The Country Club of Gyms

Hello to the country club of gyms. And let me clarify, I grew up going to a country club as a kid (and adult if I want to be honest about my mooching) and nothing compares to this. I would like to say a personal thank you to the United States of America Military for providing a facility such as this where lazy asses such as myself should drag themselves every day! Now let me curse you for a minute. How can I possibly tell my husband that I don't feel like working out today in our crummy gym when the GYM LOOKS LIKE THIS??? I am afraid that I am now bound to three years of constant working out with no excuse to get out of it. We thought that our gym at home in Atlanta was pretty great. It was practically in a dungeon but it was close to the condo and it offered a great class schedule. It was a steal at $100 a month for both our memberships. This place has classes that pretty much start every 3 minutes and the best part is........IT IS FREE!! Here are some shots of the rest of the place!I know, I know. One hardly has an excuse to not be physically fit when they have this place to go everyday. Unfortunately, it doesn't make me want to workout any more than normal!! Which is typically NONE.

Change of subject. In case some of y'all don't know, one of my favorite foods is STEAK. I could eat a good steak at pretty much ANY TIME. Deaner's dad makes a mean filet mignon (my fave) as does my favorite restaurant of all time, Rathbuns. I only have a slight problem here in Germany. The fact that steak is called "Rumpsteak" is a big problem for me. Every time I order I feel like I might as well be saying "I will have your best BUTT STEAK"!!! To make matters worse, it just isn't as good here. I think that once we have our own apartment and grill that we will be able to buy good steak at the commissary but until then, I will be forced to order butt steak for dinner in restaurants. It just doesn't sound okay.

In other news, thanks for all those who entered the giveaway! It will be going on for almost two weeks so definitely leave me a comment on the post beneath this one. Emory has some really cute stuff and the winner will definitely be able to find something cute! Some people seem a little bit confused about being a follower. In order to be a follower you have to click on the "Follow The Blog" button on the right hand side of the page. This is what will earn an extra entry into the giveaway! And people who post anonymously unless you leave all your information, we might have a problem. Which brings me to another topic of my mother-in-law. Whom I love to death. If anyone ever sees a comment on my blog that is from Anonymous and that utilizes AT LEAST 45 or so punctuation marks, that is from my mother-in-law! :) One of these days I will show her how to get a profile name but for now.............If I see 30 periods in a row.........I am nearly certain.......it is her............love you Kathy...........

I'm off to meet Steph and get my hair highlighted!! Woooo-hooooo!! What better way to spend a Friday afternoon! Tonight we are having Mexican and beer night and having dinner at Steph and Jon's house. I can't wait! More later! Don't forget the giveaway!!!

GIVE-A-WAY-GIVE-A-WAY-GIVE-A-WAY

I have been wanting to do a give-a-way for some time now but I really couldn't decide what I wanted to give! I told Deaner the other night that I wished I was super rich and could give away a My Best Friend, Jr. but I don't think my husband would appreciate me buying a laptop computer for one of my readers! I promise though that if I ever hit the lottery jackpot, I will give-a-way 10 MBF, Jr.'s!!

My next instinct was to give-a-way something that was unique to Germany but to be quite honest, there is no one "German" product that I have found that I cannot live without OR that I couldn't get in the States. SO, I compromised. Here in Germany when one goes grocery shopping (anywhere besides the commissary!) you have to either bring your own grocery bags or pay approximately 50 cents per plastic bag that you use. RIP OFF! I recently discovered Emma's Closet which is a new business which specializes in custom baby and gift item's! I ordered the Essential Tote in Red with a White monogram for days when I want to hit up the Wiesbaden farmers market and need to bring along my own tote bag!I can't wait to get it!! Emory Eison, owner of Emma's Closet, has graciously agreed to let one lucky reader pick a gift from her new inventory of gifts! Whatever gift the reader chooses will be monogrammed in whatever initials the winner chooses and sent to them! There are some seriously cute things on this web page such as........these super cute towel wraps. Personally, this is on of my favorite things on Emory's web page. I loved my towel wrap in college and I'm thinking eventually I will have to get another one. Sometimes wearing a bathrobe just gets too hot, especially in the summer. Think about how cute this would look with a monogram on bottom corner!? Another favorite is.....this waffle weave cosmetic bag! I go through makeup bags quickly because I can't stand them once they get dirty. Maybe I should buy several of these! I also love this medium sized terry cloth cosmetic bag!She also has really cute throw blankets that would look cute with a monogram on the corner!I would love to have ALL these things! If you are the winner Emory will work with you to pick the perfect gift for yourself or someone else! So, here is how it works. I will draw the winner and post it on Wednesday May 13th because this will ROUGHLY be around my 100th post. There are 3 ways to enter.

