Austria

There's not really much to talk about in terms of what goes on in between our little trips. John is working hard and I am not. I have a cycle of extreme productivity (cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, running, working out, cooking real food for John, reading etc.) followed by very lazy days filled with internet surfing and blog reading. It's a teacher's life during the summer-what can I say..

So that is why it is really fun to have a fun trip every other weekend! The weekend before last, we drove down to Austria to visit the Stierands. We left at 9:30, so we didn't get in until after midnight. It's about a three hour drive and I could barely stay awake towards the end of the drive, so it was a good thing John was behind the wheel.

We woke up to a lovely breakfast on Saturday morning and then hung out by the pool, swam, and played with the boys. Luca is 5 now and Hannes just turned 3 a few days before we visited. I loved talking to Hannes because I could actually understand his German! We talked colors and had some fun. I also love that the boys understand Spanish since Veronica speaks to them mostly in Spanish, so even though we don't speak much German and they don't speak English--we could still communicate.

This guy knows how to relax...

Saturday afternoon we went on a three hour hike up the foothills of the Alps. Thank goodness for the little restaurant at the top where we could sit down and enjoy some cold drinks. The last part of the hike was pretty steep. Poor Veronica was pushing Hannes in the stroller and she has the guns to prove it! He was so cute at the top when we got our drinks because he clinked his glass with mine and said "Prost!"

That night, Veronica made pizzas for dinner-as in about 11 of them. She just kept bringing out pizza after pizza with different toppings and we are our weight in pizza. Yum! She is a very good cook. After the boys went to bed we watched Source Code, which was pretty good. John loves to impress his German friends by downloading popular movies and connecting the iPad to the TV so we can all watch.

John was showing the boys Photo Booth and they were laughing so much when he distorted the photos of their faces.

On Sunday we enjoyed another good breakfast and lunch and did some more chilling by the pool. We left to drive home around 3 or 3:30 and got slowed up by some pretty heavy rain. It took about 4 hours to get home so we got takeout from our favorite Indian restaurant, Sur Mandir, for dinner since we were pretty hungry upon arriving back in Erlangen.

It was great to catch up with Jeurgen and Veronica and I can see why John went down there so many times while I was in the US. Good company, good food, beautiful home...what more could you ask for?