Lucas being crazy as always

Merry belated Christmas

Lucas playing with his toys. He got pretty spoiled this year!


Lucas and my Grandma Evelyn



Pretending that he's sleeping

More toys at my aunt's house

Playing the 'sleeping game'

Brian having some red wine again

Eating Raclette! Yum

Looks like somebody else was very interested in Lucas' toys

Mausi wanting to play with Lucas

He loved that one!~

Mama helping Lucas with his gifts

We just got home from my aunt's house and I wanted to wish everyone a belated merry christmas. I hope you had some great times with your family and friends.

We celebrated christmas eve at my parent's house. Lucas was a little overwhelmed with all the toys he got, but he loves all of them. There we had some delicious raclette. We didn't stay too long though, as we had to get up early the next morning.

The day after we drove to Winterbach (near Stuttgart) to celebrate with my Mom's side of the family. My grandparents and my other aunt and family were there as well. That meant more gifts for Lucas of course and another crazy day altogether for him. The night was kinda rough, as he woke up several times and didn't sleep too long. We just got back home and now I have to do some major cleaning.

Snow Love

That's true Minnesotan boys right there!

Literally staying at home now...

YAY the snow is finally heading our way!!!

Licking the peanut butter off the toast

I don't think I wrote this in my last post. My car is on the verge of breaking down, so I'm without a car now. We had it in a repair shop and they told us, that we shouldn't drive it no more. THe bearings are about to break and it could happen any minute. As that is more to fix than the van is worth, we will have to chunk it. So I have been without a car for almost three weeks. It is kinda driving me nuts, because I'm totally not used to that. I feel isolated and hate that I can't even run to the grocery store or whatsoever, as the next one is about 20 by foot and to be honest it's not worth the walk with Lucas, as I can't really carry water bottles and all that stuff. But it's ok. I try to get most of the things we need on the weekends, when Brian is home and so is his car. Speaking of the Mustang, we're in the middle of selling it right now. We already have two people that are interested. Now we jsut have to decide what to do. There's a co worker of Brian that wants it right now. And there is a best friend of my brother (German) that is interested. Of course as of now, we favor my brother's friend, but that would bring more headache and paperwork for us, as it needs to have everything in German specs and whatsoever. So we will see. Next week, Daniel's friend will tell us if he really wants to buy it or not.

As for my Visa, we haven't gotten further. We are waiting for the interview date, still.

Oh yeah, I really hope that the privatizing of my profile worked. So let me know if you can still read it and if you had to sign in, in order to so. I'm sorry for that, but I really didn't like, not knowing who's all reading my blog. Especially with all these pictures of Lucas and details of our private life.

Will put this blog on 'private settings'...

.... in order to do so, I will need all e-mail addys of the ones that want to continue reading my blog. So send them to me via e-mail, on facebook, myspace, wer-kennt-wen or wherever we are connected. In about a week, I will change my settings!

Nikolaus

Nikolaus left a few gifts in front of our door in the night of the 6th December


We took Brian's boot for Lucas, cause we could hardly fit anything into Lucas' real shoes


All happy about his gifts


In love with his new train set



Nikolaus even left a little something at Oma's and Opa's house





On Sunday, we celebrated St. Nikolaus, which is why Lucas got some gifts that day ;-) He was pretty happy with his presents, as you can tell from the pictures.

Monday morning we finally got to continue with the Visa paperwork. We drove to Frankfurt for my medical. Thankfully we could leave Lucas with my Mom. We left around 7.30 am, as you can't schedule any appointments.
Thanks to our navigation system, we found that place pretty quick and surprisingly it wasn't even half as crowded as I thought it would be. The whole procedure didn't take longer than about 45 minutes with waiting times. First we had to fill out some paperwork, then they took some blood for the HIV test and other tests they run, urine and they took an X-Ray of my lunge. They copied those pictures to a CD-Rom, which I will have to carry with me in my luggage on the plane. I don't know why they want to see pictures of my lunge, when I enter the States, but if that's what they want, well that's what they get. Oh yeah, by the way, my arm is all green and purple now, thanks to the nurse that took my blood. I didn't feel it right away, but she must've hit something.
After all these tests, a doctor checked me out as well. He just did a very quick test of my eyes, listened to my heart and asked a few questions.
Just when I thought we were through, he asked me about that stupid HPV shot. I only got the first shot, because it was required for the Visa. Personally I would've never gotten that shot, because it is not tested enough and I haven't heard too many good things so far. I maybe would've considered getting it, if I were a teenager and never had sex before. But I had to get it, because I'm not 27 just yet.... I stressed enough about this stupid shot alreadz and they gave it to me about two weeks before Brian got back from Iraq. It only cost me 160 Euro.... :-(( The thing is, that the whole vaccination consists of three shots in a period of time of 6 months. I was supposed to get the second shot, two months after the first one - which means right now. I thought I would get through, but then the doctor said I have to get the second shot and send them a fax with the verification, that I got it, in order for them to fulfil the paperwork and send it to the Consulate.

Anyway, I just found out that as of December 14 I don't need this stupid shot anymore. I don't know why this doctor didn't inform me about this. But I'm definately not getting this vaccination.

Monday we also drove the Van into the repair shop. So far we haven't heard from them. I really hope that it can get fixed easily and without a whole lot of money!!! I hate being without a car.

Time for an update

I'm sorry that I haven't updated on here for a while. It's just been a little crazy over here and I kinda forgot that I still have my blog. I hope that I will get to update this a little more often now. I just have to get into it again.

So like I said it's a little hectic over here and these past couple of weeks have been stressful for us with the housing issues. I won't go into detail, as most of you know it already. Also today my van acted up again and now we have to see if we still get it fixed or not. We really need a car though, so we will see what happens. Just keep your fingers crossed for us, that it's just something very simple that won't cost us too much.

As for our cars, Brian made up his mind and he wants to sell the Mustang before we leave Germany. He figured that it's not a car made to drive in snow and also not a family car at all. We are better of buying a family car that is good in snow over there. We wanted to take the van with us as our second car, that we can use as a 'work car' for Brian, that gets him to work and doesn't need to drive long distances. But now we don't know if that's still going to happen.

I don't have my Visa yet, we still need to go to the doctor and schedule an appointment for my interview. So I hope this will go a little smoother for us rather than all the other things we have been dealing with lately.

The movers are supposed to come January 12th and after that date we will move to my parent's house. That way I always have company and don't need a car and also we save quite some money.

We are supposed to leave Germany February 10th (two days after my birthday). From there we will fly to Minnesota and spend 3 - 4 weeks with the family, before we fly to New York.

That's our plan for now ;-)

And now, here's a couple of pictures that I took in the past week

Our Thanksgiving Dinner at Jess' and Steve's house


Lucas seems to like my Caramel Apples (made them for the first time ever)

We got him a Stanta Balloon at a christmas market

He loves bowling

Daddy"s back home!!!