Auerbach again

So, as some of you may have guessed by now, The Auerbach Castle is on of our favorite places to take people when they come to Germany. I think every guest we have had has gone there (with the exception of Jessica, life was crazy when Jessica was here). It is such a beautiful drive to go see these castle ruins, just a short distance from our house. You can look out of the watch tower to a beautiful setting below, and they have a restaurant right there within the castle walls that we love. This is the castle restaurant Steve has taken me to for our past 3 anniversaries.

{Our kids live the Good Life. (and actually don't break too many of these German wine glasses in the process)}
So...we took Tawna and Krista to see the castle as one of the last things we did before Krista left. The weather held up for us, although it rained much of the time Krista was here, and I think we all had a great time.

{Steve made an attempt at getting a picture of us in front of the castle. How do you think he did?}
{I hate this picture of me, I look wind blown or something. But...Steve looks Good so I had to add it. :)}

More France

Next day in Paris....
We started off going to see Notre Dam. It was beautiful, and the boys were excited that this is where Quasimodo rings the bells. Steve and Tawna took Nathan and Steven up the 422 stairs to see the bells at the top of the church. The boys did a pretty good job it sounds like, but when I saw Nathan again, he told me that his legs where shaking. :)

Steve and I got to stand on this little gold circle that is the center of Paris.
Then we got some hot dogs for lunch and sat out in front of the Mayors house to eat.
Next we saw the Egyptian Obelisk

Then we went to see Saint Sulpice so we could have a "DaVinci code" moment. Steve is standing at the base of the Rose Line!

That evening Tawna and Krista went with Sarah Steffen to see some things and then went out to dinner. And Sister Steffen, Steve and I went out for some Sushi. We left the kids at the hotel with Aaron Steffen who is their 14 year old son. We owe him big time, and we had a great time out on the town without the kids for a couple of hours. We got to see the Arc de Triumph which was neat to see.
To finish things up we went on Sunday to the Louvre which happened to be free that day. There were a ton of people there, and it was a bit overwhelming, but Steve was excited to be able to see the famous things there.

He also took some very illegal pictures much to my dismay. :)

We had a wonderful time, and were so happy to be able to go. Who knows were we will go next! :)

Krista's B-Day and "The Eiffel Tower"

So, we are back from Paris and ready to report! :) We had a GREAT time, much of which we owe to our wonderful friends, the Steffen's who lived in Paris for a year and were wonderful tour guides. It was great to have Tawna and Krista there, although sometimes I think Krista would have preferred swimming in the hotel pool and eating Taco Bell for dinner, rather than seeing ancient architecture and experiencing French food. :()

We had a little time to celebrate Krista's birthday in the morning, so we made the best of it. She got the Hughes birthday treatment with streamers on her door when she woke up. I made a decent tasting German cake for breakfast, so we got to sing and blow out candles over breakfast. Then she opened a card from Mom and Dad, and she got an adorable jacket from Steve and I to keep her warm in France. Unfortunately it didn't fit right! I wasn't sure what size she was in German sizes. Ohhh I hate messing up on birthday presents! So that was it for the morning birthday, then we got in the car and headed to Paris.

We got their at a decent time, and checked in to the hotel. Then we headed straight to the Eiffel tower. Krista considered not going up because of, I think..... elevators and Tawna had some major fear of heights once we got to the top, but they made the sacrifice and we are happy they went up with us. It was amazing to see the tower. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. We had crepes (said the way Sarah Allred says it) for dinner and then were ready to head home for bed.



Oh yeah, Nathan did excite the evening though by changing the color of his pants. Unfortunately Steve took two more bites of dinner before taking him to the bathroom. :) GROSS!!

My Hubby

With Father's Day just recently, it has been fun for me to read the blogs on some of your wonderful husbands. They seem to be doing a wonderful job as Fathers and everyone has great things to say about their "man." And as much good as is being said..... I would not trade with any of you for the world! :) But that is how it is supposed to be. Isn't it? We are all so in love with our husbands and think they are the best things out there, but we would have a hard time talking someone else in to marrying them. To me it seems like that is the plan and it is working. We SHOULD be bragging about our men and I certainly am in love with mine.

Steve and I had a bit of a rough start in marriage. We had a lot that we had to get used to in one another, and neither of us were very good at just ending the argument. We have learned so much since then. About each other, and about effective arguing. :) It has surprised me how much I have learned about myself after getting married. I have someone that is telling me things about my personality that I never realized or thought was a problem. It is a great way to learn and grow.

