Deutschland!

I told you I'd do a different post for our Germany trip, I just didn't tell you it was gonna take me 4 months, I'm just full of surprises like that.

In 2001, December 26th to be precise, we moved our second grader Alex, his 11 months old sister and his 6 week old baby sister to Munich for 3 years. We made lifelong friendships over there (I know right, Germans!!!) and it was one of the best decisions we ever made. Sure it was hard not having the American life, normal nice Americans around us instead of warm fuzzy German people. but it was so worth it.  This last summer, I finally went back. Reed had had more than one chance to go back for work, but not me. 

 Chiemsee is a lake in Bavaria where King Ludwig the 2nd had build a castle to be the replica of Versailles.  He was crazy, lost all his money and "drowned" with his doctor one day, while he was an excellent swimmer...ach, vee ton't know how ziz happened. So the castle is not finished, but what is is amazing.

In the castle's bathroom, they have very clear indication of what NOT to do.  I was just about to step on the seat and saw that, and thought "ach, nein, Ich will zitz my tushy down then" silly me, good thing they explain things like that.

Yes, we all wore red Belgian soccer shirts, Belgium was playing that night ...and lost

Oh the selfies we take

We stayed at our friends' the Schoenhubers's farm.  He works with Reed at TRW and also has a farm.  They have a cute little baby girl, can you say date night for Liam

Play time, eating paint chips

Can you say "Bavaria", how pretty and so typical of the area...I realize I just said "can you say" twice, I like to be the teacher at all times.

I had the exact same scooter but in green, and not with the same flag, same colors but arranged differently and vertically. My neighbor used to come and steal my scooter all the time. His mom would bring it back and even bought him one in red, but he still wanted mine (he was little and just lost his dad so that can explain a lot, but at the time, I was puzzled, gosh, red was just as cool as green in my eyes!)

The old tractor still runs! I don't think Elly was ever that excited about anything!

We went to church on Sunday then did a little trip down town Muenchen.  The boys just gave money to the guitar guy

The Glockenspiel

 We went back to our old house.  The playground hasn't changed, neither has the bus stop and the recycle area where Alex dumped the million different types of junk to recycle...and I paid him to do it :) that's how he financed his mission, not really

Munich again (blogger is messing up my order)

Maddy in front of her old Kindergarten, she remembered faguely.

This makes me think of the Vontrapp family, walking in order of heights (yes, I know they were Austrian).  This is our old house.

Our old neighbors had us over for dinner.

I have a picture of our neighbor Chistian holding both our little girls.  They had no kids at the time. They now have 3 boys and we have 3 more also ;)

10 years later, only the bushes are bigger

Shopping in Poing like old times.  Elly was about the size of Liam when I shopped at that same store.

She fell off the cart at that store (a regular size cart), I got yelled at by German shoppers, instead of helping me, awesome!

Time flies, it's crazy. It was just so awesome to be able to go back. I have missed Germany and even understood a lot of the language. I won't wait another 10 years to go back.