Champagne Friday

Lady shopping time!  Work it.

Hallo lovelies!

Germanglish, anyone? :-)

Happy Friday!  Please grab a glass of champagne (anyone else read it in their heads like "sham-pog-nay"??) and chill with me.  It's one of those hang out days, unwinding from the week and getting ready for an uh-mazing weekend.

Jon, some of his buddies and I are heading down to Munich tomorrow for a day at the water park.  I'm going to be completely surrounded by testosterone and beer.  Not sure yet if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it should make the day a bit more exciting, that's for sure.  If you're a praying type of person, throw some in for me, will ya?  Thanks.


Time for some Friday's Letters!

Dear mens, please be nice to me tomorrow.  I don't want to drink tons of beer and go down water slides.  Or maybe I do.  But please don't make fun of me when I'm trying to awkwardly push myself up out of the pool because we all know there's just no cute way to go about that.  Dear Chinese food, first of all, you're at your best in a buffet.  Second of all, thanks for having my back in the worst of times.  You know what I'm talking about.  Dear husband, sometimes I want to hit you in the back of your head, but other times you make me literally go weak in the knees.  Mostly the former, but both make this whole shindig called marriage as maddeningly wonderful as it is <3  Dear school, can't believe that I'm going back to you.  You're worse than an awful boyfriend and/or hard drugs.


You might here from me this weekend, or you might not.  Either way, don't wait up. ;-)

Go be #happy (Facebook's taken up hashtags, why not blogs next?  Am I right?  Probably not.)

 

Walk It Out

Dude, it's been really hot here.  And Germany has no idea what air conditioning or ceiling fans are.

But there's always popsicles!  There's nothing to get you in the mood for summer like popsicles. :-)


Caesar (Cezar? Who knows.) and I have been taking these bangin' nightly walks.  Well, I mean, we just started this week but I look forward to them everyday, watching the clock until seven thirty hits and we can head out.  The pup gets all his wiggles out and just moving and being around the outdoors helps simmer down my anxiety from the day.  The sky is blue and the grass is green and there is nothing that can interrupt the peace out there.  Except for the ten million bugs that are always trying to makeout with my face, or maybe a wild boar or something.

Is it weird that I get happy just smelling "spring" and fresh cut hay and, ya know, nature??

It's a good thing he's not anymore beautiful or else I might think that he's really my kid, not that I don't already act like it.  There's deff some only child syndrome over here.

Caesar's three favorite things:
1. His dad
2. Water
3. When his dad gets home

He's sleeping by the door right now, waiting for Jon to get home from work <3

He also loves (with strong persuasion) modeling.  And he's got those angles dowwwnn.

And look at these little furry creatures that Cezar and I saw yesterday:

We saw a couple of beavers!
Get your minds out of the gutter.
Cezar has this sweet spot on the river that he rushes to in this heat for a drink and a dip which a couple beavers were hanging out at, probably tanning or "parking" or something.

And if Dorothy had actually said "Screw the Wizard of Oz, I need a drink", I'm sure she would've followed these signs to the nearest brauhaus:

Germany makes daily walks so much easier, or harder depending on how many beers you've shot down.

I was so scared when we found out that Jon got orders to Germany.  He woke me up with a call from Iraq at five am to let me know the news, and I tell ya, that kind of thing, any sentence that includes the phrase "babe, we're moving to Germany" will wake you up better than any triple shot of espresso.  I thought it was a practical joke, maybe him trying to keep the spark alive since we hadn't seen each other in almost nine months except for a few minutes here and there over a shoddy Internet connection.

But nope, the boy spoke truth.  A few months later I had a passport and a couple plane tickets to Frankfurt in my hand.

I don't know why I was so scared, like maybe I thought that the Bavarian country side was riddled with cannibalistic tribes who wore lederhosen and picked off the weak American tourists.

Truthfully though, I've never been good with change.  Ever since I was a babe, I've wanted order, routine and (let's be real) control.  Everything had to be perfect.  Obviously life never really hands you over the reins, and I'm still learning this, but now the food on my plate is allowed to touch and most of the time I actually like to share with other people  :-)

In the same sense, Jon and I are enjoying Germany more and more as the weeks go by.  All of the things that I was so scared of, a different language, strange roads and unknown foods, are now so "normal"; don't tell my momma but I might've hit that one hundred mph mark on a bahn or two, and I'm so fluent in grocery store-ese (zwiebel is onion, paprika is bell pepper...) that it's almost embarrassing to admit how well I know food words but have to do the awkward smile-and-nod for everything else.

So what I've learned:  Germans are normal, not scary!

They probably hang out with their friends like this

And make faces at work like this

They live in houses, go grocery shopping and get coffee with friends just like Americans do, weird right?
...I should've gotten out more.

EXCEPT Germany does not have Target.  I know.  It could almost be a sin, except for the fact that they have a lot of IKEAs and a bunch of beer, and you can even enjoy the two together.  That combo probably beats out Target and its slushies any day.

I'll miss Germany and it's alcohol-loving ways.


Anyways, I'm off to go enjoy some of the lovely little bits of life (like my dog, have you seen a picture of him??! jk, you've seen like two hundred) and late night tea, and you go enjoy your almost-Friday, mi amigos.

