dripping with passion

we took a super quick weekend trip to cologne, germany a couple of weeks before christmas. to be frank, this trip was the first travel experience i semi-regretted taking. (i hope it will also be the last...?) it was soooo cold and soooo crowded in cologne that weekend, both of our boys had coughs and runny noses, and i was feeling exhausted from an already full december as well as the anticipation of lots of more miles of travel ahead in the weeks following. but  it was a crazy little adventure we shared as a family. and the cologne christmas markets we had heard a lot about were indeed magical. we turned in early on our one night in germany - we went to our hotel and took long hot showers and cuddled up in the bed and watched a christmas movie. it was a memorable trip in several ways ... and i guess i just can't get myself to really regret it ;) here's a few iphone snaps from our freezing thirty six hours in germany...   the main christmas market in cologne is set ...

the day after our epic thanksgiving celebration and feast in munich, the ten of us wrights traveled on a tram and then a train and then a bus to get to neuschwanstein castle! when i went to neuschwanstein last year with my mom and sisters, ian was a bit green with envy because he had always wanted to see that spectacular castle himself. so when we decided to go to munich for thanksgiving, we knew that making the day trip to neuschwanstein was a must! for weeks before we left for germany, i hoped and hoped that we would have snow at neuschwanstein ... can you imagine how magical that would be?! instead we got a foggy, grey, dry day ... but i'm going to go ahead and call it mystical and enchanting :) moses and i hung out around the grounds of the castle while the rest of the crew went inside (since i had been inside last year, i didn't want to pay for a ticket again). after ian and hyrum's family finished the tour, we all hiked up to the bridge to take in the famous...

  on the evening of thanksgiving day, we flew from london to munich. ian’s brother hyrum is living there with his wife heather and their five kids – and we had been looking forward for months to visiting them and celebrating thanksgiving with them! they were kind enough to observe the holiday and have the feast a day late to accommodate us (ian had to work through thursday but took the day off on friday). {i couldn’t let the fourth thursday in november go by without some kind of commemoration though, so we ate turkey, cranberry and stuffing sandwiches before boarding our flight :)} we got in late thursday night and were so excited to see the kids in the morning! after breakfast, heather and i – with lots of help from the kids! - buzzed about the kitchen making pies and chopping vegetables. hyrum took the three of us, along with his three boys, down to the city center to see the famous glockenspiel at marienplatz. at the stroke of eleven, we stood, along with lots of other tou...