Nothing New

Nothing really exciting has happened over the past few days, but I thought I should quick post something anyways because it has been awhile.

We still don't have a confirmed date on when we will be coming home, but it still looks like we should be flying in on the 10th. David said he should know forsure on Tuesday.

This week will be pretty busy for us. On Tuesday we finally get our laundry machine if everything goes right. It is a lot of work bringing your stuff to a laundry mat every week. Wednesday David has to bring the Jeep in because it got recalled. He is able to bring it somewhere on base to get fixed because we bought our Jeep from a military car sales place. They just had to order the part. There was 2 other Jeeps that had the same problem. And Thursday we get all of our stuff delivered. So Friday - Sunday will be spent unpacking so we can have it all done before we go home. Our last move we just spent one weekend unpacking and it was all done. It may be a little harder here with the lack of storage, but David always seems to make it work. Its like a puzzle to him.

David went skateboarding this morning. He has been wanting to go for awhile now.

I am just watering the grass...fun!

I just unpacked all of our stuff and there was 3 things broken, so I was sort of bummed. I was really sad about my Pampered Chef stone that broke.

Shipments

We waited until almost 7pm to get our express shipment yesterday. But it was worth the wait to get a few more things. So today I will unpack the few things we got. This weekend we will have to wash the blankets we got because the movers decided to pack them in our garbage can, so you can image how nice they smell.

Yesterday, we also got some good news on our other shipment....it is already here! It wasn't suppose to be here until August 8th. So they are going to deliver it on the 3rd. That will give us plenty of time to unpack before we go home. It will be nice to come home from leave to a house that is all put together instead of a house that is all full of boxes.

How Am I Suppose To Plug That In?

Tomorrow they will be delivering our first shipment of household goods. It will be nice to finally be able to get our house together. We were looking forward to getting our TV and our microwave, but it looks like we wont be able to use those two items right away. Since we live off base every thing is 220 voltage. So we had to buy some new items, like curling irons, blow driers, alarm clocks and fans or we had to make sure our items were dual voltage and buy these little plug-ins that change your item to 220, so you can plug it in. If your item isn't dual voltage and you don't want to buy a new one...like our microwave or David's amp we need a transformer. They are not cheap, we can buy a used one for $85. And they are big and ugly...well, not huge, but it is a metal box that has to sit right next to the item. Since we have to use an AFN decoder box we are only able to get TV in one room. If you want TV in each room you have to buy a box for each room.

Sunday we went grocery shopping and forgot our groceries in the car and went to the BX for an hour. I am not sure how that happen, we just drove over to pay our internet bill and decided to go to the BX since it was right there. We were driving home and David goes, "Didn't we go to the grocery store?" We both couldn't believe we did that. It was so hot in that car. We were lucky all of our stuff wasn't melted and our stuff wasn't ruined. I swear my memory is going!

Been doing some cooking. It is fun to try some new meals.

This is a week of birthdays... I want to wish Auntie Ann, Uncle Bob, Ashley and Ron a Happy Birthday! Also, I missed Auntie Jodi, Mandy and Joni's Birthdays last week...so Happy Birthday to you!

Raining

We finally got some much needed rain yesterday evening. The rain really helped to cool down our house. Once the rain started to let up, we opened up the doors and put the fans in front of the doors...it was just like we had AC. I even felt a little cold at one point.

Before the rain we did get some yard work done. Our garden is like a jungle right now. We just hope to get it all cleaned up before winter and next spring we will start to plant some new flowers. It will be a long process, but it will be neat to see what it looks like when we leave here in 3 years.

Having a phone number that everyone can call has been so much fun. It makes living over seas feel more normal. Its so wierd sitting at home and all of a sudden the phone will ring and it is someone from the states. It is so great to hear from everyone. This week hopefully we will have our hook-up for our phone, so that is when our unlimited minutes will start. They only give you 500 minutes until you get your hook-up.

It's Hot Here!

Yes it's true... we have TV! It took the satelite guy over 4 hours to get it working, but he did it! Yesterday, I spent most of my day flipping through the 8 channels we get, so today I have to get some work done outside.

It has been so hot here and inside our house. You just get so sticky and gross! I love the hot weather, but it would be nice to be able to come into an air conditioned house.

David noticed in my last post that we have been getting brain washed by the commercials in the military. I suppose only the people in the military reading this will realize what he is talking about. But when I was talking about our express shipment and I said "towels....things you really need right away." There is a commercial just like that on AFN and right after that part in the commercial, this little boy goes "Dad, I am going to need a bigger box!" It was so funny when he mentioned it to me.

Hopefully, this weekend we don't have to do much around the house. We have been so busy every weekend. We will have to go and do our laundry, but that is a must. We don't get our laundry machine installed until the 1st.

Hoping....Waiting....

I had a dentist appointment this morning and no cavities! We almost didn't make it because our alarm clock didn't go off. We woke up about 5 minutes before we had to be out the door and the dentist office is 30 minutes from our house, so we were rushing to get there.

The TV guy has been here ever since we got home this morning at 9:00 and it is noon now. But I am not giving up hope yet. He has gotten some German channels working, but not any american channels. It is so hard to communicate with him because he doesn't understand english and plus I have no idea how to work one of the AFN satelite boxes, so I can't offer any help to him. David had to go into work so he couldn't stay here for the appointment. It would have been nice to have him here because these AFN satelites are different then German satelites and it doesn't seem like this guy gets it. But I guess we will have to wait and see...

