Pieces of Summer

I don’t have too much to say about the last month. 

As always there have been a mix of extremes. Extreme highs and extreme lows. On the one hand, we’ve felt SO grateful for our amazing experiences to travel this part of the world, see so many neat places, and have this incredible experience of living abroad. On the other hand, our family is undergoing some challenges that would be difficult anywhere in the world, and so the hundreds of “little things” that are harder and more inconvenient by living abroad stack up and make those challenges feel a lot heavier than if we lived back in the states.  

But above all, we are happy, we are healthy, we are a family, and we love each other. We have our faith and each other, which is everything to us. 

Some of our different activities this summer have included: 

Our gym membership offers an array of free sport classes for kids.  We’ve been trying a few of them out over the summer. It’s been a fun adventure trying to communicate with the instructors and getting the kids to participate. We’ve tried ball spiele (ball play), kinder turnen (kid’s gymnastics), hip hop, and klein spiele (small games). Each class begins by the instructors explaining how the games will work, and me trying to interpret what they are saying and explain it to my kids. Many of the instructors have spoken English, which is so nice (we are so lucky they do!) and when they don’t, we’ve always managed to figure it out through a game of charades. 

We visited a local amusement park about a month ago. It was filled with roller coasters, fair rides, trampoline courts, farm animals, and man-powered rides: a Ferris wheel powered by pedaling a bicycle, a swing ride powered by manually spinning a wheel, a helicopter ride overlooking the park, also powered by pedaling, and a tower ride where you sat in seats and pulled a rope, hoisting yourself to the very top. Apparently, these self-operated rides are a very German thing. I’ve never seen such a unique park. It was the best time trying out each attraction. Our kids (and me because at heart, I'm just a big kid), all loved it and had the best time. Germans know how to make some magical parks! 

It’s been HOT this summer. Up to 108 F. And with only one little ac unit in our living room, some days have been pretty unbearable and some nights have been sleepless. But we’ve beat the heat with visits to splash pads and swimming pools (thankfully there are lots of those here) and luckily, it’s been cooling down the last week or so. 

In the last month, Mike's work travels have taken him to England, Algiers, Kyrgyzstan, and Ethiopia. It's always fun to hear about his interesting experiences in all these countries. Luckily he's been writing some of them down, and many are pretty funny.

As for me, I got to go on a little solo trip (+baby) to Brussels last month to visit some friends. While there, we went to a local market, explored a beautiful park, and visited Bruges for the day. It was a lot of fun shopping, eating waffles, exploring, and just visiting with each other. How nice it was to take a trip away for a weekend!

The biggest event from the last month was our 10-day road trip to the UK. We drove to London, Weymouth, Stonehenge, Wales, York, and Dover. We explored royal palaces and castles, played on beautiful beaches, drove across the most gorgeous green landscapes, and stayed in the cutest bed and breakfasts. Barmouth, Wales was our favorite stop – just a beautiful coastal town filled with lots of fun things to do with kids (crabbing, jelly fish watching, lots of ice cream, sandy beaches, etc.).  These trips have given us some wonderful life-long memories to cherish!

School will be starting up in about two weeks and I think we’re all excited for that. Last year’s  experience at an international school (half-German/half English) was in all honesty, extremely tumultuous. This year, the boys will be going to a new school for Kindergarten that will be taught completely in English. It has a lot more teacher and resource support, and I think (and hope and pray) that it will be a better experience. Wish us luck! 

Before school starts, we have one more family vacation planned, so we are really looking forward to that!

On a final note... the other day, I thought it would be fun to remember what it’s like to drive here in Frankfurt, so I set my camera on the dash and captured a little drive time on my way to the gym. When I first got here, driving felt like a big deal. It seemed so different than what I was used to. Now it's so normal. Funny how something so intimidating at first can become comfortable and normal over time. (What a blessing that is). I wonder how it will feel going back to the states. Mike recently went to DC for a week and said the roads downtown felt HUGE and the sidewalks were so spacious! Funny, because compared to the west where we are from, we initially thought DC roads were tiny. Everything is relative isn't it...

https://youtu.be/kDNSH7RhmGY

Now for a few pictures from the last month’s adventures:

Trip Highlights, loads of pictures, and more

I’m getting so behind on my updates, I need to get some of the last month’s memories down before anything else happens. 

To summarize it all: We took a bunch of trips.

The most epic was our road trip around Eastern Europe. 