1. Leave me a comment for 1 entry

2. Leave me a comment and become a blog follower (or let me know if you already are!) for 2 entries.

3. Leave me a comment, become a follower, AND post a link to my giveaway on your blog for 3 entries!

Make sure to tell me if you became a follower/already were one AND if you are going to post a link on your blog so I can check it out. Good luck to everyone!! I am really excited about this!!

This must be a joke

I am watching the Today's show right now (I know, I know, I need to get a life) but the headline news right now is "Pregnant Woman Hit By A Car While Being Chased By A Bear". Seriously? Is this the only news that we have to report? Isn't there some sort of swine flu outbreak going on right now? Perhaps a war to report? This pregnant lady claims that she wasn't hurt during this bear chase and hit and run but I think she might want to get her head checked again since she has decided to give her child the middle name LITTLE BEAR!! No way.

On another Today's Show note, Casey at The Ever Changing Life of a Military Wife told me this morning that when Al Roker cut away to local weather reports that he said "Hello to all those watching on AFN"!! Does anyone think this means he read my blog!? I am sure he would be a loyal follower if only he knew about me! :)

So we actually did it last night! We haven't necessarily signed our lives away (yet)but we did pay our earnest money to our architect and as long as our bank financing comes through, we are going to be the proud owners of our THIRD house/condo/apartment! God, if you are listening, please let the condo in Atlanta sell BEFORE this purchase occurs! So as we were wrapping things up last night I asked when we would hear back from the bank, innocently thinking that it would probably be about 24 to 48 hours at the most, if the bank was experiencing an extremely high volume! I almost fell out of my chair when she said between 2-4 weeks! WTF? How do people wait that long?! Maybe being an American makes me impatient but does this seem like a long time to anyone else? It was explained to me that it takes this long because we are Americans in a foreign country. BOO!! Luckily, the financing person said she was running about 2 weeks on getting answers back to people. So, sit back and relax! If it does work out, we would close in about a month. The complete renovation will take 3 months if all goes according to plan. While I am pretty excited about it, I am not excited about trying to figure out how to get our temporary housing allowance extended.

So, on the last cut to local weather, Al Roker sang a song about Willard Scott that went like this:
Everybody loves my Wiiiiiiiilllllly!
Everybody loves my Willy Scott!
Everybody loves my WiiiiiiiiLLY!

I can only imagine what you might have thought if you didn't know his song was about Willard Scott!

Anyways, my husband has decided that he can now be picked up from work at 4pm. This would normally make me really happy because I love that he gets home early. Unfortunately this means that I have to leave to get him around 3:45 or 3:50pm and this translates to having to miss the last 10 minutes a day of Days of our Lives! Oh well, I'm pretty sure that I won't miss anything that won't be replayed 80 times. The other bad news is that Deaner wants to check out the gym at the airbase today. That means that I am going to be forced to workout. I am already dreading it! It was one of the first things I thought about when I woke up this morning! But, I promised. And god knows, I never break my workout promises! (hee hee).

One more funny thing before I sign off for the day. I got an e-mail from a friend of mine in the States that told me that she couldn't believe that I drove here all by myself. She said she was sure she would somehow manage to kill herself if she had to drive on the left hand side of the road. I assured her that yes, she would manage to kill herself if she came over here and drove on the left hand side since that would be straight into ONCOMING traffic! Y'all, people only drive on the left hand side of the road in England and Australia! :) It did make me laugh though!

One more hilarious thing!

