It must have been a month or so since I last wrote a blog entry. That’s because for two weeks we had my family here from America and the two weeks after that I was either recovering or insanely busy. We now have all the pictures uploaded and we should be good to go, so here I am writing to y’all.

My mom and step-dad, brother and sister-in-law all came to see us. They were actually invited to Flo’s brother’s wedding, so we had a lot to do – bachelor night, Polterabend, legal wedding, church wedding and a whole bunch of touristy stuff in between.

A Polterabend is when friends and family of the guest are invited to come and smash all things ceramic on the ground, after which the bride and groom must clean up. It’s for good luck, I’m told.

We tried to take it easy the first couple days. We walked around our town a bit and went on a nice long walk in the Seven Mills Valley, which is exactly what its name says it is. It’s gorgeous and peaceful. We also went to one of the largest motorcycle dealerships in Germany, which happens to be in our town. The guys lost themselves there for a while. We also visited some old Roman ruins and spent some time in the city of Esslingen, which is very old and beautiful and interesting to walk around in.

Of course the guys had a bachelor night for Benni to attend to. (Annka didn’t want a bachelorette party.)  A bachelor party in Germany is a little more complicated than one in America. Here, the groom has silly tasks he has to do the whole night. Benni had to get strange women to let him cut the tag off their bra or underwear and then safety pin the tag on his shirt. Of course, alcohol makes all things possible… even things it shouldn’t make possible, such as,

We also went to the zoo here in Stuttgart. We’ve got a little polar bear baby since the last time I was there. It’s an awesome zoo and botanical garden and is always fun.

We also went to the Mercedes Museum, which was actually interesting even for those of us to whom a car is just a car. They really integrated a lot of world history into the history of the manufacturer, so you can find out why certain innovations were necessary, etc.

One night we went out to eat and Jer found a bosom buddy:

And then, as it turned out, Benni and Annka went through with their legal wedding, but as Annka’s gramma died three days before the real wedding, they scratched that part of it. Instead, (they’re hoping to do it in September now) they invited a bunch of us to go Go-kart racing and to a street festival in one of the towns here. I’m still waiting for a couple photos from Jer for the Go-karts and a boat ride we took on the last day they were here, but this is one from the street festival. The name of the band was the Louisiana Funky Butts. Cool, huh?

Anyway, I know that’s like, hardly any detail for a two week visit, but it’s hard to know what y’all will want to know. The photos have descriptions on them, too, where something needs explaining, so rather than write it all down twice, I rather direct you to the photo page (all the links on this page go to that page, by the way). So, I will get pics of our new car up soon and also pics and video of a boat race we went to last weekend.

In other news, I lost my wedding band and engagement ring in the parking lot of the strawberry patch on Saturday and God found them for me! Well, he told me where to look and while I was in tears because I didn’t find them in the first 10 seconds, he pointed Flo’s eyes in the right direction and found them for me. Yay!

We also had Faustin Fernando come to our church to preach this weekend. He’s a guy from the big church in Toronto, where Flo and I went to Bible school. It was really fun having someone different come. God is so cool!