...

I loved being home for Christmas! Christmas in Europe is just more christmas-y...and I got to take pictures of the family.

Rebecca loves getting pictures taken...so she was a perfect model. She is way more patient than Anthon is as a model. :-)

Barbie!

Rebecca and I were together in the bathroom and just trying some of mom's make up. My mom has sooo much good make up and it's always fun browsing around in her make up bins. So, Rebecca and I remembered one time, when my mom had bought a new lipstip that had a pretty intense pink color. She put it on Rebecca...and for some reason she looked like a clown, especially because of Rebecca's mouth shape. Anyway, while we were in the bathroom, we decided to put on all crazy colors on Rebecca's face...and after a while she reminded me of a Barbie. So... then we got the idea of taking some Barbie pictures and here is one picture of that shoot.

We also took some really Barbie-ish pictures, but I don't wanna publish them here. :-)

Rebecca is dating a guy from Stuttgart (they actually got engaged a couple of weeks ago) and I decided to take some pictures with them.

Sorry about the pictures that are not in order...

Little Katharina is such a fotogenic girl! And I love Anthon's hair in this one... haha..

I also love this picture of "little" Hans.. his eyes are so pretty!

I took these pictures on our way from Italy back to Germany. We drove through the Dolomites- what a pretty area!

I took the following pictures while we were driving from DC back to Utah. We could hardly see anything for a couple of hours. But we were in the middle of nowhere and didn't want to stop for several reasons.

When I was back home in Germany with my family, Jessi and her family came to visit us for a couple of hours.

Isn't this a cute picture??

My mom, Fynn and I went to Munich for a day. When Fynn saw the icycle, he had to have one. So I broke it off and gave it to him and as soon as he got it, he pretended to be Harry Potter. I'm often impressed with Fynn's imagination!

Although this Santa Clause was a really nice guy, Fynn was not too happy to see him. Fynn was sooo afraid of him and tried to escape. Maybe his bad conscience?!? :-) 

I find this picture so hilarious!

Fynn recovered quickly as soon as he got a hot chocolate.

Anthon had to finish his internship with the state department, so he came a little bit later. I think I explained everything 2 blogs or so ago.

That's the Christmas Market in Augsburg.

We had dinner at a pretty cheap, but really good restaurant just 3 kilometers away from my parents' home. Yummy!

After we celebrated pre-Christmas with my family, we went to Italy to spend some more time with his family. This picture was taken at Juliet's balcony.

We also went to this AWESOME Italian restaurant. It was soooo delicious! Look at this huge sea platter. Soooo good!

We also went to Padova with Frank and Emily for a couple of hours.

Uhhh...look at this handsome guy!

Venice! What an interesting and beautiful city!

Sadly, the server apparently doesn't let me upload some other pictures..but at least you've seen some pictures now....

I'm gonna upload some more Italy pictures..

Southern Utah with Dad & Grandma

Sooo.. I still haven't blogged about Dad's visit and our time in Southern Utah. Thanks everybody for giving me tips on how to upload more pictures and being able to move them around. It makes it sooo much easier!

Back to the topic. One of our highlights during our time in Utah was Dad's visit. Since he lives in Colorado now, he was able to come and visit us for a weekend. We decided to spend some time in Southern Utah...and who would be a better tourist guide than Grandma Petty?!?

I loved listening to her many stories that she knows. Dad was driving and on our way down to Leeds where Aunt Bea lives, she would tell us stories. We stopped at several cemeteries and statues, drive by certain houses and she told us tons of interesting things about it. I'm glad we took her with us!

We decided to visit Aunt Bea, Cindy & Dwight (I can't remember how to spell his name). Anyway, we had a great time there, too. They were so nice to let us stay at their awesome guest home. Everytime Anthon and I stay at their guesthome we think how awesome it would be to live in this house. It's way too nice to just be a guest house.

Anyway, we didn't take too many pictures of them. But here are at least two. Aunt Bea is such a cute and beautiful woman!

