A Day in Heidelberg

Friendship. It knows no boundaries. My friends are all over the world, literally. But how blessed am I that one of my closest friends from Colorado moved to Germany just a few months before I did? While she lives 2 1/2 hours south of me, we have made great efforts to see each other ever other month or so. Though I admit, even if we met weekly, it wouldn't be enough. Here are some pictures from a day we met halfway for lunch. The time we had was short, but it was very much worth the drive! And we got to try something unique to that area: Flammkucken. Check out the picture below.

I found the beach!

I'm not much of a beach person. I don't really like sand. But it is hot. I don't want to stay in my house and just survive, I want to get outside and do stuff that one expects to do on hot days. And I have a kid who is allergic to chlorine so that rules out pools. I live in the center of Germany, a good 5 hours to the nearest real beach. 5 hours doesn't sound all that far, if you ask me. But today I needed a place here, in my town, where I could kick back, stick my feet in the sand, and let the boys go swimming. So I did what every nomadic military wife does when she needs to figure something out. I googled it! It took a few tries to find what I was looking for but when I did, I was sold. We loaded up the car with bathing suits, water bottles and baby and headed out. I felt all the stress of the past few weeks melt away. I didn't realize I was stressed. But there's something about a beach that drains away stress you didn't know you had. We played and rested for 3 hours and then drove the 15 minutes back to our house. We will go back. Maybe tomorrow.