Vienna Christmas Market Rathaus, Hofburg, Parliment

Grampy and Nana successfully arrived at the airport on Christmas Eve morning! We picked them up and headed straight over to the Rathaus so they could see a Christmas market. This one is the biggest in Vienna.Grampy with his first Langos saying, “What is this?”We love all the decorated gingerbread hearts.The kids got some cotton candy to share, and you can tell from the way they swarmed Grampy that they were very excited!We couldn’t get the kids to stop eating long enough to smile! It was another pretty warm day for Vienna winter though, so it was nice to get outside and enjoy the beautiful scenery in the city!Grampy saying, “Wow, did you get a picture with that in the background? Make sure you get that in a picture.” “Yes Grampy, the last picture had that already… but we will take some more anyway.”It is very difficult to hold hands with the children, as they are always dancing/running/flopping around… More pics of the family at the pretty market. It was actually harder to get Grampy and Nana to look at the camera than the kids, since they were always talking or telling the kids where to look…We headed over to the carousel and the kids picked this cool spinning hot air balloon to ride in instead of a horse. They were so happy! They love to spin.Next they rode the little train. They were very happy about this one too, and had fun waving at us a smiling as they rode around. They never were both looking and smiling at the same time though… I can’t wait until Marion is bigger and then we will always be attempting to get three kids to look and smile at the same time.Since the weather was pretty nice, we decided to walk over to the Parliament building. It is such a beautiful building and we have never really taken any pics of it.Chris liked the griffin statues best.And the kidlets like this pointless low wall that they could walk on.There are a lot of sculptures lining the walkways around the building.And some really HUGE pillars in front!Baby Marion woke up for a couple minutes to take some pics. She didn’t really want to be awake though, and we had to keep poking her so her eyes would be open in the pictures. Whenever she is bundled up warm and taken outside she goes right to sleep.Marion’s squinchy “I don’t want to wake up” face.The kidlets liked playing “1…2…3…jump!” They come hold hands and say, “Let’s play 1,2,3!”Last stop – the Hofburg. Another beautiful building in Vienna. I am starting to realize our time here is almost over and I get sappy whenever I see my favorite places in the city and think I won’t be seeing them much longer. We got a picture of the whole crew out in front of the beautiful palace, and most everyone was smiling…