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!!!

Picture Update

Some slight changes

We finally got the orders for Ft. Drum NY. At least now we know it´s for sure and we couldn`t be happier. But there were some little changes to our schedule. Our last day in Germany won´t be 27th December. When Brian read his orders it said report date is March 10th 2010. They did that because they wanted to give us more time after his deployment and all. I was a little irritated at first, because I hate all these changes. I need a fixed schedule, being a German :-)
Brian told me what we now plan to do. We will stay in Germany until the first of February and then take a trip to Minnesota to visit with the family there for a while. Then we will take a flight from Mn to NY.

I should've known better

Brian called me this morning and told me, that he received an Email from Branch regarding our assignment to Fort Knox. I thought I just copy it in here, so you can read it for yourselves.

After a search of your assignment in Ft Knox, KY; I decided to pull youoff. The reason for this is that the unit deploys constantly. Since you havea couple of deployments, I would recommend another area. I was working on FtCarson, sadly I was shut down three times.Right now I have Ft Bliss, TX; Ft Sill, OK; Ft Drum, NY; Ft Campbell, KY;and Ft Benning, GA. However, if you are still interested in Ft Knox, KY, Ican make that happen.

I never thought that they would have a heart and actually care where they send us. I'm very relieved that this happened now, as we weren't 100 per cent happy with Fort Knox to begin with. I guess we got a second chance now.

Brian and I talked it over and came to a new solution. At first we took Texas and Georgia off our list and then decided between Oklahoma, Ft Campbell and New York. After some evaluation we decided, that we will go for Fort Drum New York. Now, let's just hope that this time it will really happen, cause it would make us very happy. Of course Colorado is still our number one on the list, but now we're also kind of looking forward to move to New York.

Just a quick note ...

... to let you all know that we are still alive. Still without a running PC in the house, but hopefully this weekend we will find out more. A friend of my parents is going to look at it. Cross your fingers that he can fix it right away.

Other than that we are doing ok. The weather is so beautiful and we went swimming a lot during the past couple of weeks.

Will write more as soon as I´m back online :-)