what's new with us + a day trip!

Hello everyone!  It's been a while since I've blogged and I've had a lot of people (including my dear husband) ask me WHY!  The biggest reason is that we don't yet have internet in our home. We'll be working on that soon!  

I actually started this post two weeks ago while I was in Germany, and currently I am sitting in an adorable coffee shop on the court square in my hometown of Newnan, Georgia.  (More on that later.)  I decided to take a little bit of time to come uptown, enjoy a cup of something warm, and get this thing posted so I can start working on the next one!  And let me tell you, the next one will be GOOD!

Yum times a million.

Since our last post, we've moved into base housing!  We have our own place now!

The positives:  
- It's ours.
- We now live in multiple rooms again, instead of a single hotel room.  Woohoo!
- We have a kitchen where we can finally cook again.  I've made Rich one of his favorites already...chili.  He will never complain about chili.  Like, ever.

The not-so-positives:
- It's smaller than we're used to.  BUT, again, it's ours.  And I'm determined to make it work, come hell or high water!
- Our upstairs neighbors?  Whoa.  They're loud.  Hardwood floors + loud stompers + a small child who apparently has no bedtime and runs a lot + an attitude of absolute anger and repulsiveness in response to our polite requests to be a little quieter = a very long road ahead.  And nope, we can't ask to be moved.  It doesn't work that way.
- We have a one-sided sink and no garbage disposal.  I realize now how much I took ours for granted in Texas!

We've borrowed necessary furniture, pots, pans, dishes, and utensils from the military until our household goods arrive.  We're very thankful for this help, but since none of it is ours it just doesn't feel quite like it's our home yet.  Know what I mean?  Once we get our own stuff I think we'll just feel so relieved and finally settle in a little more.  In the meantime we've purchased a few things to hold us over until our household goods arrive, like bath mats, dish towels, things like that.

One big difference about living in Germany is that we have to recycle everything.  This means multiple trash bins for different materials and special yellow bags to be used for plastics.  It has taken some getting used to, but Germany is a very eco-conscious country so we're happy to oblige.  Not that we have a choice, haha!

A few weekends ago, Rich, Gerald, and I drove down to Ramstein AFB to check out the world's largest BX/PX and to visit our friend Andrea! She and Rich were stationed together at Fort Hood, and she and I became fast friends. Shortly after I met her, she had her beautiful son Jayden and I was smitten with that tiny little boy from the first time I held him.  When she got orders for Germany in 2012, my heart was so heavy. That was my first time saying "see ya later" to someone who'd become Air-Force-family to me.  And now, we're in the same country and only an hour apart! 

Last weekend during our visit, Jayden was celebrating his third birthday and speaking in complete sentences! He's grown up so fast! I felt so honored when Andrea asked me to mark his annual height on the chart I helped make for him.  I only painted on the tick marks and numbers, and our friend David did the pretty woodwork!  You see, I marked his height on his first birthday, so it meant a lot to me that she wanted me to do it again.

Then, Andrea drove up to Wiesbaden the following weekend to see our new house and spend some time with us!  She had planned a little day trip for us, so Gerald came over and the four of us headed to Rüdesheim!

Rüdesheim is only about 20 miles from Wiesbaden, and the scenery between here and there is gorgeous.  Rolling hills, green countryside, old castles, vineyards that go for miles, and views of the Rhine River.  When we got into town, Andrea kept driving till the town was behind us and we all started wondering where on earth she was taking us!  We were going uphill, wayyyyy uphill.  We turned into a parking lot, paid €2.50 for the parking ticket, and she told me to bring my camera. 

By this time I knew there was a statue through the trees but I couldn't quite see all of it. As I mentioned in a previous post, Rich and I had researched the area before we arrived and this statue was in one of our DVDs.  Still, I wasn't prepared for the enormity of this thing.  I'm beginning to realize that I will never grow tired of the constant awe that I feel in Europe.  I cannot describe the flips my heart does every time I see a piece of breathtaking history here.  It's unbelievable.

