Life

I think the best things in life are the happy things. I'm aware that pain, trials, and sorrow are necessary in order for us to develop, grow, and become stronger- but they aren't pleasant. So rather than blog about the hell we have returned to here in Dayton, I'm going to share photos of the good times we had in Germany. That's not to say that all life in Dayton is awful and that all life in Germany is hunky-dory. I am just truly grateful that we had a couple of weeks respite from the miseries in our everyday life here and now.
So, first of all, when we first got to Germany, the weather was cold but there was no snow. Our grandsom Jarom took this photo of Russ and me behind their house. You can't really get a good idea how wonderful this house is. I'll do another blog about the house later. One of the places James and Susanne took us to in Berlin was a chocolate shop. Here we are standing in front of the Brandenberg Gate made entirely of chocolate. There were several similar large buildings and monuments all made of chocolate. The place smelled very enticing. As you can well imagine, the prices were a bit high so we didn't actually buy anything but it was a nice place to get in out of the cold!

Around Christmas it started snowing. Finally there was enough snow to venture out to find a place to go sledding. Berlin was originally an area of small villages. They eventually all grew together to form a large city but there are still lots of wooded areas. Not far from James's house in the southwest area of Berlin, there is an opening in the woods with a hill that works very well for sledding. We enjoyed an afternoon there but left when it got too crowded to have many turns to go down the hill. We returned early the next day and got to go down the hill again until it started getting crowded and we were getting cold. James and I managed to share a sled on one run. Fun!