Spider hunting

This is not in chronological order, but it's too cute to wait until I get caught up. I haven't been homesick, but I sure wish our family and friends were here to ooh and aah over cute Kaben with us.

The other night while walking to our hotel room we saw some spiders on the window. Spencer took his shoe off to kill them. Little did we know it was so funny. Since then we've made 'spider hunting' (whacking our shoes on the wall) a daily ritual.

BernKastel-Kues

a little over an hour

To the right of each title, that is a place, I'm including how far it is from our home. That way you'll know how much time to plan if you want to squeeze it in when you come to visit. hint, hint...

The Blairs (our sponsor and her family) invited us to join them and other ward/stake members for the BernKastel-Kues wine festival. It is a gorgeous, quaint village. We were introduced to so many delicious foods; a sure sign we're going to love it here!

The spot we staked out for the fireworks show. I'm glad we put our blankets out early. There were so many people!

This baker made the best pizza. He was also so cute with Kaben. He played peek-a-boo and did cute noises and sounds with him. That's probably part of the reason Kaben kept wanting to turn around rather than look at the camera.

oops, but so cute.

One of the vendors had non-alcoholic wine. Expensive grape juice.

Each year BK-K has a wine festival followed by a fireworks show commemorating how the village got it's name. There is a boat on the river that lights of fireworks and then the castle lights some in retaliation as if they were at war. It was by far the best fireworks display I'd ever seen. Also the most dangerous. The houses were so close to the boat. One of them was even under construction and was just studs.

This video is a small segment of one of the boats 'turns'. It doesn't really do it justice, but hopefully you can see how cool they lit the fireworks. Like missiles or something, they even had them moving. How else could they aim at the house with exposed studs?!?

I just watched this video again and decided it reminds me of Contra.

We were afraid Kaben would be scared of the fireworks, but he loved them. Isn't this the cutest profile? I just love this picture and the cutie(s) in it!

The boat had a huge finale and then the castle did this. It's hard to tell, but it's moving/falling fire. Like a 100 drips lines of flammable liquid. Again, hard to explain, but amazing!

When that went out it went to this.

It was a great day and a perfect start to our Germany adventure!

Germany at last

We had a very long and tiring journey getting here, but we made it! All of you involved know what a feat that was!

August 30

We arrived at the Frankfort airport at 7:15am. We met up with the other servicemen and were divided into duty stations. We were the only ones going to the Landstuhl/Kaiserslautern area. We had the bus to ourselves.

Kaben was such a good traveler! Even people on the plane commented on how good he was. I guess we shouldn't have been too surprised, he's always good. We love that boy!

The bus took us to Kaiserslautern where we met our sponsor, Cherise (LT Blair, who soon became Captain Blair). Because we are 'residents' we aren't allowed to drive without a license which as you can imagine makes finding a house, shopping, etc difficult. Cherise went above and beyond to help us. We've found a fabulous house and move in Nov. 1st. Until then we will be in the Air Force hotel and then a basement apt for a month.

Our hotel room is very comfortable. It's pretty much a small 1 bedroom apt.

There is a grate by the front door that Kaben just loves to hit/slap because it makes a loud noise.

Right away they had Spencer to work. Not at the hospital, but briefing after briefing. While he was gone Kaben and I walked to the store. The bagger doubted I could get it all home. Little did he know this was just the beginning.

As if I didn't look goofy enough pushing this home I also had Kaben in the Baby Bjorn and a backpack with the rest of the groceries.

We love our walks!

Gone and done it

We've entered the blog world. We're excited to have a fun and easy way to keep in touch and keep a journal. I'm even more excited to have this off my to do list. I tend to put things off that intimidate me, which tends to make it even worse. The blog fell into this category. Once I decided to buckle down and do it, viola, it was easy as pie. Just as everyone had told me it would be.