Christmas Markets

So Christmas markets are a big thing here in Germany. With Fred being broken and Eve eating so much gas, we haven't been doing much but some friends invited us to go to the Heidelberg Castle and Christmas market and we went! It was great to get out and see more of Germany. 

This is the castle (I got this photo from Google, because we weren't able to get a photo of the entire castle)

 It's a pretty awesome castle. The original part was built back in the 1200's. They have guided tours throughout the entire thing but we chose to just look around ourselves because 6 kids is a lot to try and get through a tour, especially when 5 are ages 3 and under. 

 Even without the tour there was a lot of cool things to look at. My favorite would have to be the doors and the portcullis. 

 Ricky and me in the castle courtyard.

The details that they had on all the buildings were amazing! (granted I think this is one of the newer parts of the castle, still amazing though)

Don't you just love his hat?

We had lunch, and if I had remembered I would have taken photos of that and the Christmas market but by that time we were getting pretty cold. I got earmuffs to help me cause when my ears get cold I get headaches. (again sorry for no photos)

I can't wait to do it again next year!

The First Snow

It Snowed!!!!

Yay for it starting to feel like Christmas!

Trouble in Paradise

Sorry it's been such a while since I've posted on here, but we've had a few things pop up that have been keeping us busy. Ricky's been very busy with work. He's working from 11pm to 8 am and has to go to classes and meeting during the day so he hasn't been getting as much sleep as he probably should. I've officially gotten all the birthday presents sent out from my year of birthday presents. It was fun, even if I fell way behind in the end, sorry about that. I don't think I'll be able to keep it up because funds are going to be very short for a while. And that is because of the other "issue" we had. 

About 11 days ago we got into our first car wreck. Our car isn't too bad, but the other car is totaled. Luckily no one was seriously hurt. We didn't get a photo of the other guy's car but here's ours.

It was pretty terrifying. One of those "And suddenly a van" cause we didn't see it at all before it hit. I pretty much broke down right then and there. I bawled for about 2+ hours. Ricky was able to keep it together enough to get help there before he too shut down. Eventually we pulled ourselves together but it wasn't easy. It's taken a while to bounce back from this, it's hard to think of the positives in these kind of situations but there are actually quite a few. 

1. No one was hurt. It was scary but other then a few bruises no one was hurt seriously.

2. We were lucky we weren't going faster cause then we would have been broadsided and Ricky could have been seriously hurt. (He was driving)

3. Ricky was grateful that it didn't hit on my side. I think that would have freaked him out even more then it had.

4. We're lucky the damage to our car is repairable, cause we can't afford a new car. 

5. We're lucky we can fix it ourselves cause we can't afford to pay the 2000 euro it would've cost to get it fixed in a shop.

6. It forced us to ask for help. Ricky and I are very stubborn people who like to do everything ourselves. But we couldn't do anything. 

7. The LDS church is amazing! I only had 1 number of someone in our ward but she was right there to help, even though we were just trying to get the bishop's number. 

8. Ricky is grateful that his S4 isn't that car that got in a wrecked. 

And these are just a few of the things we've thought of. All in all it could have been so much worse. Now it's time to pick ourselves up and get on with our lives, and not let this bother us anymore.

Say Hello to Fred

Dear Family, Friends, and anyone who reads my blog, I'd like to introduce you to Fred.

 Yes, Fred is a car, well wagon. 

Fred is short for Manfred Von Richthofen aka the Red Baron. We got him about 3 weeks ago in Frankfurt for 1720 Euro about 2300 dollars. He's a standard diesel wagon, with a radio that doesn't like to be turned down (there's a loose or broken wire in there that makes the volume nob not work the way it's supposed to, or at all sometimes). Frankly I think he's amazing, even with his radio problems. Mainly because he's very easy to drive and cause he gets close to 40 MPG. I mean we got him 3 weeks ago, filled up once in Frankfurt, and have been driving him regularly and he's barely under 1/2 tank. (Ricky's car Eve has had to be filled up twice since that trip) How awesome is that! He makes me like wagons, and I've had a hatred of wagons ever since I was a little kid stuck in the very back of our stupid wagon in those ridiculous backwards facing seats. I hated it. But Fred has changed me. If they had diesel wagons in the states I would totally get one.

