We've been back in Germany for two years now, after spending three years in Omaha, including the Covid years. We previously lived in Germany for seven years, where we travelled like mad for the first five years before having our eldest daughter, Maddie. We proceeded to travel like crazy people while Maddie was little and we could just strap her into the baby carrier and go. (She visited 11 different countries before she was two years old!) We then had our youngest daughter, Anna, and moved to Omaha, Nebraska when she was just a few months old.

We enjoyed our three years in Nebraska, and really loved being within driving distance of family. Once life had some semblance of normality after Covid and people were able to travel again, we started to get the itch to get out. Omaha is actually a very nice little city, and very family friendly, it's just not very travel friendly! The airport is small, and everything is at least an eight hour drive away.

Before having the girls, we kept a blog to document our travels and showcase Kyle's amazing photography. We've often looked back at old blog posts to jog our memories of certain things about trips. Who did we go with? Where did we stay? What was the name of that amazing restaurant? Once we had Maddie, I got behind on the blog and never caught back up.

We've intended on starting the blog back up, and it's finally happening! My main intention is to document our travels with the girls so that they will have it to look back on as a memory book of sorts. We knew that coming back to Germany with two kids, our travels would be much different than they were when we first arrived here over 10 years ago. Our trips tend to be shorter road trips, and much less complicated. We have also found trips involving nature and small towns to be much more enjoyable than big cities.

Transatlantic flight to make her return to Germany.

The return of biergartens and hefeweizen!

The girls climb the Killesbergturm in our favorite park of Killesberg, Stuttgart

Taking in the sites in downtown Stuttgart

Our first little trip to get us going was to Lake Constance, known as the Bodensee in German. It's a gorgeous lake in southern Germany, also bordered by Switzerland and Austria. We love the view from the German side, where you can look across to see the Swiss alps. We stayed for just one night at an apartment in the town of Friedrichshafen. The town itself is not remarkable, but it has a wonderful lakeside promenade where we had dinner at a biergarten, right next to a playground. The girls thoroughly enjoyed being able to go play, rather than being stuck at a boring restaurant table. Maddie quickly made friends with a sweet little girl. They had no verbal way of communicating, but that didn't matter in the slightest!

Basílica de Birnau, a Baroque pilgrimage church overlooking the Bodensee

Maddie’s friend, even though neither could speak a common language!

The best part of our apartment—Anna loved this mirror and chair.

We spent the rest of the evening walking along the lake, enjoying the sunset. The girls collected tons of little clam shells while Kyle was trying to get the perfect shot. The next morning, we checked out and went to the adorable town of Lindau. The town of course is touristy, but its charm more than makes up for it. We rented a paddle boat for a bit, which the girls got a big kick out of. After a nice lunch, we crossed the border into Austria just down the road to take a cable car, the Pfaenderbahn, up to a viewpoint overlooking the lake. We accidently drove up to the viewpoint instead of to the cable car station down below. Even though we were already at the top with the best views, and it was very busy, and the cable car was very crowded, we still took the trip down and back up to avoid a meltdown from the eldest.