We got news that our express shipment will be here on the 26th, so that is great! We only sent about 6 or so boxes. In your express shipment you can send things like dishes, clothes, towels...things you really need right away, but they don't let you send furniture. We are still hoping our main shipment will be here on August 8th.

If you haven't checked out David's blog lately, you should read what he has posted...

Movin' On Up

Yesterday we order Netflix, it seems like the smart thing to do. We know a few people in the military who have it and they really like it. Hopefully it will be worth it with the mail being so slow sometimes. We got it so we could get 3 movies at a time, so hopefully we will be able to watch at least 6 movies a month.

Boy, the other day Vonage and now Netflix. We sure are stepping into the future. Now if we could get our TV working.

Lastnight for dinner I made chilli, I was pretty impressed with myself. Since I am not working right now I have time to cook dinner. I actually made it from a cookbook. Sounds bad that I didn't know how to cook before I was married and I worked in a restuarant as a cook. But I am now finally learning because I have the time.

We Got A 763 Number

We order Vonage the other day, so now we have a phone number with a 763 area code. How cool is that? I am not exactly sure how it works, but I know it goes through our computer some how. We will get some sort of hook up that will connect to our computer and phone, and when people call it will ring on our regular phone. Since we got a 763 phone number it wont be long distance for you all to call us. But give us about a week before everything is hooked up and running, they have to mail us the hook up. Also, remember we are 7 hours ahead of you. I will email you our new phone number today so you have it.

Yesterday we drove to Ramstein to do some shopping. They have some more places to shop at on there base, so it was fun to see what they have. There is tons of bases here in Germany. Oh, and we got to eat at Chilis...I know doesn't sound exciting to someone who lives in the states, but to us, someone who has lived in Turkey then Iceland, having a restuarant like Chilis only 45 minutes away is like Heaven.

Still no TV, hoping Tuesday...but we will see. Started reading a 600+ page book, I guess that is what no TV does to you. Maybe it is a good thing.

All the flowers in my garden are starting to bloom. They look so pretty. I do a lot of work out there during the week and David does work during the weekend. He really likes taking care of the lawn.

We are hopefully planning on coming home August 10th - September 1st, but it all depends on what flights we can get. But we should be home for about 23 days.

Can't wait for August...Miss you all!

The Pictures I Promised

Our New House
I only have two pictures of the inside because all the ones I took turned out so blurry. David has to re-take them for me. He is the professional picture taker in our family!

This is our backyard, it is really pretty and a lot of work for us.

The side garden
Here are a few pictures of the neighborhood we live in. It is so pretty here. It is nice town to walk through.


Gerolsheim is the city we live in
There are tons of vineyards that surround our house, so that is really neat. Wine season starts in September. They have a huge festival for it. You can walk through the vineyards and eat the grapes.


This is a picture from the street of the hotel we stayed in for way to long it seemed.
David did all the driving during our trip over here
I took a picture of where we were headed
This was the first McDonalds we had eaten at in a long time, it was in Denmark. So I had to get a picture of it. Eating off base in Iceland was so expensive, so we never did. So eating at this McDonalds was a big treat for us.
Denmark

These are pictures from the ferry

This was our room for 3 days...it was really small!
While waiting to get on the ferry we took some last minute pictures of Iceland, because I am sure we wont be back.
The Ferry


These were the caribou David saw while we drove to get to the ferry. He was so excited about seeing them.
David took these pictures with the video camera
Here is David trying to get closer to them with his video camera
I tried to get a good picture of them, but we scared them off...you can see them running away in the left side of the picture.
We saw tons of sheep while driving. David had to be really careful not to hit them.
This was a picture at 3am in Iceland
This is Glacier Bay

There is a seal in this picture.
It was cool to see real glaciers


David took this picture for me while I was sleeping. He knew I would have wanted to see all these purple flowers.

The night we had to say good bye to our neighbors.
It was so windy one day that the grass that they had laid got blown away.

This is the building that we lived in
I took a picture of all of our stuff when the movers where there

This was when we started to pack up on our own

Hopefully, soon I will get some good pictures of the inside of our new house. Hope you all enjoyed our pictures.

Internet

Finally, Finally...FIN-A-LLY we got our internet set up and we got some sort of technology in our house. It feels like forever since we have been intouch with everyone. And plus we don't have a working TV. We haven't watched American TV since we left Iceland. Thank goodness we brought our DVD player in our Jeep, so we can rent movies atleast. I believe we have watched 15 movies in the last 5 days. Pretty much have become a movie critic.

We almost got our washer and drier installed today too, but that would have been too much good stuff in one day.

Will get pictures up tomorrow of our house and the drive over. And I will write more tomorrow about what has been going on with us. But just had to let you know we are still doing well!

Miss you all...

No What?

Living in our new house has been wonderful. Of course there is one downside to our house.... No A/C! That has been hard to get use to, but we bought a few fans to put around the house. And actually the house stays pretty cool if you keep all the blinds closed. Most houses in Germany don't come with A/C, so don't think we just got the unlucky house with out A/C.

Our internet is still not hoooked up at our house, so we are having to come up to the library to use the internet. We are hoping by the end of this week we will have it, so then finally we can post some pictures.