More Pictures from our European Vacation

The good, the bad, the weird...

We were not fans of beef carpaccio (a.k.a. raw beef covered in olive oil)

Our search for food on the streets of Paris

Seeing the White Cliffs of Dover from the English Channel ferry

Excited about the Eiffel Tower? Or just happy to be off the runaway tour bus?

The Köln Cathedral has the best door knocker!

Contemplating the meaning of life? Or where we should go eat?

In commeration of our hunt for Disney Princesses in Germany...

Do you see the resemblance?

Can you repeat that? I don't think I can hear you...

Goodbye isn't forever

Around the World in 80 Days...

....Or, really it was 4 countries in 6 days. And 2 of them were just for a few hours. But it kind of felt like we went around the world. And I'm still amazed that we can drive through that many countries in less time than you can drive across the state of Texas. ((Crazy, right?! Or is that only weird to me?))

Last week we finally went on a trip that Brian and I have been talking about for over a year. And I'll go ahead and tell you...it was perfect. The entire week -- in all it's craziness, wonderfulness, and touristy fun -- was absolutely perfect. And I am so glad we waited and didn't rush into this trip because everything came together so well that I wouldn't trade a single moment of it. Ever. In fact, I would go back and do it all over again if I could. It was amazing!! 

So...Paris. Oh, Paris is a fascinating place. The street vendors, the street performers, the food, the driving, the buildings, the sightseeing. Everything. It's all just fascinating!

And somewhere in Paris, in case you decide visit, you'll find the craziest bus driver ever. Like seriously. We opted to do this hop-on/hop-off bus tour in Paris and one of our drivers was just insane. When he wasn't pulling the bus over to yell "Pickpocket! Pickpocket! Gypsies!"at random people or stopping in the middle of traffic to have conversations with drivers through his window...he was pulling the bus over to try to pick up hookers. But sadly, he didn't want to stop to let the tourists off to see all the awesome French stuff...which is the whole point of the bus. ((We were pretty sure we had been taken hostage by a deranged Frenchman who just wanted to drive us in circles around Paris and someone might need to call Liam Neeson to negotiate our rescue.)) 

But we did get to see the sights....once the bus driver set us free.

The Arc de Triomphe

My sweet babies (finally) at the Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame

The Louvre

((which we didn't get to go into because it was closed on the only day we were in Paris...sad!!))

We did see a lot more. A way lot! Those are just the big highlights. We also saw the Place de la Concorde, the Academie Nationale de Musique, the Grand Palais, the Champs de Mars, the Ecole Militaire, a lot of the Seine River, a lot of random but very beautiful buildings, and a lot of the Paris Metro trains. 

We had a lot of fun in Paris. 

Once our time in Paris was done, we hopped in the car and drove into Germany(!!!). Eeek! Germany is an amazing place. It's gorgeous, the food is amazing...and my favorite part of Germany...we got to see old friends. (In case you can't tell, Germany was my favorite part.)

But seriously, look at this...

Isn't that gorgeous?!

One of the biggest reason for our days in Germany was allowing me to visit a friend I haven't seen in entirely too long! She and her husband are 2 of the the most amazing people you'd ever be lucky enough to meet. Our time with them was unbelievably wonderful, but far too short. (That's the only downside to our trip...not enough time with them.)

Having them as our wonderful German tour guides was extra awesome because they knew all the great stuff to show us. ((Plus, they could translate everything when we out places. Bonus!! lol) But aside from all the great food they introduced us to (because it was super yummy!...if you've never had German breakfast, you're missing out!)...Aside from that, they took us around to see some really amazing places. 

The Köln Cathedral....jaw-dropping, breathtakingly gorgeous!!

The Imhoff Chocolate Museum

The kids got to learn about the history of chocolate & how it's made

The Praetorium...Roman Ruins in Germany that weren't discovered until 

the 20th century. Super fabulous!!

The Palace of Benrath

Not only is it beautiful(!!) we found Disney Princess here. Fun! Teresa and I took the kids on a Princess Hunt to get pictures of the kids with as many of them as we could. Awesome!!

The Neanderthal Museum

Hint: That is not a real person she's standing with. It's a statue. It took us a while to figure that out.

The Rhine Tower...which btw...is really high up off the ground. 

Sometimes pictures can be deceiving, but this one is not. That tower is really high!!

They also showed us that the Love Locks aren't just in France anymore.

On the Left: Love Locks Bridge on the Seine River in Paris

On the Right: Love Locks Bridge on the Rhine River in Dusseldorf, Germany

Köln (or Cologne) and Dusseldorf are beautiful cities, and if you're ever in Germany you should definitely visit them. Again, there are a lot more pictures...so many more! (Seriously...we had over 900 pictures from our trip.) And I do wish we could show you everything because those cities are phenomenal places. 

