European Expedition–Back home in St. Leon

Before driving into St. Leon we decided to stop at Globus – kind of like a SuperTarget.  We went here all the time to get German candy, bread, cute Niki stuffed animals that we loved, Playmobil and always left with really delicious German sandwiches.  Today we filled up our cart with German candy and chocolate and picked up some sandwiches to take to the park.

I can not even describe how exciting it was to see St. Leon-Rot written on signs.  We were giddy!

We got out of the car and walked down the street towards our house.  Chris gave me a hug and we shared a surreal nostalgic moment as we watched the kids run ahead.  Our neighbor, Sylvie just happened to be walking out of her house and noticed the girls – thinking they looked familiar.  Then she saw me and I ran to her and gave her a hug.  She was astonished to see us and kept saying, “I am shocking!”  It was so cute.  Katie captured a little on video and it sits happily in our highlight video of the day.  I truly feel like it was a tender mercy to have been able to see her. Unknown to us, Sylvie was recovering from an eye surgery, which is the reason she was home during the afternoon instead of at work.  She had to leave to go pick up her kids and then brought them back to meet us at the park. It was so fun to talk and get caught up.  Love her.

It was fun for the kids to play at the St. Leon playground.  It was right around the corner from our house and the kids used to play here all the time.  Luke seemed to remember all of it, but Matt didn’t at all.  He was only 4 when we left.

After playing in the park, we  went on a walk through the fields by our house.  So fun to see the horses – brownie and spottie. We had spent lots of evening walks going to visit the horses, which the kids had given names.  It just really felt like we were home.

Back to our house for some pictures.

And with our two little German neighbor kids – Eliah and Amira and my good friend Sylvi.  It was so great to see them and spend some time in our little village.  Unfortunately the gelato place closed down so we didn’t wander down to the main street and past the place where we took our family picture 4 and a half years earlier.  We would have liked to stay everywhere longer – but it was time to get up to Heidelberg.