We Got Our Stuff

So this is a little late but our stuff arrived! 

 It's funny how everything you own doesn't seem like so much in some boxes but once you unpack it all, it seems to multiply by 20.

It took about a week to get it all unpacked from the boxes, but I'm still working on finding places for it all. Hopefully I'll get everything put away eventually... :)

Random Awesomeness of Germany

Germany is pretty awesome and the Germans are very different from what I expected. First of all there are no trucks (ok there are a few I've seen maybe 2-3 off base that might actually be owned by Germans), everyone owns wagons or hatchbacks. And what's even crazier then that is that these small cars are used to pull trailers. Huge trailers! Don't believe me? See for yourself.

I guess this is just a regular car but I mean how crazy is it seeing a car pulling a trailer like that?!?

Other German awesomeness is this guy!

I went on a tour provided by the base through a German grocery store and we met this guy in charge of the wine. As you all should know by now that my Husband is fascinated by mustaches and this has been the most epic of mustaches we've ever seen! It goes all the way back to his ears. Germans are awesome!

Painting

So we decided that we would paint our house this time. Paint makes such a difference on how the room feels. It took a good 2 weeks to finally decide on color, but only 2 days to paint. 

Here are the before and after pictures.

Before

 After

Before

 Another Before

 After

With all the tape off.  It's subtle but made a huge difference in the feel of the room. It makes the house feel more like home, which is the ultimate goal with all these moves.

Germany Is Beautiful

So I've been trying to take photo's of the area around here rather then just admire it, but its kind of hard to remember all the time. Lucky for you, Ricky is better at it then I am so here a couple of photos he took.

The rolling hills are so pretty!

 And if you can't tell there are tree's everywhere!

So here's something interesting that stood out to me, there are no watering systems for their fields. I mean it makes sense cause it seems to rain at least once or twice every other week but coming from desert farming communities I'm used to seeing wheel lines and hand lines everywhere. Granted without all that equipment the view is so much prettier.

Our House

Sorry it's taken so long but we finally have internet again! YAY!!!!!!! So now I can finally post some pictures of our house that we've been in for over a month. It took a little while to find a house that we liked that wasn't too far from the base. The shorter the travel time the more we save on gas, which is super expensive here. Amazingly enough we found one fairly early on which was a good thing, because the air force only covers about a month of hotel fees and since we didn't have furniture and had to borrow some from the base, which conveniently couldn't be delivered until almost the end of our allowed month. But it all worked out in the end and here we are!

Here's the front view. Also you can see our crappy rental car. This is the only photo I could find of it.

 The kitchen. Yes, it's a little small but it's nice. 

 Random note about German kitchens their ovens and refrigerators are very small. Over half of my baking trays don't fit in the oven, and see that big cabinet looking thing on the far left side of the photo, that is actually the fridge. And don't be fooled thinking it goes all the way to the floor, no there's a drawer under it.

Anyways moving on this is the living area.

 And this is the dinning area/stairs. There's more rooms on the first floor, like the bathroom/laundry room. (yeah the washer and dryer are in a bathroom) and there's also a storage room where we put the American size fridge the base is letting us use.

 On the second floor there are 2 extra rooms.

 A full bathroom that has a huge bathtub (not pictured) and a separate shower.

 And the master bedroom, and if you're wondering, there are no closets anywhere. We got wardrobes to hang our clothes in.

 Our house does have a third story. Right now it's being used as a storage area for everything that we don't have a place for yet.

 Another random fact about our house is that it's all tile on all the floors in all the rooms. Luckily the bottom floor is heated so that is super nice. 

We also have a small backyard and a shed.

All in all it's a really nice house and we enjoy living here.

Bring on the Wine Fests

So we arrived in Germany at the perfect time. All the little villages are having wine festivals. And our 2nd weekend here we went to one with our friends the Halls. It was one highly recommended by the Ramstein Military ward because of the amazing fire work show. Speaking of which there are 2 military wards in this area. 2! Anyways more on that later back to the wine fest. So we drove through the rolling hills and windy roads out to Bernkastel-Kues. It was very crowded but gorgeous. 

A view of the rolling hills on our way there. So many trees!

At Bernkastel-Kues there were fields of grapes that went up these hills. It was really cool.