Last night Deaner and I braved the yucky weather and since it has stopped raining for about an hour, we decided to eat dinner outside. We went to this great German restaurant called The Backerbrunnen. We were the only table not underneath the large patio umbrella but it wasn't raining anymore so we decided to take our chances. After getting settled into our table and ordering our dinner and drinks I happened to look straight up into the tree above (I was afraid it would be hard to see them so I circled them in white!). I nearly freaked out when I saw the birds in the tree because the one on the far left was perched DIRECTLY above Deaner. He was a little concerned himself because he was not in the mood to be pooped on! I kept waiting for that damn bird to fly away while we discussed whether or not we needed to try and change tables. That was when I noticed birds #2 and #3. Which looked exactly like bird #1. None of the three birds were moving. We started to watch VERY CLOSELY before coming to the conclusion that these were FAKE birds that were attached to the branches with plastic legs! HA HA HA!! We must have discussed Deaner's imminent danger for at least 5 minutes. Thank god we didn't make the mistake of getting up and moving and trying to explain to the waitress why we were moving!

I have to admit

I feel like I have a confession to make. I have had all these comments (well, let's be real, only 5) congratulating me on my bravery for driving here in Germany. I feel the need to clarify that the drive to Deaner's office is only about 4-5 miles and it is completely a straight shot. I mean, I turn out of the hotel, drive straight for several miles, and then turn into the base. It really isn't that difficult and it certainly isn't the Autobahn! And I am wimpy enough that when I went to pick him up I got in the passenger seat and let him drive home! Ha ha! I think I would be okay driving here if I actually had SOMEWHERE to go! You can only run so many pointless errands before they become ridiculous.

SO, I'm glad that I let Deaner drive home last night when we left the base. As we were leisurely cruising through an intersection BAM! No, we didn't get hit but an insanely bright light flashed in our eyes which we can only assume means that we got a ticket for running a yellow light! The real killer is that Deaner admitted after it happened that at least 3 people have told him it was there!! Duh!! Oh well, I am sure that I would have done the same thing. I am just glad I was in the car so I was startled enough to remember it! I won't make the same mistake now!

I'm sitting here watching the Today's Show. I find it really funny that when they cut to the weather report and Al Roker says "Here's what's happenin' in your neck of the woods" that nothing comes on here in Germany. Obviously because only TV stations that are affiliates in the States get picked up and deliver local weather reports however instead of us hearing nothing here in Germany, we can hear all the private conversations that occur on the TV set for about 15-20 seconds. It can be pretty funny! Right now someone just told Al he is looking a "little bit disheveled"!

On another note. I want to know how the United States government could be so stupid and so outrageous that they thought it was acceptable to fly a 747 plane being tailed by a fighter jet through the Manhattan harbor heading towards downtown Manhattan sky scrapers? Seriously? What where they possibly thinking?? The videos that are on TV are bone chilling showing people running through the streets screaming. How awful. Can you imagine how these people felt? I have multiple friends in New York and I have already heard some of their stories of their office buildings being evacuated ect. One friend ran down 50 flights of stairs with every other person in the building. I can imagine that this must have been a horribly terrifying moment and I feel like there is no excuse for such behavior. How did the government FORGET to mention it? Inexcusable. Who is working in this clown administration? Enough about that.
Days of our Lives is coming on in 6 minutes. Not that I am waiting for it or anything! :) Deaner and I have our meeting at 5:30 this afternoon and I am nervous about it! We have to decide if we are willing to hand over our earnest money check tonight! I don't think we will know immediately if the financing will work out but it shouldn't take long. I'm off to make sure that we have all the needed documents to take tonight. Wish us luck!

Above is just a random wedding photo. I hate posting without some sort of picture nowadays!!

I finally did it!

I drove today for the first time ever in Europe!! Moving here was my 6th trip overseas but before today I have never attempted to drive a car. I figured it was now or never plus I wanted to put that hard earned license to use! :) Instead of waking up at the crack of dawn to take Deaner to work and bring the car back with me I let him drive to work and then I took the shuttle to the base to meet him for lunch. He showed me how to check our APO box (we of course had zero mail) and then I took the car home with me. When we left the states we knew we had a headlight out. We tried to get it fixed right before we shipped the car but unfortunately the mechanic said that there was something wrong with the wiring and that it couldn't be fixed by just replacing the bulb. This was particularly irritating to me because I knew it was going to be a huge pain to take care of that here. Anyways, somehow some way Deaner found a Chrysler Jeep dealership and it is less than a mile away from the hotel! Being the perfect wife that I am I took the car over there after lunch and got the headlight fixed. This was interesting but thankfully there was someone there that spoke English and it only took about an hour! Turns out that NOTHING was wrong with the wiring and they fixed TWO lights for 40 euro. The bad news is that they said something else needs to be done to the headlights and it will cost 1400 euro. Hmmmmm, I think we will take our chances and pretend we didn't hear that recommendation! :) They are out of their minds!

