What an Exciting Week

This week has been a really exciting week for us. At the start of the week we were able to get into the housing office to see what was avaliable for us. Because we have no children we would normally qualify for a two bedroom apartment on post, and if we had come in August like we planned thats what we would have gotten. However, God changed our plans for us so that we came after peak moving season which meant all of the two bedrooms were full. The normal protocol for this would be to make us just continue to wait until a two bedroom to open up, but again God intervened and put ladies in the office who believe in putting us in housing we wouldnt normally qualify for. So after filling out the necesary paperwork we were given to options to go look at and choose from. Both houses were only a street apart but the one we chose was far superior in our opinion. The house that we picked had a nicer yard, which is fenced in so it is perfect for Luna in the back it has a spectacular view. Our house is a huge three story townhouse with three bedrooms, two and a hald baths and a basement big enough for me to have a craft room and Daniel to have a game room! It is so beautiful and I cant wait to share pictures with you when we move in at the end of the month.

The rest of the work week was rather uneventful but the weekend was lots of fun. On Friday I was able to take Luna Baby to the dog park while Daniel was shooting hoops. It was an extra exciting adventure because a friend of ours that had been working with Daniel for 2 years and is a good friend of ours stopped by with his new wife, Kristi. Kristi and I have been talking via the internet for quite some time and have been really looking forward to meeting and enjoying Germany together. It was so nice to finally meet her in person and we definitely get along well! She is awesome :) Then today all four of us went to the Crown Jewel Bazaar to start on our Christmas shopping! It was super neat, there were a ton of venders there selling all kinds of neat European items! Things were very expensive so I only got two presents but I got lots of ideas now!

This week had been such a great week and I hope next week is just as good. I really cannot wait to move into our new house! We have already started talking about Christmas decorations and I am going on a spree to get everything we will need as soon as we are unpacked! I am so excited to finally have a nice place to decorate for Christmas! I am also excited because we are having Kristi and Zack over for Thanksgiving and I will be cooking the meal for the first time ever and I am beyond excited!

We will have our house ready soon so I expect some visitors shortly after! We love and miss you all so very much!

We used to have one of these when I was younger and it was always one of my favorit Christmas decorations so I had to take a picture when I saw one today.

Some beautiful hand- crafted clocks!

Our First Real Outting!!

Today was an awesome day! We slept in late and then spent some time walking around the town right out of the gate to post. I finally figured out how to upload pictures, unfortunately I have not figured out how to rotate the ones that need it so please bear with me! Because it is Sunday must shops were closed, but that was fine because we really just wanted to walk around and get Luna out of the hotel. I tried to take pictures of everything that look interesting or cute so I hope you enjoy them. We also found a cute little bakery and got our first German pastry- a chocolate filled crosssiant- YUM! After walking around for a while we headed back on post and took Luna to the dog park. She was so happy to have a big space to run around in again! Once we finally tired her out we headed back to the hotel. It was nice to get out and about as a family and it is definitely something we plan on doing often. Next weekend they are having a bazaar on post with over 50 Bavarian vendors! I am really looking forward to going and starting off my Christmas shopping! Tomorrow is our appointment with housing so I am hoping to have a good update about housing soon but we will see. Its almost dinner time here so I am off to get things done!
Guten Abend!

Cell phones

YAY! We finally have our German cell phones! It was very weird going four days with no cell phone. Lucily one of our friends gave Daniel a little prepaid one so he could stay in contact with his unit but even so we were both in smart phone withdrawl mode! haha We originally bought iPhones back in the states so that we could just switch out the sim cards and bring them here but we ended up getting a really sweet deal and got two new Samsung Galaxy S3's for 1 Euro each! They are awesome phones and I am really glad we got them. I missed having an android phone instead of an iPhone. We can't call or text the states without it costing us a large sum of money so for those of you with smartphones we will be using kik for messaging. Just download it in the marketplace and create an account then let me know and I will send you our user names! We also have tango for video calls.

We haven't done much yet. Thursday was our first full day here and we mostly spent that getting food and neccesities for the hotel room and took Luna on a walk. Friday we spent the whole morning in Daniel's inproccessing class filling out paper work and getting his appointments. We are so anxious to get housing and we have our appointment on Monday; I cannot wait! Then we had some lunch with friends and rode the bus for the first time. After we got back we headed off post to get phones. The way it works in Germany is that you go in and then they set it to activate which takes about 3 hours then you come back and get the phone. Our phones weren't ready by the end of the day so we had to wait and come back this morning.

Today we slept in until 10:30, which was nice becuase we had to get up very early our first two mornings here. Then we walked up to T-Mobil and got our new phones. We brough Luna walking with us which she loved! Then we came back to the hotel and had some food and spend almost an hour setting up our new phones exactly how we wanted them... did I mention how much I missed having an Andriod phone, because I definitely did! After that we hung out around hotel for a while, and I caught up on the vice presidential debate that I had missed on Thursday. We had to go over to the commisary again to get some more food; the snacks went faster than I expected!  Now that we have had dinner we are just enjoying a night in so we can rest up so hopefully we can do some exploring tomorrow!

On an exciting side note I finally figured out how to add pictures. Hopefully tomorrow I will find lots of neat things to take pictures of to show you all! I am off to shower and hit the bed!

Gute Nacht!

