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!