Houston, We have a problem.

No, our Ryan Air flight did not crash this morning, surprisingly. However, we are checked into the hotel room on the Airforce base and all I can hear is beep....beep....beep......beep......beep. It is coming from somewhere on the base and it is LOUD and CONSTANT. I have been in this room for 4 hours now and it is all I can hear. I have no idea if it will ever stop. I don't think I can listen to it all night. I'm already about to go CRAZY. We might have to make a stop at the BX on the way to dinner for some ear plugs. What was the Edgar Allan Poe book? The Tell-Tale Heart? I think that is me right now. Check back tomorrow to make sure that I am still alive.

I can't think of anything else to report today. Beep....beep.....beep......beep.....

Bruxelles

Hi everyone! I just got all checked into the Marriott in Brussels and got my internet all hooked up. This day started out without much potential but it has steadily gotten better. We had to wake up really early this morning to head to Brussels and y'all know how I feel about waking up early! It rained most of the way here and I feel like this drive gets longer each time we do it! However, the stars seemed to align when we got here a bit early, found a parking spot on the street and got to eat PIZZA HUT BUFFET!!!!! (I just typed Pizza Butt Buffet and that would not have been as good!) I know it might seem like something small but trust me, this was big for us. And it tastes just like the in the States! The only downside is that the buffet is like $15 a person. We certainly did not care and completely gorged ourselves. Deaner even suggested going back for dinner but that was BEFORE we ingested pounds of pizza and had to roll ourselves home. It was SO good. I'm not sure what we are going to do tonight for dinner but Chi-Chi's might be calling my name. Pizza Hut and Mexican in the same day? It is almost too good to be true.
After getting checked into the hotel I was very surprised and VERY happy to see that MTV was working in Belgium (two weeks ago when we were here, it wasn't) and I was able to watch The Hills!!!! It is my secret flaky guilty pleasure. I can't get enough and if they had a 24 hour live feed, I'm pretty sure I would subscribe. Deaner always tells me that the show is so fake but I just don't care! I wish LC was still on because Kristin's voice really annoys me. And I just can't understand why anyone would want to date Justin because he is nasty! So, next up on my agenda is to watch The City. I don't love it as much as The Hills but it will do. My current beef with that show is that Whitney answers/comments on everything with a question. Example........

Someone: "That guy is so hot"!!!
Whitney: "I know, right"?
Someone: "This is the cutest dress"!
Whitney: "I know, right"??
Someone: "This party is so much fun"!
Whitney: "I know, right"??

You get the point. It just bugs me. Almost as much as it bothers me when someone asks where something "is at". UGH.

Anyways! I'm off to watch The City and then I will probably read until Deaner gets home from work. I'm so happy that tomorrow is Friday but wish we didn't have to ride all the way back to Germany! Deaner and I have hair appointments with Steph tomorrow and then we are having dinner at their place. I can't wait. I have to set this laptop up on the desk in the hotel room and there is a mirror right in front of me. I can hardly stand to look at my roots! Then on Saturday we are having some friends over for dinner and football watching. Should be a good weekend! If I can't write tomorrow y'all know why!! Happy Thursday!

I'm stumped for a post title!

It is hard to believe that I haven't left the house today! I heard a rumor that it was pretty cold out there today! My iphone tells me that it is 39 degrees outside so perhaps I wasn't missing much. While in a tizzy this morning about finances I decided that Deaner can no longer bring his dress shirts to the dry cleaners. It is truly ridiculous to get your clothes dry cleaned here. At first I was ironing Deaner's shirts but it just took too long. After the last batch came back to the cleaners I was through with them. They take about a week to clean them, they come back wrinkled and 8 shirts cost approximately $35. A far cry from $.99 a shirt in Atlanta. All those factors combined with a financial meltdown of sorts, guess who stood for hours this afternoon behind the ironing board! Deaner has assured me that we are fine but I will just be happy once we pay off the salary advance that we took when we arrived in Germany. There is no way that we could have done it without it but that extra money each pay check will be great! That, and if I start to substitute teach soon!

Let's see. I have actually done a lot today. My house is finally clean since I was able to usher my husband out the door to work this morning. I just can't seem to get anything done when he is around! The kitchen is spotless, dining room free of clutter and the den is straighted. The house is vacuumed and 4 loads of laundry are finished and more impressively, put away! Dinner is also on the stove. I made a new recipe tonight of Cannelini Bean soup. The only obstacle is that the commissary didn't actually have Cannelini beans! This could be interesting! My mom told me that I could substitute navy beans and that it would be fine. It smells good so I'll let y'all know!

