Salzburg and Munich

It's our second day in Austria and time for a trip to Salzburg. We tried to find a few Sound of Music sights without taking a tour. Here's the fountain Maria splashed in while singing "I Have Confidence" and the bells that rang at the wedding. 

Yeah, I know. Those aren't the things you would have looked for, but my little sightseers aren't the easiest to tote sometimes! We still loved Salzburg and also visited the Salzburg Castle (at the top of this picture). Still haven't found a princess at a castle...but we're still looking! "Hey Hannah, let's go see another castle today and see if we can find a princess!" That's how you get an almost 4 year old girl to cooperate! (Don't judge, we do what we've gotta do!)

And the view from the castle wasn't too shabby! (Another "wow") 

When you're the family photographer and you hand your camera off to your husband while taking a selfie and this is what you get...LOL! 

Day 4 we cheated and left Austria for a little time in Munich. We arrived and headed for the city center to see the glockenspiel. It rings every hour and has a scene "acted out" by characters in the clock. 

It was fun to watch but goes on way too long to hold the attention of my little watchers. But this sweet moment did happen while we were watching it! Sometimes these spontaneous little hugs just kill me! If these two get nothing else from our whole 5 months away I think they will become best friends - they're each other's only playmates!

And then it was time for a quick glimpse inside a church...and for Mark and Hannah to pray again (we needed a lot of prayers on this trip! Lol!). I would love to someday sit in the pews of an old church like this and listen to hymns being sung. This church had significant damage from the war but was refurbished and is beautiful. 

After lunch it was off to the Deutches Museum (technology museum). Yes, it sounds boring but we were primarily going for the Kinder Reich (kids kingdom)! The basement floor is a hands on kids museum that I'd read about and both kids had fun! There was a fire truck to climb on and play in and Daniel was convinced he was the only kid who should be driving the fire truck and kept trying to push the much bigger kids out of the way. Many tears were shed every time we pulled him away from it!

The oversize musical instruments were fun...and kind of what I wanted to see! 

Munich was beautiful but our day was short. We were both almost out of data on our international phone plans from the US and were trying to get SIM cards from a German phone store so we'd be all set when we arrived for our long term Germany stay in a few days. Unfortunately we were traveling without passports that day (oops!) and passports are required for buying a card. So a lot of extra walking for nothing. 

There were many other sights I would have enjoyed seeing in both of these cities but we took in what we could - walking and pushing a double stroller the whole time in both places. I wish our stroller had an odometer on it because we've put many many kilometers on those wheels. And the cobblestone and brick sidewalks are not easy on stroller wheels!

And now it's time for our Deutschland Adventure to officially start! 

Until next time! Auf wiedersehen!

It's Day One of the Rest of Our Year

There's a song I like by Matthew West called "Day One", and while it's totally unrelated to this blog post (well it could sort of be related, we ARE a starting over in a way) I decided to steal his title. This is about day one of the ret of our year.

It's day one of the rest of my life
It's day one of the best of my life
I'm marching on to the beat of a brand new drum
Yeah, here I come 
The future has begun
Day one ------------   Matthew West

August 3rd The Husband and I boarded a plane bound for Germany with The Daughter (3 1/2) and The Son 1 1/2). We have a couple of weeks of vacation travel planned and then 5 months in the southwest region of Germany. I have to admit I was slightly terrified of the 9 hour and 25 minut flight, not to mention the following days of time and culture adjustment. In fact, I've even had friends at church watch me try to keep The Son contained and still during church and laugh at the thought of him contained in a plane! His last flight was 8 months ago and he screamed inconsolably the entire short flight. Thankfully the ear tubes he got 2 months ago seem to have helped. 

Our first flight is less than an hour, I was assigned to The Son because he's a Mommy's boy. My tips from this flight:

1 - snacks are always better from alternative containers 

2 - Forget toys, empty water bottles are the best!

3 - You're never too young for educational reading. 

Layovers can be a bit stressful with young children. They NEED to expend energy between flights but you don't want to use up the patience of your fellow travelers before you ever board the plane. Since our terminal didn't have a play area we made our own. Here kids, take care of some luggage!

 

And while we were waiting at the gate the agent told us she had moved the other person assigned in our block of 5 seats (2 seats and 3 across the aisle) to another seat so we could have all 5 for kids to sleep! That. Was. Awesome. It made such a difference! 

The second flight was almost too easy. I won't say it was easy because it took me to put both kids asleep and I can only be in place at a time. But The Son was asleep before takeoff and slept the first 3 hours!!!! (I should say that 2 nights before the trip we started melatonin and moved bedtime up an hour and the next night we moved it 2 hours to 6pm and we departed at 3:30pm. I also gave both kids melatonin after we boarded. 

He slept off and on and mostly just wanted held the rest of the time. The Daughter was slightly more high maintenance but still not on bad. She made a friend with the gentleman behind her and frequently talked to him, played on the iPad, listened to way too loud music and enjoyed the airplane dinner. Much to my surprise she didn't even mind using the airplane bathroom! But settling down for her was more challenging. The Husband kept trying but wasn't having luck so we swapped kids. I sang her our bedtime songs and said a prayer before she asked for her "Tranquil Child" drops. 2 minutes later she was sound asleep too and got about 2-3 hours of sleep. 

The only one who didn't really get any sleep was The Husband (sorry Honey!) 

