London

Last weekend

my parents took me to London for my 15th Birthday!

Packing very light, leaving room in our bags for our new shopping finds, we were off to the land of the English!

The first thing we did once we were in London was the London Eye! It is such a cool ride, you go sooo high in the air (135 Meters to be precise), and you get the best view of London there is. It's a long ride, but the capsules are giant, so we were all able to get pictures of the city from every angle.

This is what we rode in on the Eye

My Mom and Dad

View of Big Ben from the Eye

The day after was my Birthday, so we celebrated it on Oxford and Regents Street, shopping our little hearts away and going in all the American stores we could find!!

After we went shopping we went to dinner and then to a movie! This was my first time, at a movie theater, since Christmas time that we saw a movie in English!!! We saw Slumdog Millionaire, which was very good!

The next morning we packed our bags and got ready to leave, we weren't leaving until that night, so we left our bags at the hotel and did some more sightseeing! We went on a walk through Hyde Park and saw Buckingham Palace along with the Horse Guards.

It was a wonderful birthday and trip!

Kensington Palace

Swans

Gates near Buckingham Palace

Austria

About two weeks ago my family and I went on a Ski trip to Ebbs (Kufstein) Austria with my friend, Emily, and her family! I had never been on a ski trip before, living 20 minutes away from wonderful ski resorts all my life in Utah, we never found them necessary.

We rode the train there, which is always fun and very relaxing, and you could notice right after we crossed the German/Austria border how much the architecture changed. From rooftops to wood trimmings, it was all different and very cute! When we got the the Ebbs train station, while we were still surprised with the small size of it, we couldn't help but focus on the beautiful, yet small, town surrounding us! Every detail on the churches and stores made the place look like a village out of a snow globe, with the mountains in the background, it was picturesque.

We spent the whole week skiing down the slopes and had a blast at a resort named SkiWelt, the biggest in Austria! (containing 91 chairlifts and 70 places to eat!) My dad and I were nearly in heaven, for we had always dreamed about skiing on the Alps, and were loving every minute of it! Before we moved to Germany my dad and I were up skiing almost every weekend, I have skied all my life and had been on a ski team for 5 years, so skiing in Austria really brought back great memories along with making us very homesick!

We had a great time skiing in Austria, the weather was great, and dreams came true!

My Mom and Dad on the train to Ebbs

Dad in Munich Train Station

My mom and Lars in the Gondola ready to hit the slopes!

My friend Emily and her mom

Chairlift, I thought the ramp to get down was interesting...

8 person chairlift, looks like a couch...

I thought this was really cool! I have never seen or heard of a double chairlift like this!

Chairlift with heated seats and bubble!

Dad on awesome heated chairlift

Lars in heated chairlift

On the bus up to the mountain

Emily, Me, and Lars on the Bus!

Emily and I

Mom, Dad, and I!

Yaks! We were just skiing along and randomly there was a farm with Yaks, just watching the people ski along!

(Picture dedicated to Jordan and Ginny!)

Ski Bunnies!

Mom and Me!

Our cute little Hotel!

Kids dancing the traditional Tirolean Dance!

Looks like Hop-Scotch to me!

More of our Hotel Entertainment! :)

Museum/Castle/Fortress of Kufstein!

This was the weather the day and the day before we left, snowed so much that it just piled right up on the swing set!

View from the top of a Gondola on a super nice day!