On a totally different note, I am dying over the cheesiness of Days of our Lives. I don't remember this show being so bad when I was in high school and college. First, Nicole and E.J. have been having their wedding ceremony for at least 3 shows now. There is way too much talking and chatting and interrupting to possibly be a real wedding. And Phillip has been in bed with that girl in a hotel for 3 shows with a man holding a gun to the door waiting to kill him. Knock on the door already and just shoot him if you want to! The real question is, why do I find myself watching it everyday!?

Besides the victory of fixing the headlight, this has been a pretty boring day. The weather here is supposed to be crummy all week and I am hoping that the forecast is wrong! Holy crap, the killer really did just shoot Phillip in the chest! I'm not sure how he can recover from this! And just as Nicole and E.J. were going to take their vows, here comes Sammie busting up the ceremony. I should have expected nothing less! Now Oprah is on and rather than subject myself to that garbage I think I will leave to pick Deaner up from work! I have the latest Grey's Anatomy downloaded from itunes so we have a show to watch tonight! Wooo-hooo!

Happenings in Heidelberg

Sorry for no post on Friday! I don't even remember why I wasn't able to write anything! Dinner on Thursday night with Jon and Steph was super fun. We ate at this brewery, called Brauhaus Castel. I of course had the same thing I eat in every restaurant (steak) and it was really good. Since J&S were leaving at the crack of dawn for Dublin it was an early night. Friday was pretty uneventful. I did laundry, met Deaner for lunch, and spent the afternoon ironing his work shirts and watching TV. So domestic. Friday we went to dinner and came home early because we wanted to get an early start to Heidelberg!!

We got to Heidelberg around 11:30 or so on Saturday morning. It only takes about an hour to get to this wonderful little city! I loved it! I had never been before but Deaner had been. This is the hotel that we stayed in.It was so great! We had the suite because a normal double was not available. I can't believe we were right over this Irish Pub! The balcony that you see on the top floor was off of our bedroom. The Dubliner was located PERFECTLY, was super spacious, clean, and reasonably priced. We may or may not do another overnight trip here but if we did, we would definitely stay here.We laughed at first about what a waste of space this little sitting area was because because it was sort of an odd place to go chill because there wasn't any TV or anything but it turned out to be the perfect place for me to put on my makeup and dry my hair ect. As I was blow drying my hair Saturday night I turned my head to look out the skylight and nearly screamed bloody murder. Here is what I was looking at...Crrrrrrap. That thing was practically staring at me! Anyways, once we got checked into the hotel we went to lunch here.I had delicious tomato soup and french fries. As soon as I ordered I realized by looking around that this place was famous for making sandwiches on their home baked pretzels! Ooops! I wish I could have changed my order! After lunch we headed up the funicular to the top of the Konigstuhl. It carried us up 1700ft to spectacular views of Heidelberg. Deaner and I have really perfected the hold the camera out and take our on picture shot.After enjoying these views we rode the funicular down to the castle. The Castle was HUGE and definitely beautiful. It is also home to the largest wine cask in the world and it holds 58,500 gallons of wine! Holy crap! It was too big for me to even take a picture of it! Here are some shots of the castle grounds and the views from above Heidelberg.Instead of taking the funicular back down from the castle we decided to walk back. It was a beautiful day and we just wanted to enjoy the down hill stroll. On the way down I noticed several Europeans in the most inappropriate shoes for this type of walking! First of all we are on a huge decline and secondly the walkway is COBBLESTONE. This is not the worst pair (heel wise) that I saw but they were definitely the most hideous!The church that can be seen in the background of most of these pictures is right in the center of Heidelberg and the main shopping/dining area in town. I was actually able to take a picture inside this church (yes, they were allowed!) because it was very light inside. Typically my small camera doesn't have a powerful enough flash and most churches are too dark to photo properly. Since the church is smack in the middle of the city there is no way to take a picture of the entire church while standing by it. Thank goodness for the arial views!I think we pretty much saw it all in one day! Here are a few shots of the view off our balcony. We didn't spend too much time at our hotel since we were out sight seeing all day. The last picture is a shot of the castle from a bridge in town. It sort of gives a better idea of what it looks like as a whole!As a whole, the overnight trip was a huge hit! We will definitely be taking guests here in the future because it was easy to get to and manageable in one day. Of course we enjoyed staying the night, consuming several beers, and arguing about whether it was right or wrong for Matthew Stafford to leave UGA before his senior year. That is another whole story but I don't believe my husband for a second when he says that he would have stayed to get his degree instead of taking the 80 million! :) This morning we could not figure out why there was such a raquet going on in the street below. Church bells were ringing, people were shouting, crowds of people were clapping. When one of us finally got up to see what all the commotion was we realized that it was the Heidelberg Half Marathon that we had seen signs up for! There were thousands of runners running through town and the rest of the city was out cheering for them! It was pretty neat to see!Now we are back in Wiesbaden and getting ready to start another week. We have a meeting on Tuesday with our banker and architect regarding the apartment we are thinking about buying. Keep your fingers crossed! I really really want it! Hope that everyone has a good week!!