I know I said it before, but I really am glad we waited to do this trip the way we wanted. I'm glad we were able to plan it out perfectly so that everything fell into place exactly as it should. ((And later on...you can ask me about staying in a hostel...because that happened to.))

And you're probably wondering about the other 2 countries. I'm not actually sure if they count or not, but we did drive through the Netherlands and Belgium. And we ate pastries in Belgium. (Well, we ate pastries everywhere actually. European pastries are delicious!) But we did see those countries, so I think they count. Lol

So yes. All in all, I'd say it was the most perfect vacation ever. (Hostels included.) And if I could go back and do it all over again, I would. In a heartbeat. 

Sing It!

Kierstin and Makenzie singing with the Stretham Primary School Choir at the Ely Music Festival

The Other Side of Stretham

Surprise Surprise

Right now you're probably sitting at your computer thinking "holy whaaaa?? She's on here twice in 2 days??" I know. Twice in 2 days...after being gone an unmentionable amount of time. It's that whole attention-span-of-a-squirrel thing I've got goin' on. But I had to shout from the rooftops about the most amazing thing ever(!!!!) that happened today.

The hubs had to run some errands this morning while I hopped in the shower....Wait. Let's backtrack a second. We're not going to talk about showering on here. That's just not kosher. 

So, back to the errands. He went and it was awesome in all it's errandy glory. (But for serious, y'all, it was just some errands.) And then he called me on his way home and told me he had a surprise for me.

Oooh!! I love surprises! Actually, I'm still on the fence about surprises. It really depends on what kind of surprise it is because sometimes surprises can go very badly. But that's a story for another day.

I was still up in our room when the hubs walked in with a cardboard box that contained this mystery item. He shared his errand story with me and then handed me the box. 

I about imploded from sheer excitement!

Taaaccooooooossss!!!!!!

For serious, authentic, Mexican street taaaccooooosss!! Right here in England!!! Can you believe it?! I sure as hell couldn't.

As it turns out, there's a street taco truck at the local market on Saturdays. The same market that we quit going to well over a year ago because none of us wanted to get up that early. So all this time I could've been eating these.....(yes, I'm hanging my head in shame). But! No worries, because from here on out I will be visiting these lovely street taco people every chance I get. They were delicious!! 

I'll go ahead and tell you now that the hubs and I sat up in our room and ate them in secret. We totally did not share any of them with our kids. (I have no guilt over that at all.)

And you probably thought my super awesome amazing thing that happened was that we found out that we're moving somewhere great. Or that I won the lottery. Or someone gave me a free car. Hahaha! Nope. Just some taacccoooosss. 

I'm kind of an easy girl to please.

Adventures of the Mister

I'm going to go ahead and tell you now that I can't believe it's March. Time is flying past me way too quickly. We've just been so busy with things that I haven't even had a chance to notice the days just floating away from me. There have been about a dozen things I've wanted to jump on here and tell you all about but then life happens. And I have the attention span of a squirrel...so I forget...and the posts get lost in the recesses of my brain. (It's sad, I know. I'll try to work on that.)

But!

I couldn't resist showing you pictures from the trip the mister went on recently. I unfortunately did not get to go. And this is me with pouty face because that place is amazing!!But someone has to stay here and mind the laundry piles. I have learned over the years that the laundry does not clean itself. ((And again...this is 2015...why hasn't someone invented a way for that to happen yet??))

Anywho. He got to go to Newquay, which is pronounced "new-key"...kind of like "hey, man I've got a new key" lol. Don't pronounce it "new-quay" or you'll just look like a crazy American. (Don't ask how I know this.) But yes, he got to go and since I did not, he brought me pretty pictures to live vicariously through them. 

((That's a lot of mussells!))

But he also brought me what has become my new favorite British thing. It's food, of course. Lol Because right now I'm enjoying as much of the Brit food as I can, seeing as how we don't have forever to eat it.

This is clotted cream....and it amazing! It kind of sounds like it would be like whipped cream (or at least that's what I thought before I saw it). But it's kind of like sweet butter. But not. I don't know. But it's soooo good! 

It's going to be one of the foods that I (for serious) miss when we leave because you can't get real clotted cream anywhere but here. And the good stuff comes from Cornwall (that little "tail" at the southeast part of England), which is where this came from. I've become a clotted cream junkie. If you put butter on it...I put clotted cream on it instead even though I don't think you're supposed to do that. In fact, I'm probably bastardizing it with my American ways...but I can't help it. It's just so tasty!!!

Hmmm...since it is 2015...maybe they can find a way to get mail across the pond faster so someone can mail me clotted cream and other delicious Brit foods once we're back in the States. ((I need to find someone to make this happen asap!))

