Friedberg

Our Christmas tree series continues. Only our photog today cut off the top of the tree. Oopsie. 

Such a cute hotel. And the sun! We needed sunglasses today for the first time!

We drove back into Belgium as we made our way to Germany and I can never pass up a good sign. 

I convinced Matt we needed to stop at a Christmas market. We found this cute tiny car that he needed a picture with. He’s always got the weird poses. Doesn’t he know, it’s hand on hip, all the time. 🤷‍♀️

So cute!

We walked around the closest cluster of stalls and scouted out food. 

D and Matt chose bratwursts. 

Adi and Frankie favored waffles. 

And since it’s Hanukkah, I got latkes with applesauce. 

We walked around and window shopped. 

We didn’t have a lot of time, but it was great to see. And we let Adi get a loaf of bread. That girl loves bread!

Delaney made me promise we’d get a Christmas pyramid. 

I won’t know, cute building we waited by as Matt and adi went potty. It’s just all so beautiful. 

We drove straight to the temple from the market. Only the main road to Frankfurt was randomly shut down so we took a v windy back way that made me sick and took forever. So we got to the temple much later than we wanted to. Then we found out that we could have had a way easier night and paid way less money of we’d stayed in the patron housing that it turns out is totally available to peeps like us. I didn’t know. 

We grabbed pictures and let Delaney see the temple, then drove 10km to our first air b&b of the trip. 

It is an interesting place. It’s a tiny apartment off Eva Marie’s home. She’s lovely, but the apartment is odd. We’ve got 2 full bunk beds and 2 twin beds. It’s not how I thought it would be. It is clean and quiet and safe, that’s what matters, right?

The temple was lovely. We were the only 4 patrons in the baptistery and a very kind German couple served us. It is so special to be there with my family. I can’t wait for D to be able to come with us. One more year!  After the baptisms Matt and I walked around the temple again and checked out the sealing and celestial rooms. When we got back to the girls they’d been given these precious origami boxes filled with the cutest German Christmas chocolates. So sweet!

We’d left Delaney at the air b&b for over 2 hours by this point, so we did the unthinkable and got McDonald’s in Europe. The McRib was good though. 

They’ve got these funny little stool kind of things that you can lean against while waiting for your food. They were pretty comfy. 

I’m calling this one “you win some and you lose some.” Here’s Frankie modeling the kids bunk bed with the booby wallpaper. We are in Europe I guess. The comforters and pillows are old and worn out. They’re soft, I guess. 

The hallway between bedrooms. It’s very eclectic. 

And the bed for matt and I. Our comforter has cartoon characters on it. We would have traded with girls, but they all wanted to sleep together and their bunk is bigger. 

We’ve made so many mistakes on this trip and I was feeling down about the patron housing and our weird b&b. But for all the mistakes (big and small - looking at you, winter tires), there are also so many things that have been just perfect. And that’s how trips go. We’re fine and still have a blast, some hours more than others.