Jet-Lag

Having traveled from Arizona to Germany in under 48 hours, we were all pretty tired when we finally got there.  And that's an understatement.  The kids were beyond tired.  They fluctuated somewhere between slap-happy and dead over the 5ish hours that we kept them awake when we got to Trudi's.  Nate and his sponsor took off to run a couple of errands (get a rental car, go to the commissary, get a cell phone).  I stayed back and started unpacking and tried to hold everyone together.  By the time Nate got home a few hours later, Sawyer was literally standing in the middle of the room just crying that he was tired.  Over and over again.  He didn't move.  He just stood there.  And cried.  And cried.  Our goal was to keep everyone up until 5 pm.  We made a quick dinner, and it was the easiest, earliest bedtime they have ever had :).  That night, Sawyer and Violet slept for 16 hours!  The next night, they did ok but woke up for about an hour in the middle of the night and acted like complete lunatics.  And by the third night, I think we were pretty good.  

Violet was falling asleep in the swing at Trudi's on the first day.

While I was waiting for Nathan to get back, Wendi brought us some treats from the bakery. Sawyer fell asleep in the chair while eating his pastry.

This was the room where they slept at Trudi's.  It was actually quite a large apartment.  We even had extra beds.

Most of our time at Trudi's was spent house-hunting.  Every single day.  Luckily, we had good internet while we were there and could do our research online.  But it was not fun, especially for the kids.  Lots of driving and lots of being told to calm down and be quiet while looking at houses.  Every now and then we tried to do something fun to break up the monotony.  The first week we went and explored Kaiserslautern (the nearest big city).  I went shopping at H&M while Nate walked around with the kids.  They came back with a cute little pot of flowers for me...  

Our first weekend there, Wendi told us about a Stake Activity in Bern-Kastel (a village by the river Mosel).  It was their annual Wine Festival.  Basically like a fair by the river.  Lots of food vendors and some kiddie rides.  The night ended with a fireworks show at the castle on the hill...it was a reenactment of a battle that happened there long ago.  We had a ton of fun, got to meet some people in the Stake, and I was just excited to be a part of some of the German traditions that I knew and loved.  The weather was perfect.  It was just such a refreshing, cultural thing to do and helped us to feel less overwhelmed and more excited about being here.

These two literally just played with a bunch of random kids by the water the entire time.  They had a blast!

A panoramic of the river.  We all put blankets down and just talked and ate food.  Super fun.