Leavenworth 2009

Where do I begin?

Our family trip to Leavenworth between Christmas and New Years has definetly become one of our favorite vacations!  We LOVE this town and the added bonus of getting to spend a few days there with our extended family makes us love it even more!

I have posted waaaaayyyyyy too many pictures, but I took over 150 (with my new camera), so I thought I was doing pretty good to cut it down to about 30.  We do so many fun things while we are here, and I wanted to make sure that I covered all of them.

Isn' this town beautiful? 

It really feels like you are at the North Pole.

There are so many cute shops and fun little restaurants and bakeries with authentic German food.

Kasey(7), Sam(9), Lucy(6), Max(10), Will(4) & Kyla(8)

The cousins . . . they are all a year apart.

*not pictured Jeffrey(21) Cody (19), Hunter (14) Annie (4) and Finn (7 months)

The kids, along with Marrene and I, got to go on a carriage ride through town.

We all sang Christmas Carols the whole time.

We had a lot of people taking our picture, and even some Japanese tourists taking movies of us!

We must have looked pretty cute!

. . .another picture of our horse drawn carriage

"oh what fun it is  to ride on one horse open sleigh . . . HEY"

Sledding has to be my boys absolute favorite thing to do in Leavenworth.

The best sledding hill ever is located right across the street from our hotel.

Max and Sam (as well as Will, Kacey and Kyla) could be found sledding there for hours . . . literally!

Max got this saucer for Christmas.

He went down the hill on it at least 100 times.

How do kids have that much energy?

Sam and Will

best buddies and cousins

they LOVED sledding!

 . . .a smiling happy Max

Pancho looks a little "special" in this picture, but I wanted to show that the parents had fun sledding too!

Sledding hill with the cute little town of Leavenworth in the background

Sam with his favorite new hat that his teacher made for him for Christmas,

and some cute little rosy cheeks.

Where were the girls during all of this sledding fun?

"We don't like to be cold" they said.

They preferred to stay warm and inside coloring, reading books and watching movies.

Yes - this is an outdoor pool!

The kids loved swimming while it was snowing on them!

I didn't ever get in, but the kids and Pancho assured me that it was really warm.

It must have been warm because my little princess Lulu, who doesn't like to get cold, would have never gone near the water if it wasn't.  She and Will went swimming at least once (if not twice) a day while we were there!

Sam doing a Cannonball!!!!

Pancho and Max in the hot tub.

The whole town is lit up at night.  It is so pretty!

This was our view from our hotel room.

The Oregon cousins had to show their Washington cousins the "I Smell Roses" video.

My niece Hunter (14) found it on her new laptop.

My adorable nephew Finn, with his Daddy Kevin (my brother).

The family out in front of our hotel, which was lit up so beautifully.

Francine got this sock monkey hat for Christmas from her nephews.

My mom took a turn trying it on! She looks so cute.

My Dad and Mom hanging out at the Sports Bar with us.

We left the kids at the hotel with Hunter two nights, so the adults could go out and have some fun!

Lucy in her cute "snow bunny" outfit

in front of the gorgeous mountain view in front of our hotel.

The girls all had lunch together at the Soup Cellar.

It was fun to spend some time with my "sistas".

Finn thinking "wow is this really my crazy family?"

He did a great job in the middle of all of the chaos!

Max and Kasey getting back from skiing at nearby Stevens Pass.

A group of family members headed up there for a day of skiing!

 Max had a great time skiing with Megan, Bevan, Marrene, Kasey and Hunter.

annie, lucy, sam, kyla & will

The cousins who stayed home from skiing, spent the day sledding and swimming.

They also put on a spectacular play for us "A Christmas Carol"

Sam was Scrooge, it was really cute!

Later that night, the adults all went out  to dinner at Ludvigs!

We had an authentic German Meal with schnitzel, hamhocks, saurkraut and plenty of mugs of beer!

This is a highlight of our trip, as this dinner is usually full of lots of stories, laughing and even singing!

A cute little german man with an accordion always comes around and plays German music for us, we all love singing along!

Francine & Sean

(with Francine's mom Rollie in the background)

enjoying some funny family stories.

He doesnt look so cute here, but this little guy really is so much fun and he just loves our table.  We all sing along to every song and sway back and forth with our beer mugs in hand.

As soon as he makes it through his repetoire of German songs (including every song from The Sound of Music), our family (who is VERY Irish) start asking him to sing Irish songs.  We really just confuse the poor guy, but he does his best for us.  Usually by the time the guy finally gets away from our crazy family, we look around and see that we have cleared out the whole restaurant.  Maybe we aren't as good at singing as we think we are.  The beer makes us think we sound pretty good!

 . . .the view from the street outside of the retaurant.  It feels magical when you walk down the street there.

Pancho and I enjoying the snow falling lightly as we took a walk to look at the lights.

My Dad took the last picture for us, so we made him pose for a Pancho and Julie sandwich picture with us.

If there is anyone out there who actually looked at this whole post, I hope that you can tell how much my family and I LOVE this vacation.  The family time, the lights, the sledding, the skiing, the swimming, the food, we look froward to it every year.  We have already booked our rooms for next year!