Scrubba-Scrubba

Have I ever told you that I have a love/hate relationship with my dishwasher? 

On one hand, it washes the dishes. That's super awesome. Especially when you have 3 kids because children seem to require more dishes than adults do. Or is that just my children? Well, either way, all I have to do is rinse those dishes off and load them in there and that lovely dishwasher does the rest.

I'm also kind of head over heels for the way it looks. The front of it is integrated into the cabinets so you can't tell there's a dishwasher there. No ugly appliancey front in my kitchen. No, sir. 

But see...that's where the love ends.

Little did we know when we moved into this house, the water is really hard. And you're all sitting there like "oh, I have hard water...I totally feel ya." No. I mean no offense to you and your hard water troubles, but no. I promise you have no idea. I thought I knew all about hard water. And then we moved here.

Our dishwasher has this super fancy container (because I don't know what else to call it) in the bottom. It's where we have to put the 4 pounds of salt every month or so to soften the water. This little red, plastic button pops up (you know, like on a turkey) and telling me "hey lady, it's salt time!!" Well, truth be told, it's talking to the mister because I don't add salt to the dishwasher. I make too much of a mess with it.

Now this wouldn't be so bad, except that salt *sucks*. 

Every. single. damn. time we put salt in there, our dishes come out looking crazy.

Every time this happens I am forced to get out the toughest scrubbing pad I can find, turn the water to boiling hot and scrub the dishes (the ones I just put through the dishwasher) until my fingers are achy and bleeding from all the effort. (Ok, that's dramatic. They aren't really bleeding. But they are pretty achy.) And this process continues for about 4 loads of dishes. Washing in the dishwasher, rescrubbing, washing again.

So you could go ahead and tell me to wash the dishes by hand after we add the salt...because that would make more sense, right? But oddly enough, I never remember that it's going to do this until after they come out looking like they've been dipped in cornstarch. (Any other plans?)

So, dear dishwasher...you win again. Hopefully next month I will remember to at least run an empty load before I put the dishes in there for you to dirty, instead of clean. 

And the Countdown Begins

Can you believe it's February? And! It's February 2015?? Because it is....you know, in case you've been living in a cave or something. It's February now and I'm not sure how that happened. Maybe I've been living in a cave.

So what does that mean? It means we're two-thirds of the way through this assignment.

What?! ((I know!!!!!!))

In a year(ish) we will be back in the States. (That's kind of insanity.) A big part of me can't really wrap my brain around it. There's so much more I want to see and do here that I kind of feel like I want to hit the pause button. Like I need to tell some mysterious guy somewhere -- the one who kind of seems like puppet master in this scenario since he gets to decide the when's and where's....like I need to be all "hold up! Wait! I need more time!" Because really, I'm going to miss things like this...

But then there's the part of me that's all....pizza....BBQ...taaaaccoooossss. Because yeah, you can't just say "tacos". No. It's most definitely said "taaaaccoooossss". I haven't had a for real taaaaccoooo in over 2 years. (Ugh, now I'm hungry.) 

And of course I miss all of my family and friends too. I can't wait to be on the same continent as all of them. (Oh, and my dog too. I can't forget him. Even though I'm pretty sure he's going to give me pouty face and not speak to me when I see him.) Hopefully we'll live much closer than we've been before. Like, you know, a few hours away at most. (Hint hint, Mr. Puppet Master!! Are you paying attention??)

Really, if we're counting pros and cons...I'm ready. And for the record...whoever picks us up from the airport...bring food. (Preferably taaaaccoooossss!!!)

Can You Actually Say That?

So, wow. I was amazed at all the positive feedback on my censoring post. For serious. I was bracing for impact. Like some crazy old woman with an umbrella was going to come yell at me for speaking my mind. And because I said hell...and shit. I don't know why she'd have an umbrella, but I think she would.

In honor of that though (the feedback, not the hypothetical umbrella-weilding crazy lady) I thought I'd share the grocery shopping post that was going through my head the other day. (Hopefully I can still do it justice.)

I know I am a pain to go grocery shopping with. Brian has gone with me several times and always comments on it. He'll try to look at something and I will just disappear. And really, I blame my kids. Have you ever taken 3 kids, all under the age of 5, to Walmart on a Saturday? You have to be efficient and you have to move quickly. Otherwise you end up with random things in your cart that you don't want or need. Like socks with drunk looking cats on them, or 5 boxes of dairy-free coffee creamer. And if you try to put them back?? Oh, well, your children will scream bloody murder, insisting that they NEED that creamer. It could start the apocolypse if you don't buy dairy-free creamer for the coffee you don't drink.

