We Made It

The first week in Munich was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. Jet lag has been the toughest than I can ever remember for myself and much tougher on Lily than last time. It took both Nate and I a solid week to get over our insomnia and Lily about 5 days to sleep through the night again. I would say the 3 best moments of our first week in Munich was 1) Seeing Lily pick up salmon sashimi with chopsticks and eat it and ask for more (she still doesn't even drink from a cup well so this was a miracle) 2) Seeing our friends Aaron and Ozlem on their daughter Zeynep's 2nd birthday 3) Getting my first digits from a nice mom with her daughter at the park.

Our cool new apartment feels like an island right now, more isolated from the rest of the world than a home I feel comfy in. We have a table with 3 chairs, sofa bed and Lily's temporary bed and that's pretty much it right now. We still don't have Internet or a phone so getting stuff done has been slow going. Here are a couple pics of what our place looks like right now.




The travel part was ok. The cats ended up being really easy to travel with; it's the pre-work that is a bit of a pain. They were treated a little bit like rock stars with all the nice attention they got. Our most stressful time in all of our travel was catching our ORD flight to MUC. Darn Chicago traffic got us to the airport over an hour later than we planned. We had to make a run for it across terminals (no checking out the cool multi colored lights on the moving walkway this time - NO TIME!). We were the 2nd to last people to board the plane just a few minutes before the door closed. Phew! Now that was stress. Introducing Lily to new snacks and letting her watch Elmo over and over again kept her from any serious crying but also kept her from sleeping -I just couldn't believe she was still awake at 1130pm when I was so incredibly exhausted.

Oma and Opa have been our guardian angels since arriving to Munich. I can't thank them enough. From picking us up at the airport to stocking our kitchen to just giving us those big hugs, all felt so good. We came to Oma and Opa's house for the long Easter weekend which has been nothing short of perfect. My mom went all out decorating for Easter. I wouldn't even say I'm exaggerating when I describe the house as Willy Wonka's chocolate and candy scene except all Easter decor. Wow. It looks really cool. Lily loves it here and has had no problem remembering where everything she likes is. We all got over our jet lag here and feel back to normal. We were able to connect to the Internet again and connect to friends and family. The biggest highlight was Lily's first Easter Egg Hunt. Oma went all out. Here are just a few pics from the fun weekend.

We'll be making our way back to Munich today (about a 3 hour drive) and even though I'm not that anxious to get back, I'm much more confident this coming week will go much better.