Rental car, Ikea, groceries, a Castle and church!

We had a busy weekend! We decided to rent a car so we could get lots of big shopping done and finally get our apartment to feeling more "settled." The process of renting the car went pretty well. There were, of course, a few hiccups. They gave us a stick shift (seems to be the default here and I forgot to request and automatic), so Dylan had to do all of the driving. The car we got had a weird trick to getting it to reverse that Dylan's never seen before, so he had to get someone with very limited english to show him how to do that. Once he got that figured out, things went pretty well. The road signs are different here, and driving through downtown Munich (when we went to church) was a little stressful, but otherwise things went pretty well. We had a GPS system with the car, which was really nice. The car we got was a Ford station wagon-type car, so there was lots of space for all the stuff we bought.

Our first stop was Ikea, some of the things we bought there were: a collapsable toy box for the boys, hanging shelves for the boys' closet and for our closet, a pop-up tent for the boys (they love it!), toys, measuring cups and spoons, oven safe dishes, non stick pan, dish towels, placemats for the kids, a tall chair for James to sit in at the table, bins for our clothes, a baby gate, cutting boards, utensils, and a lot of things I'm sure I'm forgetting. I have a really hard time keeping the house clean if I don't have a place for everything to go, so I feel a lot better about things now. Today, I might finally finishing unpacking our luggage!

We also did some stock up grocery shopping of non-perishables while we had the car on Saturday. On Sunday all of the stores and shops are closed, so we decided to go for a drive to one of the castles outside of Munich. We desperately had to do laundry Sunday morning though, so we got a bit of a later start than we wanted, and ended up going to slightly closer, smaller castle than we originally planned. The drive down was cool, we saw lots of the snowy German countryside. The castle was not too exciting, we had to walk a good distance from the parking lot to be able to see it at all, and we had to carry the kids, and it was cold and snowy. I'm glad we went though, it was a good experience overall.

After the castle, we had an awkward amount of time between leaving the castle and going to church. I didn't think we would have time to go home, and then head back into church, so we decided to head straight to church, even though it meant we would get there super early. We arrived at the church in downtown munich about an hour before we could reasonably go in. The boys and hung out in the car, and Dylan walked around and explored the area a little bit. Thank goodness for the Ipad! That kept James entertained and I only had to worry about David. It was totally worth it though, church was great, the sermon was wonderful, the people were friendly, and the boys were happy in the nursery. I'm so glad we went, thanks to everyone who recommended MICC!

Driving back to Garching (the village we live in) from downtown Munich was kind of pretty tough, but we made it out alive, and I think we all thought the weekend, as a whole, was a big success!