Celebrating 40 Years

Milestone birthdays call for special celebrations. And since Zack celebrated number 40 this past month, we thought it fitting to celebrate big!

We started out with a few days with his brother in sister-in-law in London, and then flew to Athens, Greece.

Zack's parents purchased concert tickets for us to see one of our faves, Zac Brown Band, in London. We spent a long weekend there and had a blast at the concert. But I think we'd all agree that the best part was spending time with Josh and Savannah!

After our London weekend, we flew to Athens, Greece. This was Zack's main birthday gift: visiting a city that has been at the top of our list for quite some time. We had a great time exploring ancient sites, visiting with friends, and eating incredible food.

Here are a few highlights from both cities. I'll try to add more details via future posts...

Christmas Cheer (part 19): Sometimes it's tough

Christmas 2012 was our first outside of Georgia. We were living in Vancouver at the time. Thankfully we had quite a few good friends around and it made things much easier.

Christmas 2013 was our first in Norway. Everything was new and it was cool to learn about the traditions. And to be honest, Zack's horrible stomach flu made it hard to think too much about what we were missing. 

But for whatever reason, our third Christmas away from the states seems to have hit us harder. 

I hope this doesn't come off as ungrateful. We are very happy here. We have good friends. We feel at home. We've been invited to a variety of activities and get-togethers during the holidays. We are attempting to make some of our own traditions. And we have really had a lot of fun the past few weeks. But some days are just harder than others. And the holidays can hit pretty hard.

Thankfully, we had a plan in place. We've learned that scheduling a trip just after Christmas works wonders. It provides a nice family gift without cluttering the house with things that are quickly forgotten. It gives us something to look forward to. And it minimizes the post-holidays blues (that seem to intensifying overseas). So we looked for the cheapest tickets and that is the main parties of our gift to each other as a family. Last year was Paris, and this year we ended up in Budapest. (Crazy as it sounds, it is almost always a good bit cheaper for us to fly to another country than to vacation somewhere in our country!)

Weare currently enjoying a week of rest and relaxation, including time with some US friends we hadn't seen in a long time. And lots of Mexican food, something we can't get in Norway. In fact, we went out for Mexican food the last three nights!

Here are a few photos of our time here so far. I'll share more in the coming days.

Hamburg Highlights

While our focus was more on catching up than on tourism, we did manage to see a good bit of the city. It was beautiful!

And then there was Hamburg

Getting to explore so many new cities was great. But one city stood out from the others as we made our vacation plans.

Hamburg.

Not because of any certain landmarks or sightseeing or anything like that. No, it was because of some very special friends. Some of our friends from Atlanta are now living there, friends we hadn't seen in close to two years.

I have to say it was like Christmas morning for me. Watching the hours and then minutes tick off the GPS. Pulling up to their street and seeing three of them standing on the corner, waving us in. Getting out of the car and looking up on the balcony to see one of my best friends standing there (and then running down to greet us). And the hugs. It had been too long. And yet once we were back together, it was as if no time had passed.

The kids immediately fell into playing like normal. And we fell into conversations with people who know us, understand us... and still like us!

For an entire week we lived together, cooked together, ate together, explored together, laughed together, and chilled together. It was a week I will never forget, and just what we needed. I'm incredibly grateful that God has allowed our friendship to continue to grow despite the distance between us. And we look forward to them coming to visit us in Norway at some point!

Dusseldorf

On our second full day in Germany, we decided to do a little walking tour of Dusseldorf. We enjoyed exploring the churches and wandering up and down the small streets. And we did some shopping as well.

Exploring Köln/Cologne

As I mentioned in our last post (here), our first stop on our trip to Germany was Dusseldorf. We went there to visit some of our colleagues. They invited us to make the short drive with them to Cologne.

And we are so glad we did! We were only there for a few hours, but we had the chance to tour the cathedral. A giant amongst its neighboring architecture, it was hit numerous times but managed to survive the bombings of WWII. Many war experts and reports suggest that it was not specifically attacked because it served as a very visible landmarks for finding other locations that were to be hit.

We didn't see a lot more than that. We managed to get our obligatory Starbucks city mug, and had lunch at Hard Rock Cafe (wow, we sound like typical American tourists!). But it was a fun afternoon getting to see yet another beautiful part of one of our favorite countries.