Then, we went to Zion's National Park and walked around a little bit, had lunch and enjoyed each other's company. We went to a little pioneer cemetery where Albert Petty lays.

I really enjoyed the time we spent in Zion's. I love every place where I can take some nice pictures. :-)

I LOVE him! He is such a sweet husband!

This is a view from the guest house. Amazing, huh?

We were lucky to see five or so deer.

I LOVE this picture! Aren't they cute!?!

Some Updates...

Hey everybody!


Sorry that it took me forever to blog again! Sorry that there are no pictures this time.. I've tried to upload them and to put them where I needed the pictures..but for some reason it's just going crazy... kind of lame. It has always worked.
So, just look at the pictures on my facebook profile. Pictures say more than 1000 words, right?

There are sooooo many things that have happened in the last few months, but there is never enough time to write about everything. I've taken sooo many pictures in the last few months, too. But this stupid program here on blogspot, where I can only upload 5 pictures at one time (and I have to make all of my pictures smaller before) kept me from blogging.

I've asked Anthon several times if he would blog instead of me, but he is not very keen of this idea. So... I'll just start again, without going too much into details about the last couple of months... otherwise I will still be typing in and sitting here in 2 weeks.


To give everybody a short update:

Anthon and I spend Christmas over in Germany and Italy. I flew in 2,5 weeks earlier than Anthon to spend some more time with my family and friends. Anthon had to go on a business trip during his internship with the Department of State and that's why he had to come later. But we could still spend a couple of days together with my family and then spend a couple of days with his family in Italy. It was such a great time and we had so much fun! I had only been to Italy once to go skiing in 5th grade, so Anthon's family and us went to some cities in Northern Italy (Verona, Padua, Budoia and Venedig). Cool places! Since I've started a little bit of hobby-photography I probably looked like a Japanese person on Temple Square with full camera equipment, taking pictures of every single detail.

After Christmas and our crazy cross-country trip from Washington, D.C. to Provo in 2 days!!! we moved into our first real apartment!!!!! Woot-woot! We love having our own kingdom after having lived in somebody else's homes for 9 months. I think we only had about 2 days to move in before school started.. crazy, huh? We went to IKEA and bought almost all of our furniture there. We love IKEA! When we were living close to DC, Anthon always wanted to IKEA and go on a walk in there. I love IKEA because of the Swedish food that is quite similar to German food...kind of... at least the bread and some candy. So... that was often our date. :-) You probably think that this is a cheap date... but it's actually not... we always find something there that we need. And if we don't find something that we need, we decide at the end that we really need a cinnamon roll...

Anyway, we love living here in Wymount. The members in the ward are really nice and we felt welcomed from the first Sunday on. Our ward consists of many other newly weds or couples with young kids. So..they are all about the same age as we are which makes everything more fun. We often have people over for dinner. We LOVE having people over and getting to know new people!

The only thing that is kind of funny is that every Relief Society lesson is about babies. I don't know how our women do that... but they bridge any gospel principle to babies.

While I was serving on Temple Square, we often had to practise how to bridge from a building to the gospel or the other way round and I was getting pretty good at that. But I'm not good enough yet to bridge from fasting to babies, from tithing to babies, from the word of wisdom to babies... but that's probably why Heavenly Father sent us here to this ward so that I can learn that, too.

What else... mhh.. school! I love going to BYU! I've already met so many nice people and most of my professors are good. The classes I'm taking this semester are: German Culture and History, English Writing, Nutrition, Music and Book of Mormon for Returned Missionaries.

I really enjoy learning about these subjects, although some are a little bit tough. It's not as easy studying English as it is in my native tongue...that's for sure. But I'm still kicking it ;-) And as long as my grades are good I'm happy.

I'm not 100% sure yet, what I really wanna do. I first wanted to become a teacher for German and Health. Than I thought that German and History are better. Then for one second I thought that it would be cool to do photography...but right now I think I would enjoy what my German professor is doing. We'll see... if I should become a professor, then probably when I'm old and the kids are grown up.

