9 Months Old

Some cute profile pictures... Look at thoes teeth!

My little scholar! Where are the glasses?

Always has some smiles for his mom & dad.

Play, Play, Play

The Family

One precious baby boy!

Easter Sunday - Eden Project, Oakhampton Castle

We had a busy day planned for Easter Sunday... We visited the Eden Project in Cornwall, which made up of several man-made biomes (giant green houses) that house over 100,000 plants from all over the world... I am not much of a green thumb, so not overly interesting, but we did see some beautiful flowers...

Learned that Cashews are posionous prior to roasting, very interesting...

and got a picture in front of a really cool horse made from drift wood, amazing what some people get to do for a living!

Next on the agenda was visiting the Oakhampton Castle Ruins. You can see that we had head sets and I am sure we learned a little something, but it was difficult to pick up too much information... to keep Andrew happy you had to keep moving! The ruins made a nice play pen for Andrew - he was glad to finally have some space to crawl around! What a sweet baby!

We had one more stop for the day... Restormel Castle Ruins. Andrew and I stayed in the car and finished napping while the rest of the crew visited the site.

Lands End

Finally finishing up our England trip blog (it is August!)... Lets see, oh yes, Jeanne picked us up from the airport and had a trip in place to visit the southern tip of England (and many sites on the way). It was great being able to sit back, relax and enjoy the beautiful country side. I must say some of the roads were windy and we all got a little car sick on occasion...

Here we are at Lands End (yep, the southern shore of England). We weren't going to stop, but we were glad we did - it was beautiful! Luckily we all made it back to the car alive (there are no signs or gaurd rails close to the steep edges - we were very glad Andrew was not walking on this trip!

Mont of St. Michael

This was a really cool castle, built just off shore. There was a stone pathway leading to the island, but at high tide it got completely covered with water, hence the boat ride on the way back. It was a little windy, but really a beautiful day.

The Shaffer Kids really enjoyed climbing the cliffs!

Andrew fast asleep - did I mention how much I LOVE the Ergo sling!

The boat ride back to land...

We generally don't go around taking pictures of people we don't know, but this was so cute - this boy thought it would be fun to bury his dogs tail... what a good puppy dog!

Stonehenge

We arrived in London around 3:00pm. Jeanne, David's sister-in-law picked us up from the airport and had a 5 day tour of the southern border of England planned. It was wonderful to just sit back and enjoy the ride!

Our first stop was Stonehenge, this was the coldest day we had on the entire trip... so we walked quickly around the stone structure.

Still a magnificent site to see!

Dachau Concentration Camp

We stopped by Dachau Concentration Camp on our drive back to Munich. The stories of how the people were treated were unbelievable, unfortunately they were true. Opened in March 1933, it was the first regular concentration camp established by the coalition government of National Socialist (Nazi) party. Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi concentration camps that followed. There was a common jingle saying "Dear God, make me dumb, that I may not to Dachau come."

The words across the front gate read, Arbeit macht frei - meaning"work shall set you free"

The 32 barracks are gone, but the concrete slabs remain. These were build for 200 prisoners, but as time went on they had over 1000 people housed in each barrack.

Six to ten men were sleeping on a hard wooden bed, meant for two.

The camp was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire gate, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers. Many prisoners would commit suicide by running into the forbidden area to get out of the terrible suffering.

The crematorium was set up in an assembly line, with gas chambers in the adjacent room - set up to look like showers. This mass death system was never used at Dachau as it was at other camps. It was difficult to stand in the same place where this kind of brutality occurred. It was a very sad, yet eye-opening experience.

Munich, Germany

Next we were off to Munich. We visited St. Micheal Cathedral and heard the chior sing.

It was getting dark, so we decided to sit down for dinner. We were pretty tired of German food by now, you can only have goolash so many nights in a row, so we decided to try a Mexican resturaunt. Pretty good, but definately not as spicy as American Mexican food and to my disappointment no beans or chips and salsa!

We ended stayed at the Holiday Inn next to the airport and were off to England the next morning. Andrew stayed busy drinking a bottle of water and smiling at people passing by.

Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber

After a very long day we made it to Hotel Hornburg located just outside the walled city of Rothenburg. Luckily we found our keys and quickly got settled into our adorable room complete with baby bed, changing table and baby towel. Andrew was wide awake after his 3 hour nap, but thankfully he went back to bed easily! We woke up to a beautiful breakfast, again they had an entire place setting just for Andrew, and met the owners who were very welcoming. After breakfast we decided to let Andrew take a nap in a bed (all naps thus far were in the Ergo!) and I caught up on our journal while sipping a tasty cup of tea.

The room was complete with baby supplies... how thoughtful!

Andrew enjoying some brotchen (small bread)!

Another wonderful breakfast!

Daddy and Andrew took a nap together, we were exhausted!

Touring the City

We had a nice relaxing morning, but needed to get going because we had tons of sites to see in a short amount of time. The small town of Rothenburg had several museums that we wanted to visit.

The town square was so cute with all the old-fashioned buildings. We walked around the most of the wall during our visit. We also visited the Imperial Museum with tons of swords and battle armor.

We visited the Midevil Crime Museum and read about punishment for crimes long ago - we agreed would have little crime if they still had public torture these days!

We found a German toy store and bought Andrew a special souvenir, Fynn the teddy bear. They quickly became good friends!

At 8:00pm we met at the town square for the Night Watchman's Tour - he was a scary looking man, but had interesting stories to tell of the Plague and battles long ago. Andrew fell asleep on the walk, so we had a chance to stop for ice cream on the way back to our bed & breakfast.