London Trip for Valentine's Day 2014

This past weekend, Greg and I visited London! No, it wasn't technically "for" Valentine's Day, per say, but this year Valentine's Day fell on the Friday before President's Day, meaning that it happened to be the first day of a 4 day weekend. Since we won't get much time to travel very far in the next few months, we decided to jump on this opportunity to take a trip we've been discussing since we landed in Germany: a trip to the UK!

I could probably write a post for each day we spent there, because we crammed so much stuff into 3 days. Instead, I'll try to limited it to the basics.

Good Things Come

I apologize for my lack of blogging recently! We have been rather busy,  but not with anything particularly interesting. However, we have a lot of fun and exciting changes coming our way soon, which we are thrilled to share with everyone!

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!

2 Year Anniversary: Trier, Germany

Sunday was our 2 year wedding anniversary! I must say, the second year was much more stressful and trying than our first year. Actually, despite Greg being deployed for most of it, our first year of marriage was a cakewalk compared to this past year. Hopefully year three will be a little more quiet!

Thinking Happy Thoughts

Some days, living in Germany just really, really sucks. I'd like to think of a more eloquent way to put it, but there just isn't one.

Greg was assigned today to a month long duty in January that requires him to be within 3 hours of post at all times. It wouldn't be so bad if, you know, I hadn't already booked and paid for a 4 day snowboarding vacation in Garmisch for MLKJ weekend. I get it, the unexpected is part of "army life", but that doesn't make it any less irritating. Plus, from the second you step off the plane in Germany, everyone is telling you how you need to go travel. Then, the second you do attempt to travel, the Army makes other plans. We almost didn't get to go to Switzerland because of his school and now we probably won't be going snowboarding again this winter between his extra duties and my new job.


Instead of being frustrated, I'm going to attempt to be positive and think of all the good things we have going on right now. Today, we custom ordered a 2014 Jeep Rubicon X from ENCS. While Greg was still in Afghanistan, he expressed a desire to trade his car in for a Jeep again. Most of you know, when we met, Greg had recently bought a Rubicon and managed to win his first date with me by offering to take me for a ride in it. I know, it sounds incredibly cheesy looking back, but I'm sure girls have fallen for worse things than that. After moving to Colorado, Greg traded his Rubicon in for his GTI which he's loved, but also outgrew. We were planning on trading his GTI for another Jeep when he returned from deployment last year, but changed our minds when Greg received orders to Germany. Having a VW in Germany seemed like a much better idea than a huge Jeep. For that reason, we left my Jeep Sport with my Dad in Georgia and only shipped his GTI.
After spending a few months here, we started to rethink our decision. Sure, the GTI is great for small parking garages, but it's also quickly depreciating in value and our financial situation is not permanent. Right now, we both have good paying jobs with benefits, very few bills and disposable income. That very well may not be the case when we return to America, and we know it. We have always talked about eventually getting a larger sized Jeep as a "family" car and realized that we're better off taking on a car payment while we can still afford it. Will the Jeep possibly be a little inconvenient here in Germany? Probably, but we know our situation here is not permanent and we still have the "beater" BMW we bought when we got here. Ultimately, we decided to buy the Jeep because we want it for the future and would like to be able to pay it off before we leave Germany.
Because it was ordered from the factory, we won't get to pick it up for a few more months when it comes to port in northern Germany. Once we get it, I'll have plenty of pictures to post!

Today, I also got a letter in the mail from the 4 year old Nepalese girl I sponsor through a charitable organization. I've sent her a few letters and gotten some updates from her caregivers, but this was the first letter I received from her. It was just a very simple page allowing her to circle pictures that showed things she like to do and eat. Even so, it helped to put a smile on my face this afternoon.

She drew me a flower.

Greg completed his GoPro compilation from Zermatt which you can view here. I tried in vain to link it directly into the blog entry, but it wouldn't work properly. Fair warning, it gets really loud after the first song.


We may be taking a day trip close by this weekend to celebrate our anniversary and my birthday. Since Greg can't leave the 3 hour radius, we'll probably visit Trier, a city in western Germany known for his Roman history. Others around here have told us that it's a cute city to visit with a lot of interesting things to see, so we're hoping it will be worth the drive!