Anthon is taking all these Facility& Property-Management classes (17.5 credits) and he started working 10-20 hours a week. I don't know how he does that.

What I don't understand is that although I'm "only" taking 14 credits, he still has so much time than I do... there must be something wrong!?!
But... I'm happy for Anthon that he still has some time to relax once in a while.

Anthon is the best husband ever! I know that many women say that about their husband... but mine REALLY is! I really don't know what I would be doing without him. It is so much fun being around him and I can't get enough of him. I'm soooo happy that I married him and that he is such a great and cute husband!

Many people say that the first year of marriage is the worst, but we're still on cloud No. 7. We often do little things for each other and help each other when the other person is busy or not at home. When we argue, then maybe once every 3 months and then just for 15 minutes. I hope that won't change over the years. I think it's just our easy personalities that makes it so much easier.

We just love spending time with each other. From grocery shopping, doing laundry, cooking, window shopping at the University Mall, getting a pie shake at Sammy's (soooo delicious!) to going fishing, camping, visiting beautiful places we do everything together and we LOVE spending time with each other.
I can truly say that we are one happy couple!

Annapolis, MD and some more pictures...

Not much has happened last week.
This week will be a little bit busier... I will get a visit from my visit teachers for the very first time since I turned 18. Who would have thought this would ever happen?!?
We still have to put decoration with Judie up for Thursday and for Christmas.
This Thursday (Thanksgiving) will be my first real Thanksgiving and I'm excited to have tons of food! Judie's parents, brother and some cousins are coming and we will be 10 people fighting over the turkey. Next Monday, Anthon is already gonna fly...and me 4 days later... but really.. nothing exciting has happened..sorry about that.. so I'm just posting some more pictures.

The pictures are not in the best quality... Anthon changed the setting to a lower quality..and we forgot to put it back... grrrr....

When I had a free minute, I walked trough and around the house and experimented a little bit more with the camera. When I get a camera in my hand, I'm like a little Japanese...



This cat is the shyest cat of Judie's 3 cats. I seldom see it. So it was hard to get a normal picture...without the white wood...sad... but this shot looks funny.













Last Thursday, we went babysitting for a 10 month old boy. His parents went to a gala and came back with a huge bouquet of flowers for us... really nice of them.
So I had to take the chance to put the things I had learned from the books into practice.











This Saturday, Frank suggested us to go to Annapolis, MD since we only had 2 weekends left before Anthon flies..and me, too.

Annapolis is famous for its Naval Academy, so we went to the campus and watched a short movie in the Visitors Center.
I didn't know too much about it, so it was pretty interesting.
I'm impressed with the women that go there and have to go through the same training as the guys- amazing! I couldn't that! But luckily this country has enough people that are willing to go through these 4 tough years of training to be able to protect this country.



I didn't notice that this here was a garbage can until Anthon told me that the people, who were walking by, asked each other why this girl was taking a picture of that garbage can. :-) Ooops..




We really wanted to go to this chapel, but a wedding was about to start...so we couldn't see the inside...unfortunately..





I love Photoshop! I don't know much about it...so I was exploring it a little bit this time.
I didn't like that the photographer was in this picture...so I erased him...kind of fun..




Annapolis lies directly at the sea, which gives the city a nice touch.





When we walked through the city, we noticed that there are many guys wearing their uniforms. Anthon was suspecting that there might be a game. Later his dad called and told us, that they were playing against Arkansas.
We heard that the students always march to the stadium when there is a game, so we were lucky to see them marching and being able to take pictures.








While we were in Annapolis, I remembered that an elder from my mission in the Michigan Lansing Mission is in the Naval Academy. But I figured that the chances that I'll meet him are pretty low.
I also remembered that he was playing the drums in a scottish/irish Naval Band. But when I heard some bagpipes playing a little bit further away, I had to go closer to see if he was there... and he was!
So lucky!













Before the football game started, they had a fly over...pretty cool.




At a shop in Annapolis...