Catch you on the flipside for some Friday's Letters!

xo

Step by Step

First of all, I'm not sure if you guys know but I'm an artist.

Jon came home, looked at the painting and, before even taking off his boots, asked "Did you really paint that?"  Why yes, babe, I really really did.  Then he asked me about two or three more times if I really painted it.  YES babe, I REALLY painted it, my initials are on the back.  "I can paint my initials on anything, that doesn't mean you painted it."  Oh my gosh.

Apparently I'm that good.
Though some girls thought their tree branches were coming out to look a lot like a certain part of the male anatomy, if you know what I mean.

***

Thanks for putting up with my lack of blogging.
Somehow I got stuck in a big, deep hole of depression.  I might have just gotten worn out working full time, trying to ace school and keep up the house.  Really, I think I got caught up trying to keep up appearances and lost my energy and myself for a while.  But little steps are bringing me back and it feels so good.  We're hanging in there.

Step 1.
Try new things.  Like group painting classes on post, evidenced above.  SO much fun, especially because they gave us free food and offered alcohol.  I'm probably heading over to play softball this Thursday, too.

Step 2.
Walk the pup every day.  We do this after dinner when the sun is setting and the heat is dissipating; it's gorgeous out.  I can't wait to take out my fancy camera and play around with taking some shots.  And you can't beat having such a cute model as this sweet thing, I can just never get over him (the blonde one, not the red head):

 My two big babies.

Step 3.
Eat well.  I'm planning our meals, pre-cooking chicken and quinoa, taking veggies to work and drinking tea instead of coffee (suffering on this one).  It's all about changing your mentality to change your health.  I've been using this uh-mazing app called Recovery Record to help change my thinking towards food and eating, try it out!

 Pre-cooking chicken in a little chicken broth and seasonings for lunches.

  

Step 4.

Really enjoy time with friends.  Johana and I, after painting trees and belting out song after song in the car on the way home, sat outside by the fire, drank "watermelon juice" (aka watermelon arizona iced tea and malibu, aka delish) and laughed so.much.

Serena and Blair.

***

I feel better with structure, and I feel better when I'm not giving 100% to everybody with nothing left for myself.

So I'm cleaning and organizing, and I'm staying strong while taking care of myself.

It's a weird in-between phase so please bear with me.

We'll all be okay.  Right?  Right. :-)

Vacay!

I went hurr.

Prague was amazing.  Seriously.  I'd like to move there yesterday.

Our friends that we went with said they thought I might never come back...they caught me :-)

The Hubbs and I actually got to have a vacation last week.  A much needed vacation, because that man works so hard all the time.  Let's just say that even though his command designates leave times throughout the year, he rarely gets to actually take advantage of them.

We started out on Wednesday, leaving for Edelweiss early afternoon (the best feeling ever is when you get to leave work on Tuesday afternoon and know that you don't have to come back until the following Monday).  Edelweiss is beautiful.  It's an Army resort located in southern Germany, right on the Italy/Austria/Germany border, right by the Alps.

Lovehim.

Another awesome thing about Edelweiss: jumbo-sized alcoholic drinks.

Yeah, that's an extra large margarita and a five liter beer tower.  Done, son.

But we're wimps because we didn't finish either one.

We also got free refills (Germany's missing out) and I got to have a massage and facial.  The facial was incredible, but I've never had a massage (out of my whole one-time experience) during which I was talked to for the entire sixty minutes...and listened to an awkward song about taking somebody home while the male massage therapist spent time on my neck and shoulders.  He did give some awesome pointers for Prague, though.  And I walked away feeling like Jello.

We came home on Friday afternoon and left for Prague that same evening.

Prague is about an hour and a half East of the Czech border, and about two hours away from where we're stationed.  It's straight in Bohemia, and it's amazing.  Don't be scared of it's slightly bad reputation; go if you can.

Dinner the first night.  Hub's was topped with a lemon, whipped cream and jelly.

 The main square and astronomical clock tower.

 RJ (Russian Jon) came out.

 My friend and I had an awesome time going to the top of the clock tower and sipping on jumbo mojitos.

TMI WARNING:

 Worst translation in the history of translations.

 Prague castle/cathedral.

 The Night Gym had a banana show.  Next time.

 Cookies, cash & cigs.  Scandal.

We went with our really close friends (ya know, the ones from this post, who we reconciled with) and it was perfect; the guys get along, the girls get along and we all get along together.

Amazing cake was had...at almost every meal.

The guys went on a beer tour...for which us girls waited for them for hours.

I bought a bottle of hemp beer...and it tasted really gross.

We discovered some awesome music at an underground bar named Vodka bar...and almost got in a fight with a rude Czechy.

Plans to go back are already in the works.

Some quick facts:

• I've taken over some manager responsibilities at my job.  Who's a big kid now??  It's scary.
• Hubby got me my first DSLR camera, a Nikon D3100, and it's gorgeous!
• Caesar's still cute.  As always.
• Last 9 credits of my associate's degree!
• The Hubs is becoming fashionable with a little help from moi (and Express sales).