New Years & New Age

New Years Eve is my favorite. I have no idea why. Personally, I've always been a bigger fan of holidays that allow you to spend time with friends rather than family, but I also have not lived near my family for holidays in a long time. New Years Eve is a much more enjoyable holiday to spend away from your family than say, Thanksgiving.

This New Years, however, was an extremely depressing reminder of how lonely we are in Germany. After 7 months, we still haven't made any friends that are in a similar position in their lives as ourselves. It's pretty hard to throw a New Years party when no one can attend because it wouldn't start until after their children's bedtime. We couldn't go out of town because of Greg's extra duty, so I ended up working New Years Eve and falling asleep shortly after coming home. Greg woke me up before midnight to see if I wanted to watch fireworks outside. There weren't any planned, organized fireworks here, just a bunch of people setting them off in their backyard. We drove around for a few minutes to see them. It was a strange feeling that our entertainment for the night was watching other people set off fireworks in their backyards. By the time we got back home, the whole city was covered in a cloud of dust and smoke from the fireworks. Augustus was terrified by what sounded like a firefight happening outside. Aside from that, it was a pretty average day for us.

My birthday also corresponds closely with New Years, so I am officially one year older! We didn't do much for my birthday, but I didn't care to either. I baked my usual Black Magic cake which was ruined by our POS military issued oven, but that's a totally different and uninteresting story. We went to Chipotle in Frankfurt, which sounds kind of sad considering that's basically a fast food restaurant, but we both love Chipotle and it's as close as we can get to eating something "American" here in Germany. I probably enjoyed that fast food more than anything else I've ever eaten on the economy.



I don't really do resolutions, but I am very excited that 2013 is over as it has not been a great year for us. We're ready to start 2014 with a little more optimism and I do have a few goals I'd like to complete. Mostly, I want to save more for retirement and finish paying off my car. I know, nothing big or exciting over here. Hopefully, we'll do some more traveling, but I wouldn't consider that a goal. We've been talking a lot lately about planning a trip to London in the first half of this year and I'd still really love to persuade Greg into a cruise this summer, but he's still not interested! Who doesn't want to spend a week on the Mediterranean drinking and eating?! My crazy husband, obviously. Hope everyone else had an awesome start to 2014!