We arrived at Steffen’s dad’s house to a warm welcome and made some lovely memories together for five weeks. We continue to navigate the pandemic and it’s always hard to know how much contact we should be having with other, unvaccinated people. So we decided each girl could play with one friend and it worked out to be just two families, since Hannah, Charlotte and Olivia are good friends with sisters. They spent the night a few times with their friends, but mostly we spent time together and with Steffen’s family. The girls enjoyed their favorite foods, walks with Yoko the dog, lots of game time, playing in the street with the neighbors, homeschooling and a slower pace.

We made it to the appointment in Berlin and everything went smoothly! We ended up getting the passports very quickly and were able to move our flights up almost a week, which was wonderful, but I’ll get to that in a few posts.