More traveling!

After our whirlwind day in NYC, we decided to take yet another road trip. This time to DC's outskirts to visit Lizard and Matt. Hayden in tow, we loaded up and headed across the bay to see her new house! I had just seen her for her wedding of course but she hadn't seen Hayden since Reunion Weekend '08 and Matt and Jay had never met. We made great time until we hit 95 of course, where we were reintroduced to stateside traffic. Ugh. By the time we got there we weren't up for much, which was just fine with our hosts! We settled in with the wine cube from Target, some steaks on the grill and some movies on demand. Our kind of night! Hayden fell asleep upstairs, leaving us a little time to catch up. Not long after, Jay fell asleep during the movie and I dozed off here and there. Traveling is hard work!

We just went up for the night, and then were planning to do a bit of travel in the DC area. We rode around looking at things for a bit, and decided none of us were really up for another day of sightseeing, so we headed back to the eastern shore. We said a quick goodbye to the Washington Monument, promised Lizard and DC we'd be back soon, and that was that. I figure our nation's capitol has been around awhile, and I'd much rather visit in springtime without scarves, hats, gloves and windburn!

The Big Apple!

Of all the amazing places I've seen, New York City has eluded me. I've been to country after country, great city after city in the states but never the Big Apple. So on November 27th, Jay and I woke up extra early to be out of the house by 4 to drive to Milford, DE to catch our bus up there! Jay's Nan goes up every year after Thanksgiving to do her shopping and invited us to come along this time. We were so excited! We left at 4, headed up to Delaware and boarded the bus along with many other excited shoppers. We had done some pre-planning and changed our minds a few times on what to see and how to get everywhere, but by the time we arrived at Rockefeller Center we had a good idea of what we wanted to accomplish. The bus dropped us off at 11 am and would be departing at 7pm so we didn't have much time to dawdle!

We took a walk around Rockefeller Center and the surrounding area first to get our bearings, and to see the holiday decorations. NYC seems to sparkle for Christmas! The tree wasn't lit yet but there were plenty of other decorations to get excited about. After a few minutes, we headed to the subway and went south. We really wanted to see Ground Zero. From where we were we couldn't see a whole lot but construction, but it was just amazing to see how much has to be done 9 years after the attacks. We also took a look at the church across the street from where the towers stood, St. Paul's. It's the oldest building in Manhattan in continuous use and has seen the Great Fire, Washington's Inauguration and the attacks of September 11th.

After that we headed down to the harbor to catch the Staten Island Ferry. We really wanted to tour the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, but that would have taken up most of our 8 hours in the city. Instead, we took the ferry across to get a good look at the old girl and promised her we'd be back soon to properly introduce ourselves! It took a little longer than expected, because our first ferry was delayed due to medical emergency. That meant we missed the return ferry completely and had to wait another 30 minutes. Just enough time to grab a hot dog! We did a little more exploring uptown and bought Hayden a t-shirt and a sweatshirt for me.

From there we took our time wandering through Times Square. I could spend all day there! There is so much to see and everything is bright and shiny and lit up and entertaining. We ran across the Naked Cowboy and the Naked Cowgirl, took a quick trip inside Toys 'R Us, checked out a few shops and took a ton of pictures. From there we headed to Top of the Rock, where we got SUPER discounted tickets for being military ID card holders. Woohoo! We waited for our turn to go up and were not disappointed by the amazing views. We saw the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Central Park, Times Square and more at night. It was incredible, and definitely lived up to my NYC ideas.

After all that it was time to find our bus and head back home. We saw a ton in 8 hours and are already planning our next trip to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, do more shopping and eating and see more sights. After all the travel we did in Europe, we found that the shortcuts are just as helpful, there are just as many people not speaking English and the subway is virtually the same everywhere.

Hayden tries out the tractor

Hayden tried out his cousin's tractor while we were at his Poppy's in Virginia. He couldn't quite push it down hard enough with his foot, so he took dad's lead and pushed it with his hand! It was pretty funny.

