good food, company & roman baths.

After our great weekend in Munich, we came home for some relaxing and more eating!  Monday we did just that - relaxed around the house, slept great, went for a walk and went to Kaiserslautern, the nearest city to us, and had a great German dinner. 

One cultural thing here is no tap water at restaurants.  Beer and wine are cheaper than bottled water and Coke but I still usually order some water to accompany my meal.  It's fun because most of the time you get your water served in a fun little wine glass... Norah does well with these glasses and drinks a LOT of water if we let her :)

On Tuesday Chuck & Karen took a night away to Baden-Baden, a spa village about 2 hours from here.  While they were off enjoying the good life, the girls enjoyed some creative time playing with their tea set and dolls!  Norah lined up all her babies and set the tea up and was telling them to be quiet and other jabberings we couldn't understand:)  It was awesome!

David went into work a bit while his parents were gone and we got another Christmas package :)  The girls got these adorable hats and Norah sure thought they were great.

Thursday came and it was our turn to leave for a night in Baden-Baden :)  We were excited to get away without kids but also a little sad to leave them. It was our first night (mine) leaving Evelyn and only the second time leaving Norah. But, the girls did awesome and were heavily doted on by the grandparents!

Where we had soup, pretzel & beer on Thursday night.

The highlight of our time in Baded-Baden was the Roman-Irish bath.  When we arrived on Thursday we checked into our modern fancy hotel and then headed straight to the bath!  We enjoyed three hours of this historic bathing experience.  The bath house was built about 130 years ago and the 17 stages of warm and hot dry air baths, brush massage, steam baths and thermal pools were awesome!

Here are the stages: shower, warm air, hot air, shower, massage, shower, steam (with peppermint!), hot steam, full bath, whirlpool bath, exercise bath, shower, cold bath (yuck), towel down, cream application (lotion), relaxation (sleeping room), and reading.

This is the Roman-Irish bath house.

The brochure says you can "slip into another world and savour the unique culture" and we so did!  Since the baths are in the nude (yikes!) we were a bit nervous but decided to just embrace the culture of it all and kept reminding ourselves that no one knows us and we'll never see them again!  We opted to visit on the day where men and women were separate and could meet during stages 10 & 11 but we somehow totally missed each other with the timing so... we enjoyed the experience alone in separate sections of the building.

*Baden-Baden is the setting for Anna Karenina but has a different name

The next day we decided to try the other bath house since we enjoyed the first one so much. The second one was more modern and even had tanning beds to use.  It was half in suits and half out of them - lots of kids and more of a pool type experience with larger thermal baths and jets.  A great relaxing 24 hours away from home and away from feeding, lifting and disciplining our kids!  Thanks Chuck & Karen!

Enjoying a great lunch before heading home.

The road that leads to our village - the sun came out for us!

Back in Nanzdietschweiler we filled the grandparents in on our experiences and they filled us in on the girls and we headed out to dinner!  We got a few cute pictures of the girls in their matching outfits (thanks Sootie!).... oh, and the first time I've seen Evelyn ham it up for the camera... hilarious!

Bedtime dance... so fun!

This morning Grandma & Grandpa had to back home :(  We are so thankful they came to visit us and that we had the chance to show them our new life here.

Now, we have to jump back into the realities of life. I think it just hit us last night, oh yeah, we have to continue to transition into our new lives here... keep moving forward to meet more people and make friends... it's exhausting but at some point it'll be worth it, when we feel less lonely here and more in community!