I move quick in the store. I want my groceries and I want to get out because I don't want to be there. And I have yet to understand how anyone could mistake me for one of the chatty people. And, in all honesty, I know a lot of them are probably just trying to be nice. But for real folks, pick someone else.

I don't want to have a conversation about how crappy the quality of produce is. That's why I buy it off base - I don't like buying fruit that already looks like it went 10 rounds with a 4 year old hopped up on an espresso IV and a box of Lucky Charms. And I don't want to talk about GMO foods because that is a topic that's right up there with religion and politics and we just don't talk about it. And please don't bring up the 10 damn lunchables I've stuffed in my cart. This is such an issue for me. I've become overprotective of my lunchables like I created them and I blame Pinterest for it. It's become the new *thing* to make your kids these super awesome lunches with sandwiches shaped like stars and hearts and freaking rabbits. Um, hello random grocery store lady! I like sleep!!! Do you sleep? Because I would have to give up sleeping to make a sandwich shaped like a damn rabbit. So I give my kids lunchables.

Let's see,...what's in there today? Ooh. Looks like it's pizza. Awesome. And here's a granola bar. Andddddd....hmmmm....a pear. Merry Christmas.

Mom, it's February.

Well, Merry February then. Sweet! Lunch is done.

Again, I know I'm a pain to shop with, I know people probably think I'm rude when I just walk off while they're talking and if I could wear a sign that says "please don't talk to me - I just want to get my shit and get out of here" I totally would. But that would most definitely offend some people. I tell myself that it's less offensive to pretend I didn't notice they were talking. Or to mumble some incoherent response to a bagger's opinion on what I'm buying, or the weather. (Yes, dear bagger person, I get that the weather sucks. We all know and I don't want to talk about it.)

Maybe one day I won't be such a grouch when I shop. Then again, to stop being so grouchy I might have to find a way to enjoy grocery shopping and I don't see that happening. 

You Can't Say That!

I was having this conversation with a friend yesterday about censoring yourself and it kind of coincided with this project I’ve been working on for the last eon or so. Anyway, as I’m pretty sure I’ve told you before -- this is not my first rodeo. Or my first blog. But just so we’re clear, I’m just talking about blogs, because I’ve never been in a rodeo. (I’m digressing) So my project…the one that has taken me at least an eon, but I finally finished today ((gold star for me!!))…was to back up my old blog. You know, save all the posts & make sure I have copies of the pictures and videos & all of that before deleting it into the mysterious abyss of the internet. 

As I was backing it up, I started rereading old blog posts. This led me to rereading even older blog posts. (And now you know why it’s taken me an eon to finish this project.) And what I realized is that what I loved most about those old blogs & all those posts is that I didn’t hold back. I didn’t censor. And now? Well, I do it a lot now. And truth be told, sometimes it feels forced…writing a post like that. The ones that come the easiest are the ones that I don’t think about. I just sit down and start typing and whatever happens, happens. 

But somewhere along the way, between the last blog and this one, I started worrying too much. And yeah, for semi-good reasons because, let’s face it. I don’t like drama any more than the next person. But I got tired of people’s shocked responses -- omg, did she just say that? (Maybe.)...she doesn’t really cuss like a sailor on leave, does she?? (Yeah, she really does. Sometimes.) ….oh, you can’t say that! It’s not polite! (Well, actually…)

But I had this whole post going in my head yesterday at the commissary about how I don’t like talking to people while I’m at the commissary. I want to get my groceries and leave. And I’m very obvious about it. I don’t walk slowly…I am a woman on a mission: 1) put groceries in the cart, 2) pay for groceries, 3) get the hell out of the store. I don’t want some random person’s thoughts on why lunchables are the worst lunch choice for my children. And I don’t need the bagger’s opinion on feminine hygiene products. And sometimes when people feel the need to get chatty with me while I’m shopping, I feel like screaming at them. (In reality, I pretend like I don’t know they’re talking to me and I just walk off while they’re still talking.)

But instead of writing what I wanted to write, I censored. (And said it to my friend instead.) But I miss the old way of doing things. And the thing about it is that, yeah, when we filter we’re playing it safe. We tiptoe around so we don’t offend anyone. But really, someone is always going to be offended and you can’t please everyone. That’s kind of what I’ve been thinking about anyway. I kind of want to go back to the old way but I kind of don’t want people all up in here like “hey, lady, let’s talk about some manners…and you’re overuse of exclamation marks…and the word shit”. And I’d probably have to admit to how many times I give my kids lunchables to take to school because it’s easier than anything else. (But for the record, I make them take some fruit too. I feel like that balances out the processed junk in the lunchable.) I don’t know. Maybe I’ll keep censoring. Maybe I won’t. I’m far too indecisive.