Endings and Beginnings

After a week of sensory overload and a little bit of culture shock (what - I can go to Target at 9 pm on a Sunday and find 10 varieties of shampoo?!), I finally have a minute to provide an update on and some photos of our last few days in Germany.

The end of our European adventure was highlighted first by celebrating Beach's birthday on Thursday the 14th (see earlier post), walking around Ramstein Village and enjoying our last German ice cream sundae on Friday evening, and going into Frankfurt on Saturday night, where we stumbled on a beer fest (not hard to do on a weekend in the summer in Germany). At the festival, we ate some authentic German food, sampled some good beers, and danced to oompah bands (Finn especially loved that part).

We flew back to the US on Sunday - Father's Day. Finn was, like last time, an angel on the flight, sleeping most of the way and smiling, laughing, and being generally cute the rest of the time with only a few tears near the end. We even got several comments from other passengers at the end of the flight about what a good boy he was (thank you, Finn, for making it look like we know what we're doing). We had a layover for a few hours in Cincinnati, where we went to our condo building to visit our friends and neighbors, Justin and Eliza, and to meet their new baby girl, Elena. While we were there, Jeff and Angela of The Daily Squink stopped by to show off their little boy, Rowan (thanks to the Squink for the pictures of the kids - we left our camera in the car). We had a nice, if quick, visit, and headed back to the airport for our trip to Virginia. Many thanks to the Stones for driving us to and from the airport and cooking dinner for the whole crowd, and to the Browns for making the trek all the way from Dayton to see us.

And that's a wrap on this chapter of our lives. Stay tuned...