Wilkommen in Deutschland!

We made it safely to Germany!  We flew from Chicago to Newark (about 1.5 hrs) and then had a layover there before our evening flight to Stuttgart (~7 hours).  We flew United, and it was a comfortable trip.  We both liked the individual TVs on the back of the seat in front of us.  I slept for about an hour and Drew slept for maybe 3 hours, so we were pretty tired during our first day in Stuttgart--but happy to see Jim!  He picked us up from the airport, and after getting settled in at the hotel, he drove us around town a bit to see the two Army posts that we will use the most, as well as our new neighborhood.  We will move in to our house in about 2 weeks; I will write more about it then!

 We have adjusted well to the time difference.  We stayed up the whole first day and went to bed at the normal bedtime around 8pm and that helped us a lot.  It is overcast and cool here (in the 60s) and as Drew said, "It sure is rainy and yucky here, Daddy!"  We have already learned that it is a good time to take a walk when it is only drizzling a little bit.  We visited a bird park near our hotel last night.  It appears people rent plots of land/cages and raise their birds there-chickens, canaries, etc.  Within this park were also beautiful garden plots.  The flowers are gorgeous here and everything is so green, likely because of all the rain!

We've seen 2 playgrounds so far and both of them had a water pump for kids to play with.  They both seemed like more challenging playgrounds than the ones in the US.

I balked at this sight of this steep slide...Drew probably would have wanted to go right down it if it hadn't been wet.

Our hotel is very nice.  There is a big breakfast every morning and we have access to an executive lounge in which we can get cold drinks and snacks all day, as well as an appetizer-style dinner.  Drew and Jim went to the pool today and really enjoyed it.

That's about it for now!  Tschuss!  Bye!