Germany Getaway

We just had an incredible getaway. I never thought I'd be doing something like this, which made it even better. Jared had another Germany business trip coming up, and one day I found him at the computer applying for a passport. "What are you doing?" I asked him. He just smiled and didn't answer me. "What are you doing?!" I again asked. He answered, "applying for your passport!" It turns out he had enough frequent flier miles to take me with him without cost. Wow! So, my prayers started to be something like, "if this would be a good thing, please help everything fall into place so that I'll know it's a good thing". We only had 4 weeks to prepare. The passport came early. My mom happened to be at my sister's house right before taking care of her kids so I was able to ask her to extend her vacation another week to take care of mine. Some of Jared's work was cancelled, so when I got there he was completely on vacation. Our kids did very well with my mom, and Amy even went to bed by herself and slept through the night most nights! Everything fell completely into place and it was WONDERFUL! We spent Friday through Tuesday in Dresden, Germany, one of the cities in which Jared spent 8 months of his mission for our church. We even got to go to church in Hohenstein, a village he spent another 8 months of his mission. We were graciously invited to dinner by the Hengsts, one of his favorite families there. Brother Hengst was the ward mission leader when Jared served there. Now he is the busy Stake President.

Here are some pictures from our trip:
Beautiful German countryside and architecture

Seiffen, the village where they make the nutcrackers, pyramids, Raucherman, etc.

Dresden

Moritzburg -- Hunting Castle/Cinderella Castle