Now I am finally getting a chance to sit down and write my blog post for the day. I have Jeopardy on in the background. I was actually just really impressed with myself for knowing like 10 questions in a row. Of course when I glanced up I realized that I was actually watching TEEN Jeopardy! That sort of took the fun out of it. Especially when I didn't know the answers! :) George came over today. He was holding a plate full of cake. He announced in German that he wasn't speaking English to me anymore (I understood this much) but I didn't catch what kind of cake it was or why he was bringing to me. I hope it isn't poisonous.

How is everyone doing with their Christmas shopping?? I am almost finished! I only have one more person to buy for and then two gifts to purchase for our family's white elephant gift exchange. The price point is between $30-$40 if anyone has any good ideas! I like for my gifts to be the best! Also, I do an ornament swap every year with my girlfriends from college and I have the best ornaments already to give to whomever I draw! Last year my ornament got to me and it was smashed in a million pieces. I thought it was pretty funny and I wish that I could get the picture off my old cell phone but I am not sure how I would do that? It still cracks me up to think about. Anyways, I am off to read while I wait for Deaner to get home. Hope everyone is having a good day!

Come Monday.......

I didn't get anything done today that I was planning on accomplishing! I had piles of laundry, a house that is a wreck and no groceries. Instead of sending Deaner off the work this morning like a good wife should, he decided that he was not feeling up to par and needed to take the day off. I should have known right then and there that I needed to wipe my agenda clean because I wasn't going to get anything done with him hanging around!!

It has been a very pleasant day though! We slept in, read, had lunch together, went to the gym, went grocery shopping and now we are home and Deaner is making a big pot of soup for dinner! Doesn't he sound just like he is on his death bed!? I'd call it more of a mental health day I guess and I am happy to report that our patient is recovering nicely. At first I felt as though I had just been duped into going to the gym but it was nice to get a hard workout in and feel like I did something worthwhile. It is also nice to have it done by 4:00pm!!

This weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night we went to eat dinner at the new pizza place that we have discovered. It was great and afterwards we can home and had a quiet evening. Saturday we had a Halloween party that started at 3pm at some of our friend's house. It was great! Their house is phenomenal (right on the Rhein River) and the party was definitely a blast! They had more food than I have seen in a long time! We had to leave pretty early because we had promised to be home to hand out candy to the neighborhood kids. Thank goodness we can home because I think every child under the age of 12 came here. Even one child that definitely needed to shave. At one point I thought we were running low on candy and Deaner and I had an emergency ghost tootsie pop making session and of course, once we got the bag made, not one more child came to our door!!

It was not a good football weekend for any of us. Ole Miss tanked against Auburn, Georgia got clobbered by Florida but perhaps the most awful loss of all was for Deaner as his Virginia Caveliers lost to DUKE. Seriously? This is the second year in a row to lose to Duke. If their coach isn't fired this year I'll be dumbfounded. All in all it was as bad a football outing as you can get in our family. Guess we will just have to buck up and wait for next weekend!

I hope that everyone is having a decent Monday. It is pouring rain in Wiesbaden, it's 5:00pm and dark, and it is getting cold. Thank god we already went to the gym and I am cozy and comfy in my pjs!

Weekend Recipe

Tequila = Check
Triple Sec = Check
Sour Mix = Check
Rose's Lime Juice = Check
Red Bull = Check
Margarita Salt = check
Georgia vs. Florida = check (yikes!)
Ole Miss vs. Auburn = check

This is going to be a good weekend!! We have a Halloween party to go to on Saturday in the afternoon but we promised we would be home in the evening for trick or treaters. Since it is a HUGE football weekend, that is okay with me. I wish we hadn't sent our costumes from last year to storage because I would love to wear them again! What do y'all think?Who doesn't love the Jolly Green Giant and Sprout!?

I never have anything good to say on Fridays! I realize and recognize the fact that my Friday posts normally suck. Today I went to get gas and when I went to get my credit card out of my wallet, I nearly fainted when I saw it wasn't there. All I could think of was "not again" and "this time I already HAVE the gas and no way to pay"!! Thankfully I remembered at the last second that I had put my card in a different place so I didn't have to take my purse into the commissary a few days ago. THANK GOD. I have no idea what would have happened. I would have had to call Deaner to come pay for my gas I guess if I had no means of payment! I've got to get it together!

I also went to the commissary AGAIN. This time I bought 2 containers of sour cream and I am not giving EITHER ONE away this time!

Also, some fun news (for me)! Yesterday our Christmas cards came in the mail! I couldn't believe how quickly they arrived from Shutterfly! I was all pumped to start addressing cards etc when I realized that they forgot to send the envelopes!!!! How irritating!! I do have to admit that all it took was a phone call and they are priority shipping my envelopes to me so at least that was no hassle. Just have to wait a few more days to address envelopes. It is still October!! I was really happy with how they turned out so anyone on the fence about using Shutterfly, do it! They are running several deals right now and I was shocked at how inexpensive we got them.

