German Friends

When we first started "dating," (or rather, awkwardly visiting each other without calling first and hanging out on each others couches for hours talking about nothing is a better description) Matt pulled out a drawer of mission pictures and took me on a picture tour of that two years of his life. One picture in particular he was very excited to show me. It looked a lot like this one below, except that Matt is wearing a suit and these two fine people are on a different couch in a different living room.

He said, "I hope when I go back to Germany, I get to see them. They are some of the only people I would like to see from my mission." I would like to say that these two are also my friends now! We descended on their hospitality Friday night after our Rhine River trip. We both got hugs!! I was very excited that they both spoke English. They helped me out so very much learning a few word for the rest of the trip.

Friday night, we had dinner on their porch, then they took us to a carnival.
Saturday, we took a road trip to France. While we were planning our trip they asked us if we were going anywhere besides Germany. When we said no, they said that was silly, and since we were so close, we would go to France for the day. I'm so glad! Strasbourg was lovely.

Sunday, we went to the German ward for church, then drove to Mannheim to enjoy Luisen Park, a very nice park with lots of little parks, a zoo, and beautiful gardens inside.

Monday morning they had to go back to work, and we had to continue our tour of Germany. But we came back the next Thursday for a bit of fun and to say our goodbyes. Thank you, you two. Hopefully we can do it again someday.

The Garden

I've waited so long to put this up that I already need to do an update. This is what our garden looked like in mid-June when we finally got everything planted that we wanted.

Last year I loved my garden, but it was really just for fun. This year we have a serious garden, or at least I feel like it's all serious. I guess that's what I get for marrying the son of a gardener. I love it, but I forgot to plant the wild flowers, and we have many more rows of everything to weed. It a good thing I have help.

We got a lot of rain in June, other than potatoes, peas and beans, (or and radishes) we haven't seen many more finished products. But we have so many peas and beans, we were thinking of having a "garden party" and having all our friends come out and pick a bag. Wouldn't that be fun.

I guess I should explain why we live in an apartment down town and we have a huge garden. Each year the Church farms plant their fields and leave the sections by the road between houses and telephone lines empty. They can plow it up, but it's not easy to feed or harvest, so they plow it, and section it, and let volunteer gardeners plant, weed, and harvest it at no cost. They water it. It's basically the best type of community garden.

Adding to the Team

Matt and I have been waiting for the a good time to let everyone know about our future plans. Now seems like as good a time as any. Last weekend we came home with very exciting news.
Our doubles team will become a three-some in November. We're very excited to announce the quick approach of our little girl. (90% sure we're not announcing a boy, but if things change, we'll be just as excited, and of course let you know.)

Here are some odds and ends for everyone:

I'm 22 weeks along. (That about 41/2 months.)
I feel great (most of the time).
We're about 90% sure we're having a girl.
We have a list of names about a mile long.
My doctor says November 17th is the red letter day to look forward to.

Camping & Fishing the American Way

This is a long time coming, but here it is! Team Svedin's 2 July 4th Weekend. ( I don't know if the 1st one in 2007 counts as a "Team Svedin" event, but we did go fishing. We'll count it.) 2009 was every eventful. We strapped the canoe to the top of the car and drove down to Utah to go camping in the Uinta's.

We camped in the rain. That was an adventure!! We fished, in some beautiful lakes during some even more beautiful sunrises. That was an adventure too. We fly fished in some streams. I caught a little brook trout. That made me feel like a pro. (Beginner's luck.)

Here's my catch of the morning on Trial Lake

Here's my amazing husband cooking up that fish for breakfast. (I'd never had fish for breakfast before.)

Here's my sister-in-law digging a trench around the picnic table so we wouldn't get so muddy as we ate.

Here's a picture of the canoe falling off my car. It was on there really well, but then we loosened it to get into the trunk. Don't worry though. No damage was done to canoe or car.

After camping a night in the rain, we decided to pack it up and camp at Grandma's house. We hung out with the other Utah Svedins and Grandma Jackson and had a blast all weekend. On the way home, we stopped by my uncle's house to say hi. He walked us out to our car and said, "Is that a car under that canoe?" We thought that was pretty funny. The canoe is a little longer than the car, but Svedins are pro's at strapping things to the top of cars! It's always an adventure when you go camping with Team Svedin.

