Yeah...a visit with aunt Hollie! We picked up Hollie from Duesseldorf the day after we got back from Hamburg. We just enjoyed a 10 day visit with her. It was so great! She flew out to help me get into the baby nesting phase while her husband Kirk took of time off work to do the stay-at-home mom thing. Thanks a million Kirk! What a guy! We had such a nice visit. We drove out to Maastricht, a little dutch town just over the border to visit one of our good friends we grew up with. It was so nice to see her and her sweet kids. Then we drove up to Amsterdam for the weekend while Mike stayed home with the boys. Thanks Mike! It was so nice to enjoy the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank house at a leisurely pace. The weather was sunny and warm and we couldn't have picked a nicer weekend to be in the Netherlands. 
On Sunday we drove out to Lisse to enjoy the day at the Keukenhof Gardens. It really is the most beautiful spring garden in the world! The park is 32 hectacres and has several pavilions where they host flower shows. Of course, we couldn't walk the entire park but we enjoyed going to the wooden shoe shop, shopping in the souvenier shops and strolling through the amazing gardens. And everywhere you drive you see tulip fields even in towns miles away. It was so nice. After our visit to the gardens in Lisse, we decided to visit one of the nearby seaside towns. Because of the nice weather, it was extremely crowded so we opted for the driveby view. Check out our Amsterdam pictures.
Easter weekend was spent up in Hamburg this year! Mike heard about a Volleyball tournament hosted by the Hamburg Stake and just had to get involved. He joined on with a team from Mannheim, Germany and said that he's never had so much fun loosing. Teams come from all over Germany, the Netherlands, and even Switzerland. Anyone interested in participating in 2009? Mike's trying to recruit. While Mike was playing his heart out, the boys and I enjoyed a visit to the Tierpark Hagenback in Hamburg. It was a lot of fun. Our favorite exhibits were the Mandrills and Orangutans. There were lots of babies to watch and of course the boys are really fascinated with babies right now! The highlight of our zoo trip was when we went to the Elephant exhibit. All the elephants were near the perimeter of their enclosure and people would hold out all sorts of fruits and vegetables while the elephants would reach out with their trunks and grab the food. It was so cool. We picked up some of the fallen carrots and apple slices and Aaron enjoyed feeding the elephants. One of the elephants we were feeding would also take coins and hand them to the zookeeper standing beside him. It was neat. We also went to the Planetarium and watched a little musical called "Das Kleines Tag" (The Little Day). It was about a little star that wanted to be born on a special day and he ended up coming on quite an ordinary day but it was still special to him. The music was good and it was pretty much like watching a light show inside the planetarium. We also enjoyed a visit with some of our german friends that are from Hamburg. They took us on a drive downtown and we visited the Michaelskirche and went up the tower. It was quite windy but you get a really great view of the city from the top. Aaron caught a glimpse of the building that the Lion King is showing in and immediately made a request to go see it again! We enjoyed a nice Easter service at our friends home ward and then had a little egg hunt at the church. The boys were impressed that the Easter Bunny managed to find them even though we were staying in a hotel. You can check out more pictures from our trip on the link to the right under the heading pictures.
Mike was in New Jersey the week before Easter for his interviews at PwC's national office in Florham Park. And of course, the majority of his time was spent house hunting. He took lots of videos and uploaded them on www.youtube.com so that I could view the houses online while here in Germany. If you're interested in checking out Mike's videos, you can go to youtube.com and search under mgibbs003 and all Mike's videos will appear. The ones of our new house are below. We just recently uploaded some videos of our house for some people moving into our flat in July. I also added a link to the photos of our house from the MLS listing. You can check those out right on our blogspot. It was a bit stressful for me to decide but we ended up deciding on the house that will be in the best possible school district for Aaron and we will also be in a really good ward and neighborhood. We're really looking forward to it!