That is all for today! Again, Friday posts suck, I know! I hope that everyone has a great weekend!

Damn Sour Cream

I just noticed that it is almost 5pm, my husband should be on his way home from work and I haven't even started my blog post for the day. Probably because I haven't done anything worthwhile at all today! I put dinner in the crock pot at 9:00am and I have watched 4 episodes of Grey's Anatomy on itunes. Pathetic, I know. I am going to try and do a little bit better tomorrow! Especially now that I have to go back to the commissary for the THIRD time this week.

I'm getting a little annoyed with neighbor George. He is the nicest person I have ever met and I can't even tell you what trouble we would have been in if we didn't have him around to help us out. However, today he might have stepped over the line in annoyingness. When everyone came over to carve pumpkins on Tuesday some of you may recall that I had gone to the Commissary but forgotten my wallet. So the only thing that I had to make as an appetizer was an envelope of onion soup mix and a tub of sour cream. Viola! George proclaimed that it was the best appetizer he had ever eaten (I thought this was a bit over the top but apparently he was not kidding). Yesterday as I was about to make my way to the Commissary (again) he stopped me and asked me about the dip ingredients. Seriously? I know that they could not get Lipton Onion Soup mix in the German grocery stores so I told him I would buy him a box of it and he could get his own sour cream. Problem solved right?

Wrong. This afternoon when I was bringing in my garbage can low and behold, George shows up. He wanted to ask me what you mix the onion soup with. I again told him Sour Cream. He informed me that he didn't think that they could get sour cream in Germany but that he would do some research. I mean really. I think you would know if it was available or not. If you go your whole life without ever having sour cream or knowing what it is, you probably don't have it. I went about my afternoon. 20 minutes later the doorbell rang. George again. Asking to SEE my sour cream. So we come up to the kitchen where I have one almost empty sour cream container and one brand new one. I show him the old one. Thank god because he puts his FINGER IN IT AND TASTES IT. Then he deduces that they don't have it in Germany. He starts EYEING my NEW container. He starts to say that he needs it by tomorrow and there is no way possible for him to get it anywhere else. He asks if I am going to the Commissary AGAIN before tomorrow evening. NO NO NO. I have to draw the line somewhere!!!! It was MY sour cream!!! And I don't even LIKE sour cream but Deaner does and so I keep it in the house! I told him sorry, no, I needed it so he left.

Then I told Deaner what happened and after much going back and forth guess who delivers the new container of sour cream down to George in his office. ME. I feel so defeated. I held my ground for about 45 minutes and now I will probably have to return to the commissary tomorrow to buy myself more. You know, just to keep on hand in case our neighbors need to borrow it!

At least tomorrow is Friday! I plan on drinking many many adult beverages and enjoying my weekend!!!

Halloween Happiness!

Yesterday turned into a much more eventful afternoon than I originally planned for! Just about the time that I posted yesterday George rang our doorbell to ask if his wife, daughter, and two grandson's could come with him to carve pumpkins that same evening. It was 4:30pm and George was supposed to be at our house (alone) at 6:00pm. Oh lord. Deaner and I were planning on carving pumpkins and having a semi late dinner. This just about guaranteed that that wasn't going to happen!

I just had time for a VERY quick house cleaning, throwing together a very simple appetizer and setting up all the pumpkins. Of course they were early and Deaner wasn't even home from the gym. UGH. This would not have been a very big deal but George has a grandson that is rather rambunctious. And by rambunctious I mean that he might be borderline crazy. It was a quiet evening that he only hurdled himself onto my cleanly made bed and later threw a knife at me. I ducked luckily and it hit the window behind me but I always have to be on my toes around that kid!! I call him Dennis the Menice! Did I mention that he was 2 and a half?

The pumpkin carving was a huge success! Here is a picture of mine....One of Deaner's.....And of 8 year old, Julian's......Can you tell which of the two of us used a pattern and which one of us didn't!!?? HA! Here are a few more pictures of all of us pumpkin carvers. You can see that Deaner didn't even get to take a shower after the gym!I think that they all turned out really well and it was a really fun night. I think we will plan on making it an annual event. I can't wait to light the candles in the pumpkins again tonight! Today I had to go to the PX and buy more candy because little Julian said he was going to tell his entire class at school to come trick or treat at our house. GREAT!

I am currently making a new recipe for dinner. Deaner loves French Onion Soup and I am caramelizing the onions right now. God, it sure does take a long time! They have been on the stove for over an hour now! They sure do smell good right now! I might just run down to the bakery and see if it is still open and get a fresh loaf of bread. Hope everyone is having a Happy Wednesday!