** Warning – This is a longer post, sorry!**         Living in a foreign country takes a little getting used to.  I mean, living in a new city anywhere takes some adjusting as you learn the ins and outs of your new town.  The same is...

Jon and I took our first trip without the girls!  We have never left Madelyn overnight for a trip, and obviously never Olivia either, so this was a new thing for all of us!  We are lucky to have an amazing family we are friends with that offered to...

Pumpkins are cool.  And pumpkin festivals that use the pumpkins to make art are just a little bit more awesome.  What can make a pumpkin festival even MORE awesome?  Having it at a palace!!!     The girls and I went to the Kurbisfest in Ludwigsburg last Saturday.  It was...

The countryside around our house has an intricate network of walking and biking paths.  The paths range from narrow grass trails to wide paved walkways.  They weave their way between the fields and offer some amazing views of the rolling hills and valleys.   We try to walk most evenings that...

For Labor Day weekend, we went to Nurnberg.  Since it was a long weekend, we actually stayed two nights in a hostel/hotel.   It was ‘technically’ a hostel that had some rooms that they would rent out privately.  It wasn’t anything fancy, but, hey, neither are we!  I mean,...

Kids have the innate ability to surprise you every single day.  We’ve been in Germany for about 4 months and have worked very hard to acclimate to the culture and area we live in, including starting to learn the language.  Today’s surprise came in the form of one simple...

We decided last year to start a tradition of taking trips for birthdays instead of hosting a party.  The money we would spend on presents, plates, napkins, decorations, food, favors, etc, we put towards a fantastic day (or days) instead.   Last year, we went to the Denver Aquarium...

Yesterday, we adventured for the first time into the Black Forest or “Swarzwald” as it is known in Germany.  Stuttgart is in the center of the state of ‘Baden-Wurttenburg, with the Black Forest being the southwest quadrant.   Our little village, Schafhausen, is west of Stuttgart and about 15...

Last weekend we went to the little town of Speyer, Germany at the suggestion of a friend.  She said that the town was having a Pretzel Festival (totally cool!) and had the largest example of a Romanesque Cathedral in Germany (double cool!)  We set off mid morning and got...

In December of 2009, Jon and I sat anxiously in the doctor’s office waiting for confirmation of what we were pretty sure we knew… our family of 2 was finally going to be a family of 3!!  The doctor looked over the results, smiled at us, and our lives...