So, some background on this statue.  It's called Niederwalddenkmal, and it was built to commemorate the German victory at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.  The very first stone was placed on September 16, 1871 by Wilhelm I.  Remember seeing his name a lot in some of my previous posts?!  Yeah, he's a popular guy around the area.  Taking around two years to build, she stands 38 meters tall.  That's 125 feet.  Approximately 12 stories tall.  Wowzas.  The female figure on top of the pedestal is Germania, and she's holding in her right hand the recovered crown of the emperor.  Germania herself stands 34 feet tall. Yep, she's a big girl.

And now, I'll let you see her.

My first view, from the side.

The view from down below.  This doesn't do justice to the sheer size.

Germania, holding the recovered crown of the emperor.

All those intricately carved faces!  Geez...

The extreme detail of Germania's robe--note the dragon, swans, and deer.

The eagle on her robe is the Bundesadler, the "Federal Eagle" of the Republic of Germany.

See the lion heads in her belt?

This patina is simply beautiful.

And now, the views from our vantage point up on this huge hill...

The beautiful Andrea.  I am so thankful to have her so closeby!  Love this lady!

The magnificent St. Rochus Chapel off in the distance.  I definitely plan to visit this beauty during our stay in Germany.

Part of the vineyards directly down the valley from us.  There are vineyards everywhere here!

Rüdesheim am Rhein.

My sweet husband taking it all in.  

A cargo ship on the Rhein, with the town of Bingen on the far banks.

This gazebo made for a perfect photo, if you ask me.

We made our way back to the warmth of the car and headed down the hill to have lunch in Rüdesheim.  We decided on a quaint little Italian restaurant but I can't remember the name of it.  Lunch was delicious, no surprise!  I enjoyed a glass of a local Riesling and I think I fell in love.  

Here are some other photos I took while in Rüdesheim...

The fire department.

See the pigeon?

Can you find the pigeon?!

Seriously, the coolest trees grow in Germany.

Andrea and her magic tiny door!

Yep, a random pair of wooden shoes.

As we were leaving to head back to Wiesbaden, Germania bid us farewell from her hill. What an amazing day!

With love from Georgia and...

happy new year!

We hope that everyone had a very happy New Year!  A lot has happened since our last post, so I thought I'd catch yall up on what's new in our lives here in Germany.  And speaking of our last post, did everyone love Rich's contribution?!  I did!

We both celebrated our birthdays!  

Rich turned 29 again (and so did my brother Greg!) on December 29th, and I turned 29 again on the 31st.  We typically celebrate our joint birthday on the 30th, but we didn't get to do that this year.  I'm sure we'll pick up the tradition the next go-round.  On Rich's birthday, our friend Gerald cooked us some delicious steak upstairs in his room.  I spilled Dr. Pepper all over my sweater and had to run to our room to change, but we had a great evening!  On my birthday, we went downtown and made up for missing our joint birthday the day before!  We had planned to go by Idee der Creativmarkt (my German craft heaven) and check out any other stores we came across, but we quickly discovered that not many places were open at all aside from a few restaurants and bars.  

We didn't let this stop us from having a super cool evening together.  We'd planned to do a little shopping (or at least a little browsing) before dinner, so we'd arrived downtown a little while before we'd planned to eat.  But since the shops weren't open, we needed to kill a little time before going to the restaurant.  We swung into Murphy's Pub, a really quaint Irish bar, and had a beer.  Rich had his trusty Newcastle, and I went with a Strongbow cider.  

But aside from the atmosphere, our favorite part of this stop-off wasn't the beer at all.  It was this awesome guy who thought we were super cool too:

This boy had brought along his own entertainment (in the form of a flattened soccer ball) to play with while his dad hung out with friends at the pub, and he was happy to share his fun with Rich!  Germany is a very dog friendly country, and seeing pups in stores and restaurants is the norm.  We're puppy people, so we love this.  

We finished our brews and walked around for a bit longer.  My eyes nearly popped outta my head when we passed these beauties:

That one on the left?  Holy piano.  Absolutely beautiful.  Someday I will have my own.