This and That.....

Isn't my husband handy!? Somehow he managed to install license plate holders on both sides of our car! I was pretty surprised! That might sound insulting since he is an engineer but still....And both of them are so straight! Well done Deaner! We were just happy that the European license plate fit on our car and we didn't have to get the American/European plate. I know that the car looks nice and clean in this picture but don't worry, it is covered in POLLEN by now! I had no idea that spring in Germany would have just as much, if not MORE, pollen than Atlanta. It is killing us. Thankfully we just managed to get some Zyrtec and I am really hoping that it helps. Only one side of my nose is stuffed up and that is pretty obnoxious! Another shot of the car, pollen free and clean. It probably won't be this clean again until the next few months pass and we rid ourselves of the pollen.Deaner just dropped me off back at the hotel from lunch. He picked me up and we went up to the Exchange to do some errands during lunch. He had to get our gas ration card (I know that sounds weird but we have to have it to get gas on base!) and I had some stuff to pick up at the Exchange. I was excited to find out that we were able to prepay on our ration card and it will insure when we travel that we can buy gas at Esso stations through out Europe at our military base price! It is roughly HALF of what other Europeans pay. It definitely makes traveling cheaper!

Why didn't anyone tell me how delicious Taco Bell really is? :) I never ate at Taco Bell at home but man it was good today in the Exchange food court! Deaner got in the line for Subway acting all healthy but quickly saw the error in his ways and switched over to the dark side! YUM!! Bean burritos ROCK my world!

We went to the Shopette after we ate lunch and obtained the ration card so that we could fill up with gas. This is also where Americans can buy liquor and beer at a reduced rate. I always have fun browsing the beer aisle! I was laughing though when I came across this liquor.I am pretty sure that this is what my mother would refer to as ROT GUT. I think that the "Military Special" was about ten bucks whatever FLAVOR you want! Think about how you would feel the morning after drinking a bottle of that!

Tonight we are going out to dinner with our friends Jon and Steph to celebrate Steph's 26th birthday. Her birthday is actually on Saturday but Jon surprised her with a trip to Dublin for the weekend! How fun is that? We are going to a beer brewery for dinner and some authentic German food. Deaner will be sure to love it! I just hope he doesn't eat that albino sausage again! I wanted to get Steph a little something for her birthday since she has been my ONLY friend since we got here. I decided that my olive oil and crushed red pepper might be ready to test out so I am going to give her a bottle of it. That and a bottle of wine. Nothing big but something fun at least! And I think that the wrapping turned out cute! Check out how red the olive oil looks now!Also, about as soon as I posted yesterday I got an e-mail from my mom saying that Captain Jack got the results of his PET scan (you know, for his Salmonella/melanoma issue!). Apparently the news is good and his scans were clean. Basically it means that he has to have another surgery to remove his lymph nodes under his arms but that there is a chance that that might get all the cancer. We are really keeping our fingers crossed. My mom pointed out that at the LEAST this gives good ole Captain a few more years to tell us how much he loves us EVERY DAY! :) We promise to do the same!! Love you Captain! If you are reading (which I hear he frequently does) I better get a comment for this!Does anyone else think that it is odd that it is 2:40pm in the afternoon here and I am watching The Today's Show which comes on at like 6:00am at home! The shows are reversed here. Oprah and Dr. Phil are on in the mornings and The Today's Show is on in the afternoon! God help the people that watch those two regularly. They will kill you, one self-help brain cell at a time.