We collected all of our luggage and passed off 3 of our suitcases to a friend to keep during our vacation and then got our car. I need to take a picture of it because it's very small and you should have seen the face of the lease agent when he saw what all we had to fit in it! It's completely packed. We will need to scale down our stuff in order to just have room for souvenirs! Then off to Nuremberg for our first night. The Daughter, who has never ever gotten car sick began screaming that her stomach hurt. Now she can be quite the drama queen when she wants but apparently this is real...she kept throwing up in the car. Perhaps it's because it's a small car and she's used to a mini van, plus she was tired and probably slightly dehydrated from the flight. But driving to dinner that night it happened again - acute screaming followed by...the deed. Ick. I had taken 2 changes of clothes for the kids on the flight and they didn't need them and she had gone through 3 in one day now! By the time we explored the city a bit and had dinner we had tired kids. Or perhaps exhausted?

 Today I gave her Zofran before we got in the car and she did great, no clue if it's the medicine or getting adjusted. But there was no vomit, and we even got prepared and got bags for her now too! We had a few hours drive though and I needed to try to get her to not scream in the car today. We drove to Prague, Czech Republic today and are a sightseeing a few days here. The Hilton Prague is an absolutely beautiful hotel, one of the nicest in the Czech Republic we're told. 

Our biggest issue we've had (so far) has actually been that The Daughter has no low volume to her voice. Seriously, she is LOUD!!!! We have tried since she was a baby to quiet her and she's just loud! And she's almost always making noise. She's made up numerous songs and rides along on the stroller singing nonsense songs, but she's happy! Unfortunately, we are a bit of a conspicuous family...what, you hadn't noticed????? ;) Being the white Americans with 2 brown children, one of whom smiles cutely and waves to everyone and one of whom is very very loud makes us just slightly conspicuous. Oh well. I just keep smiling! 

And on that note, we are ALL still smiling! 

Dear Lord, thank You for our safe and uneventful travels so far. This is an amazing opportunity you've blessed  us with. Please help us to glorify your name during our time here and to show Christ through our actions and lives. And Lord, please remind me in the hard times to keep smiling! Amen. 

Our New Adventure!

3 years! I've been sharing small pieces of our life through this blog for 3 years! My simple words and prayers  from our life experience have been read over 13,000 times. My top 3 countries for viewers are US, Russia (that's interesting), and Germany. What has hanged in 3 years? Well, we've added a child, I've changed jobs and spent time as a stay at home mom. We've learned that there aren't always right answers in parenting or in adoption.  We've learned so much and life around our house is so
different than it was 3 years ago. But it's time to change things up! We're preparing to pack up the comfy and familiar house and spend some time way out of my comfort zone. What could we do that's really uncomfortable for me??? We could move to another country! That's right, our little family is preparing to move (albeit temporarily) to Deutschland! (That's Germany for most of you). Dear Husband (DH) is taking a sabbatical to do research at a lab in Southwestern Germany. Do you think I'm letting him go off and leave me at home with the kids for 5 months alone? Heck no! We've leased our house out, putting all of our belongings in storage and taking a hop across that great big puddle of water with our tots in tow. 

In order to best be able to rent out our house in a college town we needed to make it available mid-summer and rent it for a whole year. This means we're going to be "homeless" for a month prior to our trip (thankful for family who's taking us in!) and then we'll most likely be renting when we come back. So...we're preparing to put all of our earthly possessions into storage and take 4-6 measly suitcases with us overseas. We're going to have our kids in limbo for almost 2 months before we get settled into an apartment in Germany. Their worlds (as well as ours) are going to be rocked as we throw ourselves into another culture and language. Truth be told, they'll probably adapt a whole lot easier than I will. TD (The Daughter) already thinks she speaks German...I'm sure in her 3 year old mind it sounds exactly like our German lessons! I worry about TD and TS (The Son) growing educationally and socially. I worry about cold weather (***this girl is not a cold weather chick***) I worry about TS's needs and whether I can keep him on track developmentally. I worry about them both getting sick and having to deal with healthcare in another country (although Germany is one of the best options outside of the US!) I worry about the flight and keeping 2 kids happy. I worry about adjusting our internal time clocks. I worry about living on the second floor of a house with an older couple below us hearing all the crazy noise from our kids (they converted the second floor into an apartment). I worry about driving in another country with signs I don't understand. I worry about trying to tell someone I need to buy bread and sausage and instead telling them they look like a breaded pig. I worry...yeah, I just worry. But then I remember all the amazing sights I'm going to see and the people and things we'll be exposing our kids to and I get excited again. I remember that we're going to be able to worship God in English when we choose to but we can join our Christian family in German worship or French anytime we choose. How amazing is that!?! I feel like we're kind of crazy for doing this but as we keep telling ourselves - this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!

What's the craziest thing your family has ever done? If you've ever put your entire household into storage I'd love to hear your suggestions!

So there's a quick preview of what the rest of the year holds for us. I'm looking to change up the blog a little, maybe even get my own domain!  Look for lots of travel posts about traveling with kids - we'll be doing several car, train and air trips- along with the.moving process and preparations, the sights we'll see and the struggles we'll face. Traveling toddlers should make for interesting blogging material, and I look forward to seeing how we are accepted as a transracial family in Europe. But I hope to be able to blog about the many new lessons I'm learning throughout the adventure as well as I put myself out of my comfort zone...way, way out of my comfort zone! (Did I mention I'm a worrier????)

Please leave a comment a let me know where you're reading my blog from and let me know what you would like to see me blog about during this time!

Lord God, I know You hold our future. You know where our journey will take us and the people we'll come into contact with. I just ask that You place us into the lives of people who need You and place people into our lives to help us. Help me Lord to cast my anxiety over to You, to breathe in Your love and peace. Amen.