At this point, there wasn't much else we could do so we headed back to the restaurant that Rich had picked out for our birthday dinner.  It was an Italian restaurant and had some good reviews on TripAdvisor.  (Truth is, he picked it out for my birthday because he's a good husband like that.  But since we didn't have our normal joint birthday, I insisted it was OUR birthday dinner.)  However, when we reached the place, the door was locked and a waiter came out to explain that they didn't open for another half hour but that all their tables had already been reserved.  Dang it, seriously?!

Directly across the street, however, was another Italian restaurant that had tables available outside right then.  It was chilly out, but there were heaters and we were plenty warm.  Rich and I are definitely creatures of habit when it comes to food.  He ordered his spaghetti and I ordered my lasagna.  Dinner was pretty tasty, and I enjoyed my first German beer!

Me and a giant Warsteiner.

After dinner, we started our walk back toward the lodge, which of course led us where? Past the Marktkirche, of course!  And naturally, we took a few pics, because that's what the Kochs do!

Rich said, "Even the fire hydrants are fancy!"

Ohhhh, this guy. <3

We welcomed 2015 in style!
And by in style, I mean in our pajamas in our hotel room.  At midnight, we heard fireworks going off like crazy, so we walked down to the end of our hall to try and see some in the distance.  It was really foggy, but we were able to faintly see a few! It was weird to me to think that it was 2015 here, but it would be 2014 for another 7 hours on the east coast.

On New Year's Day, we didn't get to have all the traditional items on the good luck list. We did, however, order Domino's for the first time in Germany.  THAT was an experience! I had gone to the website, which is different than our American version obviously.  It was difficult for me to even get to the menu page, but I managed to figure out enough to get me that far.  We agreed on the Diavolo (salami, peperoni, rote & grüne paprika, zwiebeln, mozzarella, tomatensauce), and I called to order.  Long story short, there was a huge language barrier even though the guy was speaking English, but I did manage to understand that we needed to order more than just one pizza for delivery.  Rich called back, placed the order, and a short while later our pizza was delivered to us.  It's definitely not what we're typically used to in the US, but it was really good!   It was less tomato sauce-y, and definitely less greasy which is a huge plus!

And for dessert?  Blackeyed peas, served the classy way in a plastic bowl!  Hopefully, it'll pay off and we'll have good health in 2015.

See that excitement?!

It snowed again!  

Just this past Saturday, we had planned to walk downtown for a bit in the afternoon, but once we saw it was raining we quickly changed our mind.  We walked over to the bowling alley for lunch, and when we came out an hour later, we saw THIS:

When we went in to eat, there was only rain!  No snow at all!

HUGE clumps of snowflakes!

And the biggest news of all...?

WE SIGNED FOR A HOUSE!!!!!

More like an apartment in on-base housing, but it's OURS for the next four years!  We get the keys this Thursday and we're past ready.  It's not in the area that we'd hoped for, but it's okay.  We'll be just around the corner from the lodge here, so our regular walks downtown will be no different than they've been since we arrived here.  Also, we'll still be within walking distance to the commissary, PX, and movie theatre.  Actually, a brand new bigger PX has been built that will open sometime in the next couple months, and this one will be even closer than the current one!  The only real downside is that there is no private yard, so once we get the baby girls here we'll have to walk them on leashes. There is a puppy park over by the commissary though, so that'll make up for it I think.  Even though we'll technically move in this week, we won't receive our household goods shipment until toward the end of the month.  This means we'll be borrowing a few pieces of furniture, pots, pans, dishes, etc until we receive our own things.  But the military moved us here and the military provides.  

The lodge is very nice, but living in a hotel room for almost 3 weeks has made us extremely ready to have a home again.  We've concluded that there must be a circus of elephants in the room directly above us, and they like to do gymnastics and other loud activities late at night.  I'm excited to have a kitchen to cook in and a washer and dryer that I don't have to share with an entire floor of people.  We'll both feel a lot better once we get our own things so we can finally feel at home again.  Home is where your heart is, right?  

And now you're all caught up on what's up with us!  I love hearing the positive feedback from all of you about our blog.  It makes me love writing it even more!  As always, thanks for reading!