Castles, Castles, Castles

Matt and I took at trip down the Rhine River, one of the major European rivers. It was like talking Gilligan's 3 hour tour twice with no big ship wreck adventure at the end. We sailed by a lot of little towns and big towns, tons of beautiful vineyard covered hillsides, and too many castles to take pictures of. Here are a few . . . I'm sorry I don't know any of their names.


And here are a few more . . .

This one is bright Yellow, and being remodeled of course.

This one is built right out of the mountain side. Those are my favorite.

Lots of castles were right next to each other, so Matt and I made up some theories about castle building and living. 1. If you take over someone else's land, you should definitely abandon their castle and build one of your own. 2. Just because two castles are right next to each other doesn't mean their inhabitants were neighbors, or even lived in the same century. 3. The closer to the edge of the cliff, the better the castle.

Other highlights of the boat trip include . . . This building that I mistook for the Crispy Cream Headquarters. Sorry Germany. Crispy Cream is good, but your stuff is way better.

The yummy Fruit and Nut trail mix that we brought along for the ride.

This yummy mix includes dried cranberries, toasted soy nuts, pumpkin seeds, yogurt covered raisins, cashews, and sunflower seeds. It is not homemade.

And a very large statue that seemed to be a main attraction for a lot of other boat riders. Tons of people got off at this stop. (It could have been the rum plant and wine tasting tour that was the big draw, but I doubt it.) We put this statue on our list of "future Germany trip attractions."

Check out all that land below the statue. This whole hillside is completely covered in vineyards.

To go on the entire river ride took 12 hours, so we got off at the very middle point and got ice cream, then took a train back to Mainz. It was like doing to whole boat trip backwards in super speed re-wind. 6 hours in 45 minutes.

A German Spring

I've been so negligent about posting for the past few months. My cousin is doing an "every day in July" blog post challenge, and although the thought of posting every day already wears me out, I do have to post something. So much has happened. I have no more excuses.

At the beginning of May, Matt and I planted our garden. I'll put up pictures in the next post and then you will see why I'm so in love with Matt and his gardening skills.

At the end of May, the 19-30 to be exact, Matt and I went to Germany for our first real family vacation. It was beautiful there this time of year, and the weather was perfect. It was green and sunny during the day, then cool in the evenings with little rain storms at night.

So we flew out of Salt Lake May 19th and into Frankfut, Germany the next day. You gatta' love international flights. We decided having a car would be much less expensive than taking trains, buses, and taxis everywhere we planned to go, so we picked up our little VW golf (which was really a good sized sports wagon) and took off. For the sake of trying to beat jet-lag, we didn't even drive to our hotel to check in until later that evening. We spent our first day traipsing around Frankfurt, eating ice cream, and checking out the interesting art and architecture.

The main square in Frankfurt. I love the trestle work on the buildings here.

This crazy building has a hole in it!!!

This is more than just a cute picture of Matt eating ice cream. Look at those junk sculptures in the back.
This was the entrance to an "art" park.

Another sculpture in the park depicting a flower as it grows. They looked like 70's chairs to me.

Then we settled in at our Inn, which was in a little town north of Frankfurt. There was a thunderstorm that night that shook the whole countryside and rattled you from the inside out.

This place was so cute and so very fun. It was also the perfect introduction to German hospitality.

The next day was a German national holiday, the day Christ ascended to heaven. Everything was closed except the churches, so we drove to Mainz and caught the first part of Mass as we peeked inside the cathedral there.

The Cathedral at Mainz.

A beautiful courtyard inside the Cathedral grounds.

The remains of a pre-holy holiday party we found outside of the Cathedral. This is the only trash I ever saw on the street in Germany.

Checking out the situation for this headless martyr. Yep! It's bad.

After a little lunch, we headed for one of Matt's most favorite mission areas, Worms. We saw the church were Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thises, ate a doener, and a very old, very cool Jewis graveyard.

Here is a statue depicting Martin Luther in the town park.

This graveyard was massive. This is just one slice of it. There was more behind me and much more to the right side under a forrest of trees. It was beautifully fixed up and very neat.

Then we drove back to Frankfurt just in time to catch the last session at the Frankfurt temple.

After a day of churches and graveyards, it was so nice to be here.

Okay, next time, castles on the river, a fast train to Mainz and a weekend with Matt's two favorite Germans.