What we've been up to here in Munich so far . . .

Well, it has been a whole month since we made our move here to Germany and we thought that it might be a good idea to dust off the old blog spot and get some pictures out there for all of you so that can keep up with how we are doing.

You might have noticed we changed the name of our blog from Updates from Chicagoland to Updates from Deutchland.  In Chicago it is common to hear people call it Chicagoland on the news or on billboards and at first I thought it was a joke, but it really is what people call it and by the end of our 4 years there I was very used to it.  Now that we are here in Munich, the German word for Germany is . . . Deutchland! (Pronounced "doy-ch-lant") I thought it was the perfect transition for us, but then I also noticed that the layout of the Chicago temple (which is unusual in its own way), is strangely similar to the one we go to in Frankfurt.  I can't help but think this is a little ironic, don't you? No?  Ok, on to the pictures . . .

We live in Munich very close to many Beer Gardens, so we spend a lot of time walking to the park to play and explore.  These are some of the things we have seen:

 

 You don't see any German kids in this photo because they are all in school.

 

 That big guy you see was huge and we called him Big T

I just want to clarify that I mentioned the beer gardens, but now I haven't actually posted any of those pictures.  Perhaps the next post I will include those :)

On a normal day we stay at home until around 1pm doing homework.  Then, we usually have to head to the store.  They only sell milk in 1 Liter containers and that is 1/2 of what we usually go through in a day.  I wish we could buy more at a time, but our refrigerator is the size of a college dorm room fridge.  So, we head to the store every two days for food.  We walk with our canvas bags and the girls say, "Hallo" to all the people and dogs we meet.  Dogs go everywhere with their owners even in the mall and in stores/restaurants.  Lexie is always talked about whenever we see a german dog (which is multiple times a day).

Here are some pictures of the store we go to a lot.  The girls help me bag and everyone fights over who will get to lock up the grocery cart and take out the 2 Euro coin that we put in to rent the cart and remove it from the chains.

 

 

The girls loved seeing this chocolate soccer ball but I still refuse to buy one.  I can always be persuaded to buy gummies, however, because no one in the whole world does gummy candy like Germany.  These are our favorite.  Look familiar?

We had Haley's birthday here and went swimming at the local pool (which had heated salt water for the outside.  It was so heavenly!!), had dinner at Hard Rock Café (normally not a place I love to eat, but the girls were really wanting something American), and bought an apple strudel (something else Germany is famous for).

Finally, we went to the Frankfurt Temple to do Tyler's temple work, but things didn't go our way and we got very lost so we were only able to get the paperwork in and started.  We plan to go this coming Thursday and we will post some photos when we do.  After we left the temple, we decided to head to Luxembourg, a neighboring country.  It was soooo beautiful and we all fell in love with it.  Unfortunately I don't have more than one picture, but on our drive back to Munich, I saw the ghostbuster's car!  I didn't see Slimer, but he only is seen when he wants to be.

 

 Well, I think that is pretty much all I have for this post, but we plan to do a lot more so I hope you all feel like you are keeping good tabs on us.  Love you and miss you!