Tomorrow I will post about our upcoming weekend getaway! We are going to spend the day on Saturday and Saturday night in Heidelberg! I can't wait!

It's Official!!!!

I am now a licensed driver in Germany! Watch out roads! Here I come! And I really didn't understand much of what was on that test! After a 2.5 hour class, in which keeping my eyes open was extremely difficult, we finally got to take our 100 question test. We had to get at least 85 correct to pass. Deaner missed 10 questions and I desperately wanted to beat him. Unfortunately I missed 10 too so we only tied! I thought for a split second about telling him I only missed 9 but I know I would have eventually caved in and told the truth! :) Boo!

Besides taking the drivers test this morning, today had been pretty uneventful. I met Deaner for lunch by his office after the test and then headed back here to the hotel where I promptly fell asleep. I guess I am out of practice at getting up that early!

Hmmmmm, what else? Last night we booked our flight to go to Rome over Memorial Day weekend! Deaner has a friend from UVA that is living there with his wife and two children and they invited us to stay with them for the weekend. I am super excited! We are leaving Friday night after Deaner gets off work and coming back late on Monday night. So we will have almost 3 full days of sight seeing!! Does anyone have any suggestions of what we MUST see while we are there? I am a bit apprehensive because we booked flights on RyanAir but it was by far the cheapest way to go. Does anyone have any tips on flying this airline? I know we are not able to bring much with us at all and that we must follow all the rules or get nailed with fees so any tips would be much appreciated. My biggest fear is that we will get on a nasty airplane where all the seats are covered in other people's grossness. But for Rome, I will try and manage!

We are also trying to think of a place to go this weekend. Steph and Jon are going to Dublin for Steph's birthday and we are thinking about trying to take an overnight trip somewhere fun and not too far away.

Alright, I know that this is a boring post but it was a pretty boring day. Didn't walk into any concrete posts or anything! Above is a picture of my grandfather, Captain Jack, and me. If you have a second, send up a little prayer for him today! The results of his melanoma removal were not the best. The only slightly humorous tidbit that has come out of this is that we heard someone had been telling people to pray for the Gleaton's grandfather, who had a terrible case of Salmonella!! HA HA!! So not the same thing! :)

Note to self......

Dear Self, Please remember in the future not to walk out of the elevator doors while looking down reading the classifieds in the Stars & Stripes newspaper. See that pole? It isn't movable, it doesn't get out of the way for you, and it is made out of CONCRETE. Yes, that's right, somehow I managed to walk right into it. And the worst part was that I looked up at the exact time I walked into it so for a split second, I knew it was going to happen! Deaner and I were totally cracking up. This happened on Sunday but I forgot to tell y'all about it. At least I wasn't hurt! :)

Wow. I asked for comments yesterday and only got 9!!! That is just sad. BUT, I got several from readers that I didn't know about so it made me very happy! Thanks to everyone who did comment! I was happy to hear from y'all!

I had a few comments yesterday from readers asking me to piece together a few details about myself and how I ended up here in Germany. I am 28 years old and from Atlanta, Georgia. I lived in Atlanta my entire life besides an all too short stint in Oxford, Mississippi at Ole Miss for four years. I did try to prolong my time there a bit by telling my parents that I was planning on staying an extra semester. I got a response that went something like this..........

Mom: "Honey, we think that is a GREAT idea if you want to stay in Oxford for an extra year if you want to!! WE pay for FOUR".

Unfortunately I had to come home. :) I met my husband, Deaner, on New Year's Eve 2005 and we got married this past March 7th. Three weeks later we moved to Wiesbaden, Germany for his job. He is not in the service (although we do get the perks) rather, he is a civilian employee of the Department of Defense School System. He is also not a teacher! He is a civil engineer and will be building schools on American Military bases through out Europe. We are going to be in Germany for a minimum of THREE years but potentially longer. I'm not really thinking about that longer part year. As far as I am concerned we are moving back to Atlanta in March 2012!

