Happy Father's Day!

We celebrated the day with starting out on an early morning train ride. The girls were impatient while waiting for the train. (Although we were 20 minutes early for it, as I did not know how long it was going to take all of us to walk to the train station). Seeing the train coming towards us, they instantly filled with excitement and glee. While holding their hands, Eric boarded the train with the girls and found our seats. Initially, they sat in the seat and then about 10 minutes into it, they were on their knees, peering out the window. With a stop to switch trains, the hour train ride took us to a small English speaking Christian church.

Upon entering, we were greeted and informed the children would stay with us for the praise portion and then they would be dismissed for the sermon to attend Sunday school. Emmie had no issues being left in her classroom with the seven other children as she was glad there was going to be snacks! Adeline's class size was small too, but she was not the only new one. After church, the girls were very happy to share with us their projects they had made. We then joined the members in the foyer for light snacks and learned  there are two other couples also from Hofheim. We did not stay long though as the train would be coming shortly and the next train would not be again for 30 minutes.

Since we had to switch trains in Frankfurt, we decided to have lunch downtown. I first showed Eric the Zeil, a glass cone like structure they built throughout the 8 story shopping tower.  Click here to see pictures of the curving twisty glass structure Not sure exactly where the non-touristy restaurants were at, we headed for the old city center as we were hungry and we knew there would be an abundant there.  We found a nice table inside as it was cool to be sitting outside, even though many people were but all bundled up. All of us enjoyed spargel (white asparagus) soup and the girls shared my spargel with hollandaise sauce and schnitzel meal, while Eric dined on a smoked wurst (sausage) and sauerkraut dinner.

Our journey continued around the city center as the girls wanted to see all of the various acts: people playing various music instruments, dressed up as statues, and doing anything or nothing to get money. On our journey home, Emmie fell asleep in the stroller. Even though it was brisk out, Eric still wanted to get gelato, so him and I each got a scoop for the walk home. I did not want him to feel lonely eating ice cream by himself.

In the late afternoon, Alex came and hooked up our landline phone, so now I am connected to the world with technology and my phones! We finished the evening eating Eric's favorite sweet raisin bread I had found Saturday by chance as I took a different route to the market.  I passed a small corner bakery and caught it in the corner of my eye as I was looking at the decorated desserts that looked like the German flag with black, red, and yellow toppings. The bakery only makes 2 loaves of it and it is by random when they do. I know I will be taking that route at the end of the week to check their shelves.

Aside from doing laundry this week, we have an invitation to a German soccerball party on Wednesday night, a mall shopping outing in the afternoon and a Stammtisch ( adult gathering in the evening) on Thursday, and a Friday morning appointment at the Audi dealership to start the paperwork process for our A3 Sportback that will not arrive till end of July. After what Eric has gone through to get me a handy (cell phone), we figured we should start the paperwork now on a vehicle- at the German rate to get approved, it will take 4 weeks to complete it, but let us hope that is not the case in this instance.