So here we are in Germany! Or as Anneke would say, "GernAmy"
The end. 
Not!
Are you kidding?  I looove blogging, so much better than Facebook in that I get to tell you all about my life but don't have to hear anything about yours!! Oops, was that out loud?  In all seriousness, I am so excited to have this great excuse to get back to one of my favorite things, writing about my most treasured family and sharing pictures of their beautiful faces. 
Anyways... this first post will be a little, um, boring? Informative? Factual? Long? As Landon would say, "Check. Yes. Got it. Check."
The kids all did great on the long trip over.  Considering.  Actually not even considering.  They were fantastic troopers.  We started off driving up to Seattle on Saturday.

 Mom dropped us off at a labyrinth of a hotel wherein I promptly got lost.  Well, actually, first we tried to send Landon and Anneke off in the elevator all by themselves.  Emma thankfully alerted us through her hysterical giggling and flapping of arms and gesturing that they were the only ones in the elevator and the doors were closing... 

So after rescuing them we spent a nice evening of fast food,  swimming and hot tubbing.  The next day we had time to swim again. Anneke tired quickly however, and wanted to return to the room.  See previous mention where Mommy and Anneke head off, get lost, are unable to remember room #, try to call front desk via a courtesy phone, clerk is uncourteously unable to provide room # to non-registered guest and trek all the way back to swimming pool to admit we are lost... Mommy carrying Anneke up and down flights of stairs the whole way...

The kids quickly fell asleep, a shout out here to Emma's class, clutching their new stuffed caterpillars that were given to them as part of a super fun gift bag of plane activities.  Thank you Mrs. Sisler's class! We miss you all!
Whew! This is a long post and we are not even on the plane yet!  :)  
Breakfast, a hasty re-pack and we donned our matching "Hazard Yellow" Bad Margentheim custom logo T-Shirts and boarded the "Cookie Bus" to get shuttled over to the airport. 

Extremely helpful assistants lent a hand both in loading and unloading luggage as well as dropping us at the correct spot and before we knew it we were the only people sashaying up to the "Icelandic Air" check in counter.  All bags checked in at under 50#, whew! The kids signed their brand new passports (Sam carefully penning out, "Sam van Hecke"... Thank you, Mrs. Carmichael!) and off we went to visit the friendly people at TSA.  That was another walk in the park! Anneke had fallen asleep in the ergo backpack so we got the "Family Screen" which was easy.  The kids were all great at removing shoes, placing things in bins and Sam even got a compliment from the TSA agent as he carefully replaced each bin as we retrieved our belongings!

The wait in the boarding area did not last long and I made Sam and Landon work off energy by taking turns shuttling the wheeled carry-on back forth.  Anneke slept away.  

Boarding call!  Let the screen time begin!  The kids were all thrilled with their private screens and Anneke quickly upgraded her headphones to the free kids courtesy headphones that Icelandic Air handed out.  They were pink as opposed to the silver ones that Daddy had gotten her.  She navigated her little screen and carefully tipped Tic Tacs into her palm.  I think Emma tired first.  Sleep eluded everyone, the plane heated up quickly and thirst was prevalent.  Around 10:00pm our time people were out of sorts with the inability to get comfortable even though tired.  Anneke did sleep, Emma a little and finally Sam slipped onto the floor in front of the boys seats and conked out, Landon fought off sleep and protested loudly but eventually also slept a little.  We dis-boarded in Reykjavik at midnight our time and had 40 minutes to get through customs and to our next plane.  It worked. Not sure how, but it did!  Did you know Iceland uses 99% renewable energy?
Well, this is getting embarrassingly long winded... tune in next time for our arrival and to find the answer to why our first purchase in Germany was an illegal substance here.... AKA, bleach.