Black Friday

This year we experienced our first Black Friday...ever! I have somehow missed it every year I lived in the states, probably due to work or lack of funds! In Germany it seems silly, to show up early at the PX to go shopping. All those people in one small building! So I've never bothered. But this year we decided to make a go of it.

We woke up around 5am, which was plenty early for me. Those people that camp out all night in line and start shopping at 4am can have it! Maybe that will change when I'm older, have more kids that want more specific things and the like, but I don't think so! We left a sleepy Hayden with his Poppy and headed up the road. We were still in Virginia, in an area that's not so densely populated so traffic was clear and our first stop, Wal-Mart, wasn't really all that busy. Definitely a high volume of people for 6am but nothing like what I've seen on tv. We picked up a few appliances and headed further up the road to Salisbury, MD.

We hit some good buys at Target, like a Toy Story 3 race track for Hayden and a 12-bottle wine fridge for us! We made our way over to Best Buy where we replaced our navigation system and picked up a few DVDs and CDs. We hit up Barnes & Noble to get some books for Hayden and headed over to the mall. After picking up some super-sale hunting gear for Jay, it was lunchtime. Not bad for a few hours' work! We ate at Chick Fil A, one of our favorites that we hadn't yet had since returning to the states. After picking up a few AMAZINGLY priced Vera Bradley pieces for me, we realized we had plenty of time to spare since Hayden was with his grandparents. Seemed like there was only one thing to do...hit the movies!

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part I had come out in the states a week earlier and we purposely waited until we could see it in the states and without Hayden. Momma needs her wits about her when watching HP! So we caught a noon showing of the movie and were not disappointed! We returned home with all our purchases, full bellies and happy hearts to a Hayden that had a wonderful day with his poppy! All in all, we called our first Black Friday a success!

Happy Thanksgiving...twice!

After spending four Thanksgivings in Germany, we were fortunate enough to spend TWO here in the states, in the same year! The day after we got back, we had Thanksgiving with Jay’s grandmother and some of that side of his family. Hayden was more interested in other people and in the dogs than in eating, but that didn’t stop us! We ate way too much and had a great time catching up.


We spent what was left of the weekend accomplishing mission number one: cell phones! There are of course about a million more options here than there were in Germany. It was easy for Jay, who fell in love with the iPhone in 2008. So we went with AT&T and I got a Blackberry, which I’m now obsessed with! It’s so strange to have internet EVERYwhere. But it’s convenient. I’m still learning how to use it but it’s a ton of fun!

We made some quick visits to see my parents and to see my brother and his family. Ryan and Zoe have gotten so big! They had a great time playing with Hayden and showing them their playground, their rooms and the guinea pig! Hayden’s never seen one of those before so he was fascinated. He played with Oz a little, Eric’s dog, but mostly he just barked.

On Tuesday we headed up to Virginia to see Jay’s dad and family up there. Hayden and Oscar were already kind of rotten from all the attention; it seemed like everywhere we went there were new kids and dogs to play with! Jay’s dad’s was no exception, with more dogs and more cousins.

We spent actual Thanksgiving over at Jay’s Aunt Marcie’s house and there was SO much food! What a great way to reintroduce ourselves to America, too much food. We ate and watched football and then we had a small birthday party for Hayden. He’s had two birthdays in Germany so it was really nice to spend another one with family. He had a blast blowing out the candle and eating icing, and he got some fun stuff to play with. His favorite was a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse marching band! He unloaded all the instruments and made everyone march with him. As we’ve learned over the past two years with Hayden, it’s pretty hard to say no to him!

This year we had so much to be thankful for. My happy, healthy family is safe and sound back in the states and ready to start our new chapter. We’ve gotten to see a lot of family and friends and have many more to go, but this time we don’t have a limited time frame to accomplish it. It’s so nice to plan trips and visits down the road without having to factor in a flight, a deployment, block leave or the farm for Oscar. We are truly lucky.

The Journey Home

Our last days in Germany were quite chaotic, trying to get everything in place for our big move. We had boxes to ship, suitcases to pack, floors to clean and goodbyes to say. That’s the hardest part of course, leaving the people that become your family overseas. My last day of work was on Wednesday, which turned out to be a half day! They owed me a half day vacation and realized it that morning. What a nice surprise! All the girls brought in food for a potluck lunch and man, what a great idea! We should have started doing that months ago. We had some great stuff, and said our goodbyes.