I think that is about it in a nutshell. I'm not sure if I ever wrote this but Deaner somehow managed to win a basketball pool that he entered. The prize was a Wii and a Wii fit!! Awesome! It arrived yesterday and I think that Deaner was excited!Honestly dude, what is up with that hair!?! I swear it doesn't look like that normally! I think that the Wii will probably stay in the box until we move out of the hotel. At least until we get a transformer so we don't fry it!

Not much else is going on here. Deaner picked up our car today!! For some reason the guy on the airbase let it pass inspection even though we have a head light out. He said that since Deaner was nice and not a jerk like all the other people that take their cars there, that he would pass it! Now Deaner is going to be talking about how nice he is for the next few days. He is already fond of saying things like "I'm the nice one, you're the mean one"!! At least we have a car now and he can drive me to my drivers test tomorrow! Wooo-hooo! I hope I don't fail. It takes like 3 hours! I suppose I should be off to study! Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Also, Happy Birthday to one of my best friends in the whole world, Sarah Kate!! If you are reading, I miss ya and can't wait to see you in July!And yes, I am sitting in a laundry basket. It was a blast!

I'm up way too early

Why God, why? Why did you allow me to wake up at 6:15am this morning and stay awake? My husband is going to pay for announcing that his wedding ring was "GONE" while he was getting ready for work this morning. Ugh. As if that didn't wake me up to aide in the search. Fortunately it was in the pocket of his pajamas pants (I didn't even ask) and that crisis was averted but I was wide awake. Last night before going to bed I got to chat on Facebook with a friend of mine in San Francisco. We said good night because it was time for me to go to bed. At 6:30am when I reached for my iPhone and got on Facebook, she was on and it was still only 9:30pm there! It is so weird to me that I already had a whole night sleep and she was still awake at a decent hour. I hate not having contact with people at home until early afternoon.

So, this post is coming earlier today than it normally would so if you haven't seen the one from yesterday don't forget to go back and read it. It has all the pictures from the weekend excursions. I have had lots of people commenting on Facebook (and I wonder where all my time goes!) that they really enjoy reading my blog. Even people that I would have had zero idea read my blog have been sending sweet messages about it. I've read several blogs before that constantly encourage people to comment on their posts or to become a follower. I have never done a post like that because I know how it goes and I know that I am not always the best commenter on other people's blogs. However, I do try. And now I will shameless ask for people that are reading to comment and/or follow along! I love getting comments and it makes me feel like people are actually reading what I am writing! Those who have blogs will know what I mean! So, thank you to all my regular commenters! I love hearing from y'all and I will try and be better about returning the favor! For new readers, I'd love to hear from y'all too!!

I know I told y'all but I recently made a wedding album on Shutterfly. I wanted to do it on Kodak Gallery but the resolution of my pictures was way too high and it was taking forever to load. It still took forever on Shutterfly but I finally got it done. This book is sort of the "highlights" from the wedding. I can show it to people and they get the IDEA instead of having to look through my professional pictures that contain over 1,000 photos in three different albums. I'm sure my friends will appreciate it! Here is a picture of what the album looks like.Sorry for the glare. I paid extra to have the leather cover on the album but I think if I did it again I would choose a different cover. Not that I don't like it, but I think that one of the other fabric covers might have been cuter and less expensive. The album isn't very formal so the leather isn't necessary. Here are some shots of the inside pages.I was definitely happy about how it turned out. I would suggest taking advantage of the pictures that take up the whole page. They all turned out really great. Obviously you can't have a whole book with those large photos but they do look great every few pages or so.

I also got our moving cards last week from Vista Print. I ordered 60 of them and thought that they turned out great. They went quickly! I normally wouldn't be able to post this since it would have my home address on it but since we put our APO address on it I don't see the issue. Plus I blocked out other information.I think that the picture I used might have been a little bit too far away and we should have used one that was closer up but it still turned out great. I love Vista Print and I would order anything from them! These cards were only like $35 for 60 of them. That included printing, shipping, and envelopes!