You can kind of see part of the town.

They had a castle there and the fire work show was kind of representing a battle from the river that ran though the middle of the town and the castle. 

Now don't worry about us buying any wine, cause we didn't. We did get a foot long bratwurst and German crepes and giant pretzels and a bonsai tree. Mostly though we spent our time walking up and down looking at the stands and just having fun. There was a lot to see including the bands that were playing along the street. 

A swan just hanging out in the river that runs through the town.

Eventually the firework show stared and it was amazing!!! Definitely the best I ever remember seeing. 

Thanks again to the Halls for hanging with us while there! It was a blast!!!

This is something that we definitely want to do again next year. Hopefully we'll a little more German by then.

Traveling

After our 2 week vacation we had to fly back to Texas so that we could fly to Germany. Sounds weird right? Well this is our first time moving with the Air Force and they said we either could fly out of Abilene for free, or make our own way to Baltimore and get reimbursed. 

Since our extra funds were scarce we opted for the cheaper choice of flying back to Dallas and getting a ride back to Abilene so we could fly out of there. Luckily we have some absolutely amazing friends who took pity on us and came and got us from the Dallas airport at 11:30 pm and drove us the 3 hours back to Abilene and even let us crash on their couch. They even let us borrow their car in the morning so we could make our flight from Abilene to Dallas. (If you're wondering, yes we know now.) Then from Dallas to Baltimore where we were also very lucky to have wonderful friends willing to come pick us up and let us stay with them, then drive us to the airport again in the morning. They even drove us around the DC area and I got to see the Washington monument form afar. Thanks again to both the Bayley's and the Wilson's for taking in the homeless and getting us to where we needed to be. You guys are the absolute best!!!!

Finally though we get checked in for our flight from Baltimore to Germany. It was delayed a couple of hours due to a thunder storm but finally we took off. I have to admit I was too excited to sleep and taking a sleeping pill didn't help, in fact it made me even more antsy and go figure when we landed was about the time the pill started kicking in. I was the walking dead for my first day in Germany. I don't remember much more then windy roads, eating some food, nearly falling asleep while standing up, oh and that our hotel wouldn't let us check in when we got there because we were 2 hours early for regular check in time. When we finally did check in I crashed. 

My first week in Germany was spent making sure I stayed awake during the day so that I could sleep through the night. I got it easy, Ricky had to start some of his in-processing and take his driving test and go get a rental car so that we wouldn't be stranded at the hotel over the weekend. He is pretty amazing cause he got all the he could done and in the end we had a rental car, a crappy rental car but a rental car all the same. 

Two Week Vacation Part 4 (The Finale)

 Sorry it's taken so long for me to update some more on here but not having internet has made it difficult. We don't really have good internet now, we have one of those internet sticks that only works for a few days then it takes almost an 30 mins to load any page. Luckily we are back to the few faster days. So as we continue on the saga that is mine and Ricky's two week vacation I bring to you to the part were we left the beautiful Oregon Coast and started making our way back towards Idaho.
I do have to say that Allen is pretty amazing at road trips in making sure we get to see a lot of stuff, most of it really interesting! For instance we went and saw an amazing air and space museum. *Please forgive me for not remembering the names to anything in this post. It's been over a month and there's no one here to help me remember.*
The really cool thing about this museum is that it had the spruce goose. Granted before this trip the only other place I had heard about the spruce goose was from Phineas and Ferb (don't judge, it's a good show) but I did get to learn more about it and many many other planes from WW1 WW2 and the  Vietnam war. All the tours guides were retired veterans and because it was such a military friendly place, Ricky was able to get us all in for free!
The Spruce Goose took up almost the entire hanger.

There are a ton of pictures from there but I don't want to add them all and not have anything to say about them so I'm going to continue on with our story.
The next stop was at this water fall. Once again the name for it has completely left my mind but it's a really pretty one with a hiking trail that leads up to the very top. We (Ricky and I) went all the way up. It was gorgeous and definitely worth the climb.

That waterfall.

The rest of the trip was spent enjoying the ride. Ricky and I made sure to have fun and here are a few photos to prove it.
Us in aviators. How cool are we?!?

So Ricky has kind of been obsessed with mustaches for a while and he found a vending machine that had fake mustaches, so of course he had to buy one.