Steve is just the man I need in my life. He has so many qualities that have made my life what it is.
Just to name a few.....

1. I love his adventurous spirit! Who would have guessed that I would end up moving to places like Georgia, and then Germany! What a wonderful learning experience these moves have been for both of us. Steve is also one that will decide one morning that he wants to take a trip and an hour later we are in the car headed out of town. Since we have been here it has been really exciting. A few of his spur of the moment ideas were, Belgium, Prague for my birthday, and The Black Forest in Germany on a couple different occasions.

2. I love his love for our children. He really is great with the boys. He loves to play hide-and-seek(which I hate). He is great at wrestling. And we are currently learning how to teach them more respect for their Mother. So far Steve is doing a fabulous job. Although if he saw how the boys behaved sometimes when he is not home, I think he would be pretty shocked. :)

3. He is a great fixer. I already talked about this in another blog, but it really is true. Recently he decided that Tawna (my sister) needed her own computer so that she is not bored stiff after Krista leaves. So, he took a couple of hours, got all of his left over computer parts together, and built her a nice fully functional computer so that she can be on the internet when Steve and I are playing our game.
{Side note: Sorry about the look of our office. It is so hard for us to clean this room because whenever we are in here, we just want to be on the computer. :)
And...we bought a new computer chair today, so Tawna only used that baby chair for about half hour last night. Now she is much more comfortable.}
4. He is a great priesthood holder. He leads our family in the direction we want it to go so that we can be together forever. He has a great knowledge of the scriptures. And he is always willing and worthy to help others out if they are ever in need of his assistance.

5. He is a kind and loving husband. He tries to help me out with anything that I need. He makes me laugh all the time. I tell him he is making my dreams come true of having a loving home with a wonderful family.

6. He is a fabulous cook, as we all know

7. And as was mentioned last blog, he is great at singing and making up new songs. He keeps life interesting.

I love Steve so much and am so grateful that Kristin (his sister) decided that we needed to meet. I have had many happy days with Steve and I see many more years of the same in our future.

Happy Birthday Steve :)

It seems like every other post of mine is a birthday post, but I guess it is just Hughes birthday season. On June 21st we enjoyed celebrating Steve's 33rd birthday and welcoming in the first day of Summer. As you have all commented, we love to have a BBQ with friends and that is what Steve asked for for his birthday dinner. We invited all neighbors this time (no one from church believe it or not), but the funny thing was none of the husbands could come. They were all working. So it ended up being 5 women, and a bunch of kids for Steve's birthday. He didn't mind of course, growing up with 3 sisters and no brothers, he is not bothered being surrounded by females.For dinner Steve BBQ'd his famous chicken in Italian dressing, and it was some of the best he has ever done. I made funeral potatoes, and dragon breath salad. Then we had watermelon, an onion baguette, and grape juice mixed with sprite (not as good as the stuff Gma Great makes). Dinner was fabulous.I found a German cake mix that I made for the birthday cake that was actually very good. It had little pieces of walnuts in it which I could have done without, but it was rich and sweet, so it did the trick.
{Proof that T&K are here, and happy :)}Then on to presents! The neighbors gave Steve a great wrench set which he will use for the cars. And Steve and I(haha) got Steve a flat screen monitor which is really cool. He made sure it was dual voltage so he can take it back to the states with us whenever we go.

Then, to finish up the evening we went in the backyard for the neighbor to smoke her cigarette, and found the hugest snail we have ever seen. So everyone had their turn getting snail slime all over their arm. I was just the photographer, I do not particularly like snail slime.


It was a great birthday for Steve and we are grateful for the fun friends, and comfortable home we have to entertain in. I love Steve and am so much loving raising a family with him.