The first picture that I posted really has nothing to do with this post. I just like it and wish that I was back in Costa Rica doing those zip lines again! I think I am about to go workout. Pay off at least 1 day of the lost bet. Plus I have nothing else to do! I had all the laundry done and all of Deaner's shirts ironed by 8:30 this morning! Yuck! I wasn't looking forward to ironing at all because I didn't have any starch. However, I found that if you use Downy Wrinkle Releaser when you iron, it works MIRACLES! I highly suggest it! I know I know, I am so domestic! :)

Weekend Update

This weekend didn't show a lot of promise on Friday afternoon but things started to look up quickly! The weather on Friday was rainy, nasty, and cold. I met Deaner for lunch on base but we found a little pizza place right out the back gate of the base that was warm and cozy. We were supposed to meet at the hotel at 2:30pm to head to a meeting that we had set up with a builder. Unfortunately Deaner missed his shuttle and he called to tell me that I was going to have to go alone. Needless to say I was not pleased about this turn of events. When he called the builder to tell her she said it wasn't a problem and that she would have someone pick him up at the base. Sweet, that meant that they could then swing by and pick me up and I didn't have to take a cab! So, we met with these people and now have a very promising lead on an apartment to purchase. The man we met with bought/owns the entire building and the lady is the architect that is renovating the building in keeping with the Wiesbaden Historic Registry. If everything works out and the financing part comes through than we would start working immediately. We got to see two finished apartments and then the apartment that MIGHT be ours. It is a DUMP right now and will take three months to gut and renovate. The great part would be that I get to pick out all appliances, tiles, counter tops ect. It would be incredible. I'm trying not to get my hopes up yet but as you can probably tell, I already have. Deaner is going to call the architect tomorrow and tell her we would like to go forward with checking out financing options. Keep your fingers crossed!

Friday evening we met Jon and Steph here for dinner.We have eaten here several times before but Friday was my best meal there ever! It was delicious. The weather was crummy but we were able to sit outside under the awning and heater. The food and beer were awesome! Afterwards we headed to an Irish Pub called Scrooges. We had a great table by the window so we could look out at the crappy wet weather! Multiple rounds later we called it a night and headed home. I wasn't up at the crack of dawn on Saturday (duh). The weather was crap again and I was moving pretty slowly! Deaner went on a walk by himself in the afternoon and then we ate at an awesome Italian restaurant up the street from the hotel. Deaner had lamb that he said was great and I had gnocci. Yum!! Then we went bowling! Turns out that there is a really nice bowling alley across the street from the hotel and we enjoyed a few games and a few beers! Unfortunately I lost the bet and now I have to work out every day this week! Crrrrrrrrap.

This morning we woke up to a beautiful day! Whooo-hoooo! After showering and getting dressed we walked into town. We ate lunch at a German restaurant that was outside of the Rathaus which is the old town hall (I think, and actually I could be dead wrong). Here is what I looked at while we ate.I had my German favorite, Kasespatzle, and Deaner had this disgusting looking thing.It was served in that giant bowl full of hot water and nearly made me barf to look at it. He claimed to like it but when I asked him if he would order it next time he said he might try something else. I'm going to call his bluff!

After lunch we wanted to walk to the edge of town and ride a funicular up to the top of this hill that overlooks the city. On the way there we passed the Kochbrunnen which is a fountain that dates back to 1366. 15 different springs meet here and it gushes out 346 liters of mineral water per minute. The water tastes NASTY (from what I hear) and it is really hot. Legend has it that the water has special healing powers for those who drink it but there are warnings on the fountain that say not to drink more than 1 liter a day or else it can have bad effects. I guess so since the water has traces of arsenic and cyanide! Thank goodness Deaner brought his own water bottle to fill up.The walk to the funicular was a bit lengthy for my liking but we finally made it. We rode this car up the steep hill for some awesome views of Wiesbaden.Deaner and I can see this church out of our hotel room window. It is really pretty from afar but even better up close. It is a Russian Orthodox Church and it still holds services today.We stopped for a beer at an outdoor restaurant before the long trek back. As always, the beer was quite tasty! I know this is mean but the lady at the table next to me had on the most hideous shoes I have ever seen. First of all, it is not okay to roll your jeans like this, wear (what I assume were) knee highs, and these witch shoes!! Ha ha ha ha!!Now we are home and winding down from a long day. Of course Deaner is starting to fall asleep on the couch and it is only 8:45pm. I have no plans tomorrow besides ironing some of Deaner's work shirts. Hopefully Steph and I will find some fun things to do this week. I think we are going to hit up Ikea at some point and I am going to get some picture frames for the wedding pictures I just ordered from Shutterfly. I have some pictures to post of my wedding album that just came from Shutterfly and our moving cards! Stay tuned!