We had about 2 hours worth of entertainment from that 50 cent toy.

After making it back to Idaho we spent the last couple of days with Ricky's family. We went to lunch with his dad, and I even got to meet an Uncle that I haven't met before. But mostly we got to spend time with his mom and Ken and Gunner, and of that time most of it was spent on the River. They have a boat and so we got to learn how to knee board. Ricky was way better at it then me.

We got to go tubing! Always a blast!

And Ricky even tried to learn how to slalom ski. Unfortunately due to how many photos we'd taken on our trip we ran out of memory. It was all enjoyable, but the best part was just getting to spend so much time with family before we headed off to Germany.

Two Week Vacation Part 3

After the family reunion, my mother and Allen took Ricky and I to go see the Oregon Coast. I had never seen the ocean before (seeing it from an airplane doesn't count) and since we were so close we took the time to go spend about 3 days there. We stopped at a few places on the way there. Ricky's favorites were the Bonneville Locks with the fish ladder and the Salmon Fish Hatchery. If you didn't know, he likes fish. 

The fish ladder. It was cool to watch even though it was the right season there were still some fish going over.

 This was one of the huge sturgeon at the fish hatchery.

When we made it to the ocean first thing Ricky and I did, (after helping Mom and Allen check in and take our bags up to the room) was go out and walk along the beach.
My first photo of me on the beach!

We were there for 2 nights, and really only 1 full day. But I loved every minute of it. I would absolutely love for our next duty station to be near the beach! Most of our time was spent near the beach. We spent every morning before breakfast out there just enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells. The full day that we were there we went to Newport and spent the day touring the area. They had an interactive museum inside their visitors center, a light house you could tour (we didn't cause the line was forever long) a cobble beach that you could walk along and see seals, and tide pools (they were kind of washed out but still pretty cool) with a few things to look at.
The light house.

 That night after touring the area and exploring a few other areas Ricky decided he would get crazy with me (I was feeling adventurous, cause "Adventures out there!(thumbs up)")* and go out into the ocean. It was absolutely freezing!!!! As soon as my legs touched the water they went numb.

 If you're wondering why I'm not looking up for the photo, the wave coming in surprised me cause it got up to my waist. After we got the photo we ran for the indoor pool and sauna the condo had. All in all it was a wonderful trip and I was sad when we had to leave. Luckily I know that we will get to see the ocean again someday and get to spend more time there.
*(Movie quote, Name that movie!!!)

Two Week Vacation Part 2

While on leave Ricky and I were able to make it to my family reunion. We went my Uncle's house in Oregon. Everyone but my little brother (who's on a mission in Africa) were all able to make it. Ricky and I rode up with my Mom and Allen because we didn't have a car. We were able to stop along the Oregon Trail. It was neat to see how it was kind of like in everyday life along the trail.
At my uncle's house we were able to enjoy cooler weather. It was around 70 degrees the entire time we were there so very comfortable compared to the 109 degree weather we had the last week in Texas. He also had a home made water slide which was both terrifying and totally awesome! I only went down a few times because every time I would almost slide off the end of the slide. We didn't take any photos of us on it but we got a few good ones of the nieces and nephews.

 They were getting crazy going down on their bellies.

The kids had so much fun on this thing, as well as the adults. It was pretty Awesome! I do have to give props to my 3 year old niece who would go down from the top of the slide by her self. I wish we had gotten a photo of her doing it but we were to busy enjoying everything our selves.
The second day there Ricky, Me, two of my brothers and my Uncle climbed his mountain.
Us taking one of the many breaks I needed on the way up while my Uncle told us stories.

 We made it to the top! Taking a breather before heading back down.

Other stuff we did while up there was horse back riding for all. My uncle has a shetlen pony that the little kids got to ride around on, and a few bigger ones for the older kids.
Some really liked it.

 Some were scared at first but eventually got into it.

Some loved it right from the start.

 They all wanted to ride the pony all the time.

 Ride 'em cow boy.

 The older kids getting a ride before the adults take one later.

Over all it was a great weekend! I am so happy we were able to make it to hang out with my family for the 3 days we were there! And Ricky loved it too! 

See he's having so much fun!

I hope we get it do it again very soon!