Week in Review

There have been a couple of things that I wanted to blog about this week, but Steve has me playing this new computer game with him that we are both really enjoying. So, when the kids go to bed, we play our game until our bedtime. It has hurt my blogging time, but not too bad. We don't know what we are going to do when Tawna and Krista come and then when the baby comes. We will have to work around that I guess. :)

1. So, the first exciting news is.....Steven lost his tooth!!

It is so fun to see your oldest loose his first tooth. Unfortunately at the moment he lost it, my friend Ashley Hawkins had been here about 10 minutes with some friends of hers that she is touring Europe with. They stayed one night with us as they were passing through the area. AND I was on the phone with a friend from the Branch. So, the usual excitement that he should have received was totally lost. Oh the little failures of a Mother. Anyway, he put the tooth under his pillow that night, and Mr. Toothfairy decided to give him 5 Euros and a little one Euro toy! Way too much for a simple tooth, but Mr. Toothfairy doesn't plan on doing that next time. :)

2. A funny story. I was reading a book to Nathan and Jacob the other day that was about rescue vehicles. It talked about the sirens that are on police cars. So, I made the siren noise. Whooooooooh. Well, Nathan quickly corrected me and said, "It doesn't make that noise, it makes this noise. Weee Ohhh, Wee Ohhh. OK, any of you who have ever heard a siren in Europe know what I am talking about. There is a big difference in the noises, and since Nathan has been here most of his life, he makes a completely different siren noise than me. WEIRD!

3. One day this week the boys and I were a little bored, so we got out this really cool ball puzzle that I had bought. It is of the smurfs, and the pieces are made out of plastic, so that as you put them together, they form in to a ball. It was really a cool puzzle, although it did frustrate Nathan after the first half. Maybe it is made for kids a little older with a little more patience.
{This is what Jacob did while we did the ball puzzle.}

4. And the last story. Steve went it at 11:00pm the other night to take Nathan to the bathroom before we went to bed. Steve said, "Nathan?" and Nathan said, "Was?" pronounced Vas which is how you say "What" in German. Isn't it said that when you dream in a new language you are really starting to get it? I guess Nathan is well on his way. :) We thought it was funny.

A little about Steven

Our oldest child has once again done things by the book. Not even 24 hours after he turned six, he tells me that one of his teeth is wiggly. It is his first loose tooth, and the internet says that kids start loosing their teeth between 6 and 7. The reason this is so significant is because Steven has done stuff exactly when "the books" say he is going to from the time he was born. I have always said that Steven did a great job of teaching me how to be a Mom, because I saw what babies are capable of if you just teach them. He ate when he should have eaten, he sat when he should have sat, he crawled when he should have crawled. He really made mothering easy. :)

And he is also doing an excellent job of being an older brother. He loves to help his little brothers reach things, or put things back together, or whatever. Unfortunately he gets yelled at by them from time to time because they don't want his help. I am trying to change that behavior to be more kind on Nathan and Jacobs part. :)


I am very much enjoying having an "older" child. The things that he does on his own now, make my life so much easier. He is very good in Sacrament Meeting and can entertain himself for the most part, he takes showers all my himself now, he can go in the kitchen and get himself a drink instead of me stopping what I am in the middle of, he gets himself dressed in matching, weather appropriate clothes for school, and he just loves to wear his new suit to church. He is a real joy to watch grow.Steven has lots of little quirks about him as well, one of which I will mention. When he is given something to adorn himself with, he seems to hang on to it forever. He got a CTR ring in Primary at least two months ago, that he wears every day. The band has turned copper, and his finger is green all around where he wears the ring, but he still wears it. Some other things you will find on him that have lasted much longer than anyone expected are... a plastic bunny ring that the Easter Bunny gave him, a pin-on button that he got from school that advertises the electric company that he wears on his shirt every day, and a necklace that looks like an olympic metal that he got from a Primary activity we did forever ago. I am afraid for him to get any more trashy jewelry for fear that he will wear it forever.

Steven also has a lot that I admire in him. I think about first putting him in to the German kindergarten here, and leaving him at 4 and a half in a school for 3 hours a day where no one could understand him and he could understand no one. I would have Hated! that. That would have been so extremely hard for me. I am really one that likes to be in my comfort zone, and whenever I am in a new situation I am very uncomfortable. I think Steven is a lot like me, so it must have been so hard for him to be there. But it has been so character building, and I am glad that I didn't let my fear stop him from having this experience. He is almost fluent in German now and can communicate with the neighbor kids all day. He also loves to translate when the neighbors are here, and I have no clue what they are asking. It has been a wonderful opportunity for him to be here in Germany, and broaden his mind.

Of course Steven comes with his challenges too. As he grows older he has become quite sassy. He has a lot to complain about, and he says, "I am NOT doing that" to almost every cleaning task I ask him to do. We are working on this with him, because he needs to be a better example for his little brothers, and more helpful to his Mother.

We love having Steven in our family, and are so grateful to be his parents. He is going to be an amazing man, and I am really loving watching him grow into one.