Day 11 Vow Renewal and Kandern

Several months ago Chris and I celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary.  I told Chris that I wanted to renew our vows when we went to Germany since this was really our anniversary trip to ourselves.  So we asked Valerie and Jonathan about it and they found the perfect location to have it and someone to perform the ceremony.  We renewed our vows on top of one of the hills that overlook Kandern, Germany.  It was a pretty steep hike up the hill and thankfully the rain held off during the whole ceremony and the hike up and down the hill.  Before the ceremony Valerie took me to one of the local flower shops to get a bouquet.  The flower shops in Germany are totally different than the ones that we have in the United States.  You tell them a price of what you want to spend and then they make the arrangement based on that.  They did a great job putting together the bouquet; I wish I would have been able to take it with me.  But I took tons of pictures of it.  After that we drove up to the hill and started making our trek up the hill.  I had to wear flats to get up there but we all thankfully made it!  Pastor Art Mellie performed the ceremony and Jonathan and Valerie were the photographers.  It was a simple ceremony but the most heartfelt part was when we spoke to each other.  I thank God for Chris every day and he's my best friend.  I don't know what I'd do without him and I know that Chris feels the same way about me.  I liked when Pastor Mellie said that this was a mile marker in our marriage that we could look back on and hopefully we'll able to enjoy another 50+ years together.  Thankfully Jonathan, Art and Valerie took a ton of photos so everyone who wasn't there gets to enjoy.  Plus we didn't get really good photos of our wedding 10 years ago.

I love this one!  If you can laugh about anything you'll have a great marriage.

After the ceremony we headed back to their house to change and then they took us on a tour of Black Forrest Academy.  We were surprised at how big the campus actually was.  I figured that all of the dorms would be next to the school but they are spread out all over town.  We wanted to be able to sit in on a class to see how the teachers and students interact but everyone was at lunch.  So we headed over to the local Asian restaurant called Asia Wok.  After going almost two weeks without Asian food it was a nice treat especially since it was really good!  When we finished up with lunch we meet Pastor Mellie who dropped off some photos from the ceremony and to give us a document for our vow renewal.  Then we headed back to the school to sit in on a Holocaust video.  The teacher was talking to the students about a field trip and if they were good they would stop at McDonald's as a treat.  These students rarely ever get to enjoy American food so they erupted in shouts when they heard this.  After watching the video we headed back to their house to relax.  This was one of the few times during our whole vacation where we weren't going 90 miles an hour.  They took us to a really nice local restaurant called Funfschilling.  It was interesting trying to order off a menu all in German but thankfully they had an English menu. Valerie and Jonathan didn't know that there was an English menu!  We finished up dinner and headed back to the house.