Wednesday night we had dinner with The Pollards at the Stables, one of our favorite restaurants in Schweinfurt. They serve greek food and love the kids. We had a fun dinner, and will really miss eating there! Thursday we had our housing inspection that we spent days preparing for. We took out so much trash and recycling and donations and consignments. We scrubbed and swept and mopped and cleaned until our fingers were shriveled and our house sparkled. For once, I remembered to CLEAN the oven after spraying oven cleaner instead of cooking it! We moved appliances, scrubbed baseboards and lime-awayed until we were green in the face. I was a little nervous, but knew we had 2 days to fix anything that wasn’t up to par. Wouldn’t you know the inspector spent about 90 seconds in that house and didn’t even open the fridge! We hadn’t taken Hayden’s border down in his room, but other than that he didn’t need to see anything. All that work!

Hayden was in school right up until the last day we were there, to keep him on his schedule. We picked him up just before dinner Friday night and let him say goodbye to all his classmates. What a great experience this had been for him! We headed to dinner with the Kings, Stockdills and Williams for one last round of bruschetta, pizza and tiramisu at Rimini’s. We had a great time, told some old stories and said goodbye to some really good friends. Luckily for us, they’ll all be in the states soon enough! We spent our last night in Germany with the Pollards, to make things easier all around. Jay went out with the boys while Amber and I hung out with our little guys. We stayed up too late of course, instead of being smart and going to bed early.

6am came pretty early for us and we got our bags ready for the trip. Ryan came to get us and we loaded up the van for the ride. We stopped for breakfast and Oscar’s benadryl, and we were on the road by 8 for our ride to Frankfurt. Luckily we used Jay’s new shortcut and saved ourselves some traffic. Hayden was uninterested in sleeping, which we thought would bode well for plane napping. We got all 7 of our checked bags, Hayden and his carseat and stroller, Oscar and his crate and us with our 3 carry-ons into the airport.

After waiting in the ticket line, we were told we had to get in the other line to purchase Oscar’s reserved ticket. 30 minutes went by with us in line and no movement; we sent Ryan away, anticipating a longer wait. Good thing, since we were waiting over an hour. What a mess! They were unprepared for Oscar apparently, and it took forever to get a vet there to approve everything. We thought we were finished, but then they told us we had to wait for security to come over and check out the crate. They sent me and Hayden through security and “hoped” to have Jay and Oscar ready for our flight in time to board. Hoped?? Yikes.

Luckily our flight was delayed boarding so we all made it. We got settled into our seats and I told Jay, “Wow I was so worried about Oscar getting on the plane I didn’t even have time to worry about the plane crashing.” Needless to say, Jay was not pleased. We watched “Despicable Me” on the plane and Hayden and I ended up watching it three times. We love it! We can’t wait to pre-order it for its release on December 14th. Hayden fell asleep about an hour into the flight and we thought we were home free. Not likely. He slept 30 minutes of our 9 hour flight. Yikes! He just wanted to run and play and I can’t blame him. He was a typical two-year-old which means he was kind of loud and a little pushy but everyone around us had kids as well so no one seemed too put out.

We arrived on time to Dulles Airport in Washington, DC and had to get all our bags and Oscar to be re-checked and clear customs. It wasn’t too much of a hassle surprisingly, and soon we were waiting at our gate for our flight to Raleigh. That was a short hour, but Hayden slept the whole time! Bless his heart he was too tired. Once at RDU, Hayden and I left Jay to get the bags and Oscar and we picked up the rental. After playing a little Tetris with all our bags and Oscar’s crate we were on the road for the hour drive to Greensboro. We arrived around 830pm and stopped to grab some food for us and some food for Oscar and then we were HOME. What a long, long day to get us back to where we grew up but it was worth it!

home, just busy!

 We're home and loving it.  Just can't sit still long enough to blog.  Lucky for you guys, I have a few written that I will put up as soon as we get back to NC!