We visited the Neuschwanstein castle, which was filled with the most magical, colorful charm inside. 

We drove through the gorgeous green Alps to Innsbruck, Austria where we explored churches, shops, and old, pretty buildings, drank from fountains, and taste tested chocolates and peach mango sweet cheese tarts.  

We found an impressively giant mountain peak overlooking a lovely village where we talked to an Italian couple in our broken Spanish. 

We stopped at an old wood shop to clean up a car seat full of vomit (and search in vain for a bathroom). 

We experienced Venice in all it’s gondola-riding, ice cream-eating, gold plated-palace-admiring glory. 

We stayed in a hill-side condo overlooking the Ocean in Croatia. We played on the rocky beach and walked along the boardwalk at sunset. That was a beautiful memory. 

We nearly lost one or two of the kids to a raging (but super beautiful) waterfall at Plitvice National Park. Okay, not really, but it was DANGEROUS. Good thing I read this article entitled “stop making stupid selfies”  AFTER we visited, or else I would have been really unnerved knowing how many rescues take place there every week.  Despite the danger, we managed to keep our four little hikers safe as we all trekked  about 6 miles across wooden walkways lacking hand rails, built over the most gorgeous turquoise waterfalls. 

We walked all over Budapest (which has the prettiest fortress up on the hill), and got caught in the rain in the middle of buying delicious street food. 

We had some major diaper blow-outs in the car, causing several road-side clean-up sessions. 

We got stuck in several minor traffic jams and one MAJOR traffic jam in which we were at a complete standstill for a good 30 minutes. That one ended up adding three hours to our 5-hour drive. When we finally got a chance to pull off the highway and make a pitstop, I was so desperate to find a bathroom that I ran to a construction zone port-a-potty. Here’s how it went:

Me: “Can I use this?” (points to port-a-potty)

Construction worker guy who happened to be passing by: Shakes his head and shrugs his shoulder as if to say, “I don’t know. I don’t speak your language.”  

Me: Opens door on a different construction guy. “WUPS! Sorry!”

Also Me: Feeling panicked, sprints away without looking around to see if anyone saw what I just did.

We visited Prague where Mike got swindled in the first 20 minutes of arrival.What Happened: 

Mike: Tries to figure out how to use the money exchange machine.

Nice, innocent-looking man: “Oh let me show you how this works.”

Mike: Thinks to himself: “Wow, what a nice guy to help me.”

Innocent man: “Do you happen to have change for this 40?”

Mike: “Hey, you helped me, of course I have change, here you go!”

(Walks back to me and the kids)

Also Mike: “Ok, I got some cash, a really nice guy helped me out. Prague people are nice. I like Prague!” (Side note: words he literally said).

…20 minutes later when we are downtown…

Me: “I’m going to buy us some water, can you give me some cash?”

Mike: “Sure, here you go.”

Me: (Goes to buy water at a little shop. Hands cashier the money)

Cashier: (In thick accent, pointing to money) “This money no good. This no good.”

Me: (Takes money back to Mike and explain how it’s fake.)

Mike: “Oh, so THAT’S why that guy was so nice.”

For the rest of our Prague day, we did the regular: Walked the streets enjoying beautiful views of churches, buildings, castles, bridges, etc. At this point in the trip (9 days of travel), we were pretty exhausted, so instead of saying, “Let’s go inside that pretty building over there.” We were like, “Oh look at that pretty building over there.” (When traveling with four kids age five and under, you’ve got to keep your expectations low). 

So that was our Eastern Europe road trip in a tiny, little nutshell. I wish I could tell you more, but in summary: It was a lot of hard work packing around 4 kids, but it was also so incredible, amazing, and wow, wow, wow! I cried a couple times (mostly in Venice) at just how amazing it was and how fortunate we were to be able to see these unbelievably cool places.

Another trip we took was to the Netherlands (beautiful place on Earth) to catch the tail end of the Tulip festivities there. While a lot of the tulip fields were already picked, we had a beautiful time walking through Keukenhof. It was just a heavenly, peaceful, beautiful place (particularly in the morning when the crowds weren’t overwhelming). 

 In the past couple weeks, we’ve enjoyed going to local attractions: Our city’s botanical gardens, parks, and nearby castles. One castle visit in particular was especially enchanting. It was a fairly small, crumbling castle, without any groundskeepers or rules about where you can’t explore. On this rainy day, the place was almost totally empty and it was just magical exploring the underground hidey holes, the cave-like corridors, the dark, echoing tunnels, and tall winding staircase up to the tallest tower overlooking distant villages. Days like that are the reason for living here. 

