Weeks 11-13: Finally!!

We finally moved into our new house (pictures coming soon) and the house where we will most likely be living for the next 3 years, which is exactly 3 times longer than we have ever lived anywhere!!!

It has been a little chaotic, to say the least, during this move. But.... we are starting to get a little normalcy back, which is good. The best part is that we have internet and phone with unlimited calls to the US. YAY!! Now if it weren't for the huge time difference I could actually call people.

A lot has happened since my last post. I promise, I will try to be brief.....

Right before we moved out of the hotel we took the missionaries out to eat on base at Wingers. They loved it! Whitney had us all cracking up.

I attended a 3-day class to learn all about Mannheim and what the Army bases had to offer. It was really informative. I only wished I had taken the class earlier! One day we took the train downtown. Here are a few of the other girls on the tour with me.



Inside the Mannheim castle there is a beautiful chapel with this sculpture of Alfred Delp. I thought it was interesting because this is the name of the street we live on.

While we were on the tour the Army paid for 3 days of daycare for Aiden and Whitney. One of the other girls on the tour had her son in the same class as Aiden. We all got together after class one day to play.


We have gone out exploring a couple of times in our new town. Just a couple blocks down from our house you are in a big field and forest. It's great to just run around in the field but I'm still too creeped out by the forest to go in too far. It's really dark and there are HUGE snails everywhere! You can't really tell by this picture but they are really big. The town is beautiful though.



May 18 was Whitney's birthday. I can't believe she is 2!!! We BBQ'd some burgers (her fave) and hotdogs, had some cake, presents, and soccer (her other fave). It was fun.

My sweet little 2-year old!

May 21 was a holiday for the Germans, every year our ward spends the day at Luisenpark on this day. Jeremy and Connor couldn't go since this is not an American holiday so Aiden, Whitney and I went. We had a blast! Whitney loved walking up to complete strangers and playing with them even though they didn't speak any English. She just made herself part of the group. Aiden loved playing sports with the Missionaries. They played football (American), baseball, soccer, and frisbee. Aiden was in heaven!







Over the Memorial holiday weekend we went to Strassbourg, France. It is only a couple hours away so we did it all in one day. I had to take this picture where you can see Germany on one side of the river and France on the other.


I put the rest of our pictures in a slide show. I haven't figured out yet how to do captions on the pictures... anyone know? In the pictures you'll see we explored the city on foot in addition to a tour on the Ill River by boat. The most impressive part of the city was the Notre-Dame Cathedral built in 1277. It was amazing! The stained glass windows were breath taking and dated back to the 13th century. Unfortunately the beauty was very difficult to capture in a picture... especially on a cheap camera. We ate little bits here and there at the local shops and markets then we had a picnic at a beautiful park before going home. It was a great day!