Let's Talk Travel

Well we have finally arrived at our final destination: the hotel. It has been an absolutely crazy and exciting journey! I am going to detail the past 30 hours or so and I was planning on including all of the photos I had taken. Unfortunately, I have not yet figured out how to do it and our internet is a little slow but I will be working on it and I promise they will be up soon.  :)

At 12:45 yesterday we began loading Dad and Sarah's cars for the long ride to the Baltimore Washington International. We had a total of 8 bags, seven people, one dog and a very large crate! The boys drove in one car (except Tyler, he drove separate) and the girls, including Luna were in the other. Once we got to Baltimore we headed over to a near by mall for dinner and a little shopping. After our time there we headed over to the airport around 7. Once we got there and got the cars unloaded we headed through check in. Our bags were stuffed full and we just barely made it under the weight limit, thank goodness! After check in we spend a little more time together and chowed down on some delicious cupcakes that Sarah surprised us with! Then 30 minutes before boarding time it was time to take Luna to her drop of point. I hated saying goodbye to her; I am such a nervous furmama! Mom, Dad, Kyle and Sarah stood in line right up until we had to go through security. It was so hard to say goodbye but we all did good and were able to hold it together (mostly...). 

Once we were through security we waited at our boarding gate for about 20-30 minutes and then we began boarding. I was so excited, it had been about 14 years since I have ridden on a plane so I was like a kid in a candy store. As luck would have it we were in the very last seat, which meant over head storage for us was practically non- existent but thankfully we were able to make it work. At about 10:30 pm we slowly started pulling away from the gate. This is the point where I became extremely nervous because I hadn't gotten my ticket saying that Luna was on the plane. First I asked the flight attendant about it; she didn't know what I was talking about so she said she would ask. Well she took too long to get back to me so I stopped another attendant to ask her. They eventually finally brought me her slip and went down and checked personally, so I was a little needy right off the bat.  After I knew she was safely on the flight I felt so much better and was able to actually be excited. Finally we started our way to the run way. I don't know if this is how every airport works but the path so the actual runway was so long and windy I thought maybe we were actually in an airplane version of Mario kart. Once the plane took off we read our good bye journal Sarah gave us which was a journal with notes from friends at our going away party. My mom had also surprised us by having my family write notes on index cards that she was able to add in. It was so awesome to be able to read all those messages as we started out our adventure.

Shortly after that I decided I was ready to try to sleep. Right as I was about to be fully asleep they came around with food and woke me up. It looked horrible but I was hungry and it turned out to be pretty good, well at least the part I ate was! Then I was ready to try to sleep again but this time right as I was on the edge of unconsciousness we hit some big turbulence and we had to put on our seat belts. I finally tried again and this time was awoken by a screaming baby, who screamed for quite a while. FINALLY I had some relief and was able to sleep for an hour or two. When I woke up I had my next meal and then whipped out my Disney Princess coloring book for some quality coloring time. At this point it was about 9:30 am (or about 3:30 back home) and I was able to see outside. I got up for a few minutes to look out the window and even took a few photos. Then when I got back in my seat I took advantage of the TV screens on the seat in front of me that allowed me to see from a camera under the plane, it was really neat (and yes, I didn't take pictures). I wasn't really sure what to expect from the plane but it was a bit bumpy and it reminded me of riding in the bus on marching band trips.

Finally we landed and began the process of getting to the buses. We picked up Luna pretty quickly after we got off but due to some technical difficulties it took quite a while to get our bags. Once we had collecting a few things we went through some very unorganized sorting of who was to go where and then it was off to the buses. Too give you an idea of how long it took we landed at noon and didn't pull off on the buses until 2:30. The scenery was beautiful on the way and I was able to get some picture. We decided that to help with jet lag that we weren't going to sleep on the bus so that we would be able to sleep tonight at the hotel. I am sure Daniel was ready to kick me out of my seat but I had to keep waking him, sometimes literally every few seconds. Two hours onto out bus ride we stopped to eat at a McDonald's, it was much nicer than an American one and it was neat to see things in English and German. The rest of the bus ride went a bit better, even if we did end up dozing off once or twice.

At 8:30 we finally arrived at Vilseck, the connecting base to Graf. We had to get some paper work taken care of then we met up with some friends who were so amazing as to have a cell phone waiting for us. Then we waited for our sponsor to pick us up and take us to the hotel. We checked in around 10 and then went to the shoppette to get some snacks and ordered some delivery. We have a really nice suite with a living room, kitchenette, bedroom and nice bathroom. Attached are photos from everything so far! It's off to bed for us now!
Gute Nacht!

To Our Family and Friends

Well today is the big day!  I am so excited it is here yet I am so not looking forward to the goodbyes. I hope that everyone enjoys following our time in Germany through this blog. I originally started this blog because when we found out we were being sent to Germany it was hard for me to find all the information I needed in one place so I thought I would create that place.As the time got closer to use leaving and so many people were saying things like keep in touch and post lots of pictures I realized this would be the perfect way to share what we are doing with all of our loved ones. So I will do my best to keep this updated with what we are doing and pictures of where we are going. I am so thankful for all of the love and support that everyone has given us as we prepare for such an exciting chapter in our life. I hope that each of you will be able to come visit us at some point. Hopefully it will only be a week of two until we get housing so we will be ready for visitors very soon!

It is amazing the amount of stuff that we have to pack for this plane ride. We are allowed two checked bags and two carry on bags each. We are at the limit and we are attempting to stuff them as full as we can! Eight bags later and we still have a box full of stuff that I have to get mom to ship to us since it didn't fit! Only a few more hours and we will be loading up the cars and starting the long drive to the airport. The goodbyes are going to be terrible but I know that a wonderful adventure awaits us.

We are lucky that we have a few friends that got to the base a month ago that are already working hard to make the transition easier for us. We are so blessed by all of the people that God has put in our lives through our time in the army and I cant wait to meet the many He has in store for us. I hope that all of y'all will keep us in your prayers for safety and easy adjustment. I can't wait until we start having visitors and until we see you all again.

Thank you all for being such blessings in our lives.

<3