In non-traveling news, oh there’s so much that’s been going on, I couldn’t begin to describe it all.. In the spirit of being honest, some days I feel so blessed I think my heart might burst. Other days I feel really burnt out and depressed. Some days, I feel so much gratitude for all the experiences and opportunities we’ve been given. Other days, I feel exhausted and mope over wishing certain things were easier. In short, we’ve been continuing to learn so many things through trial and error, and answered prayers. I am filling up my personal journal all the time with the ways God is teaching me how to be a better person, wife, mom, and friend. I’ve learned so much about myself here, and so much about our family. All I can say is this move to Germany has been really life-changing in a lot of positive ways. It’s changed my perspective in many ways.  It’s been a refiner’s fire. I believe it’s been an essential step in our life’s journey. Mike and I both talk all the time how we needed to come here to learn what we've learned. While it’s been difficult on many levels, I’m so grateful we have had this opportunity to live here. It’s taught me that hard really is good. Hard is growth. Hard is where learning and change happens. Hard is beyond comfort – yes, you have to cross fear to get to it, but once you trudge through hard for a good while, the rewards and lessons learned are worth it. 

Another highlight from last month was finally getting around to this.

See this picture? This is a key element to my well-being. I’ve been trying to get this gym membership since we moved here, and a few weeks ago, I finally made it happen. To have somewhere to go each day, to have something to fit our daily routine around, to have a place where the kids can play without me for at worst 10 minutes, at best 60 minutes, to get some consistent exercise, has been so wonderful! I decided a long time ago that no matter where we live, if I can just have my gym with childcare, I can be content, and I still maintain that today.  

Other random thoughts: My kids are growing up so fast. My baby is now seven months old. SEVEN! She’s such an angel. Always happy, always quietly looking around, rolling all over the carpet in search of toys. Giggling with her siblings and cooing and babbling so sweetly. She’s just a darling and I’m so grateful for her. My two-year-old turns three in TWO MONTHS. WHAT! Her sass and charisma and spunky humor brightens my heart every single day. What would I do without her? My boys are turning into such handsome little guys and fill my life with so much fun and adventure. They are at an age where we can play all sorts of guessing games and math challenges and spelling quizzes together. They are so smart and learning so much. With the warm weather, I’ve been taking the kids to the park each day and I have the best time teaching them soccer and swinging them on the swings and exploring the sandbox with them. Yesterday, we all took turns timing each other while we ran an “obstacle course” around the playground. It made my heart so happy to see all my kids smiling, cheering each other on, darting up the ladder and down the slide, learning to use the timer button on my phone. They made me do the course three times (the locals probably think I’m a loud and crazy mom…which is true).  It was just fun. I love spending quality time and really focusing on my kids. That’s definitely been one of those positive outcomes of living here. I think I appreciate my kids more. I feel like I see more clearly than ever that being a good parent to them, that their well-being and safety, that our precious time together is more important than anything else. 

Before signing off, one last classic Germany story which happened today:

Once upon a time, I’m driving to the gym on a one-way road (there are a LOT of one-way roads here).

Suddenly I come upon a giant parked truck, taking up the entire space of the road for an indefinite amount of time.

“Hmm,” I think to myself, “Maybe I can just turn right and get to the road a roundabout way.”

So I turn right. Then left. Then left again.

Here I notice the road ahead turns into a one-way (not in the current direction).

I notice there’s a street to the left I can take (the only street available to travel down at this point), so I turn left.

After continuing on this road awhile, I begin to notice it getting narrower and narrower and narrower until…

I see that this road also turns into a one-way (NOT in the current direction).

HOW DOES THIS EVEN HAPPEN?

At this point an elderly man riding his bicycle stops in front of me as if to say, “You aren’t trying to come this way are you, you crazy American driver?”

I begin the backwards back-up drive of shame down the long, narrow road until I’m able to turn around again (Living here has made me a MASTER of backwards, backing-out, watch-your-side-mirrors driving).

After getting myself pointed in the “out” direction, I smile and nod a goodbye to the elderly bicyclist (who stares suspiciously back).

With the help of my trusty GPS, I find my way to the gym at last and think: “I remember when I first got here, this kind of stuff stressed me out A LOT. Now wrong turns are just a way of life.”

The End.