Where have I been?

Oh you know... doing the usual. Raising a now nearly 15 month old bucket of sunshine and toddler sass, exploring life as a stay at home mom, and waiting. Always waiting. C should be getting his next set of orders soon, so I am hopeful for great adventures in a new city/state, but hopefully back in the US.

Did I mention that I'm pregnant again? That was a shock. After years of treatment and negative tests, imagine my surprise that at an appointment to place an IUD the doctor tells me that won't be possible, as there's a little person in there. Imagine my shock to find out that it's another little boy who will be joining us in September (Oh, and we move in August. O.O I have lost my mind)

With Boy #1, the pregnancy I wrote of last time I wrote in here (nearly 2 years ago. Oy), we had a rough road. My OB couldn't believe my ridiculous (read: Absurdly normal, but poorly timed) weight gain, and so I was tested for Gestational Diabetes 4 times. and then had the shock of my life... and not in the pleasant way. After all that monitoring , all those blood tests, about 8 million ultrasounds.... My doctor missed a very crucial thing- my Son's intestines weren't inside his body.

I have a lot of writing to do, a lot of things to catch you up on. Know that my first son is fine now-you wouldn't even know what he had been through if you saw him now. I am varying levels of fine, depending on the day. My marriage is still one of the greatest blessings to my life. For all that has changed, for all that will change, there are still some constants like Family, Faith, and Food.

Award Winning Baked Potato Soup

Last Sunday, our chapel service had a potluck soup/chili cook off for the Super Bowl. It was a lot of fun, and yours truly took first place in the soup category! I made my Crockpot Baked Potato Soup. I've made it about a million times, and it is always a crowd pleaser.  It's creamy, smooth, and most importantly... Delicious.  Lucky readers... I'm sharing the recipe with you!

Ingredients:

5 lb potatoes, peeled and cut in small chunks

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced (I usually do 4 or 5. Hubs is obsessed with garlic)

2 qt chicken broth

1 tsp season salt

1/2 tsp red pepper

1/2 tsp pepper

2 8 oz pkg cream cheese

For garnish:

Bacon, turkey bacon, green onion, cheese

Directions:

-place potatoes, onion, garlic in crock pot. Top with seasonings, then pour in chicken broth. 

-cook on low 8 hours, or high on 4

- mash potatoes. I use an immersion blender, but have used a hand mixer before. You can also hand mash, if you like it chunky.I like my soup smooth, so immersion blender works great for me. 

- cut cream cheese into chunks and drop in soup. Put the crockpot on high for 30 minutes

- when done, give it another quick treatment with the blender/mixer/masher.

-serve! Top with garnishes and enjoy. 

This serves an Army, and I don't know the calories. ;) It's one of my favorite comfort foods and so easy too! It reheats well so no worries on all the (super delicious) leftovers!

What's your award-winning recipe?

Paris, Part 3

In which I recap day 3 and my angry feet. 

We didn't "do" much on Sunday. We were exhausted, my feet were starting to cry, and we didn't want to burn ourselves out. 
So after breakfast, we headed out for two stops: The Pantheon and the Louvre.
The Pantheon was important for me as two beloved authors are buried there (Voltaire and Hugo), and I was not disappointed. the history in that building is insane. This is also where the Curies, Monsieur Braille, and many others are laid to rest. To be surrounded by it is unexplainable. 
From there, we went to the Louvre. Travel tip: have a plan for the Louvre. It is MASSIVE. We were in there for hours and probably only saw like 5% of the art. Our plan of attack was to see the Mona Lisa first and get it out of the way. I know that sounds really calloused, but we had been told it was a let down (it is), and that portion of the museum is CROWDED and I don't do crowds. 
From there, we went and saw the Islamic art exhibit, and then Napoleon's apartments...chock full of lyre chairs, making my Alpha Chi heart oh-so-happy. 
At that point, ye olde dogs were barking and we went back to the hotel to rest before dinner.
Dinner was at Brasserie Julien, recommended by a friend of mine. It was absolutely amazing! Delicious food, great service...I was highly impressed. I got the Onion Soup (no need to say French ;) ), Lamb, and then brioche french toast. Mr. Got poached eggs/chestnuts, whole sea bass, and lime cheesecake (And scolded by the waiter for choosing a non-french dessert). 

After that, we explored. We wanted to say that we had seen the Moulin Rogue, so we popped up in that part of the city to take a picture, and immediately left. Mr was also in a play in college called Picasso at the Lapin Agile, so that was a must find as well.   

 
Then it was a quick stroll back to the hotel to get ready to leave. We left the next afternoon, after a morning shopping at Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. Of course, I left Paris with more macarons... *insert dreamy sigh here*. Can't get enough of them!

It was an amazing birthday trip that can not be replicated! I felt so blessed to have that time with Mr and to get to see more of the world. I'm looking forward to our next trip- this weekend (!!) we are headed to Bologna, Italy for Mr. to nerd out over Kappa Sigma history for his birthday!

Paris, part 1

Phew, what a weekend! I hate that it's taking so long to post these, but Mr. also took about 900 pictures.... and I'm not exaggerating.     We left early Friday for Paris. Luckily, we live just uphill from the train station, so we walked down and got on our first train. This one just took us from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt. Then, we had about 10 minutes to hop on our next train- from Frankfurt to Paris (Est).    We sprang for first class, and I feel it was worth it. We had extra leg room, we had a light meal delivered to our seats, and it was generally quiet. 2nd class was more crowded...think typical coach on an airplane, and no meal. There was an on board restaurant, but the Mister says it wasn't very good.   We arrived in Paris around 1, and had a little issue with figuring out the train system. After walking to Paris (Nord), We eventually figured it out and bought Paris Visite passes, which are definitely worth it! We were able to travel by metro anywhere within Paris as frequently as we wanted for 3 days. It definitely made a difference in our ease of sight seeing that's for sure!   We eventually made it to our hotel, and set our bags down and headed right back out. We wandered around the area our hotel is in, enjoying just seeing sights. I did make sure to stop for a birthday treat- macarons from Fauchon!  

After all this, we had a dinner at Cafe Marco Polo, which was just okay. It won major points for convenience... it's right across the street from our hotel (Concorde Opera Paris) I got steak frites- delish! Mr got scallops, which he claims were delicious.

We got crepes for desert, but I forgot to grab a picture. ;) We went to bed early, which was perfect for our insanely busy day two... Coming tomorrow! Au revoir! 

OCONUS Jealousy

 By the time y'all are reading this, the Mr. and I are on our way to Paris for my birthday! I just wanted to share some thoughts about living overseas for the weekend.   If you live overseas for any amount of time, two things will happen.  1. People will make you feel like you're not doing "enough" traveling at any given point. Maybe this is just a me thing, but we hear (often) about how everyone has all these plans for every. single. four day. See, if you were in the states,  your plans for a four day would probably be to relax, maybe see or do something in your town or just nearby, but that's about it.  Here, people go NUTS. The Mister is taking a four day for my birthday, and we're going to Paris. We're not traveling for Christmas or New Year's. When we say that...we get the wide, unblinking stare of disbelief. How DARE you have time off and not use it to see more of this country!
Look, we love it here, and we love travel. We just also have some debts to take care of, work to do, Pets that need us, and Doc appointments. We can't take off every month-and that's okay. We're still seeing as much as we can.
2. Related to number 1, your friends and family romanticize your time here. People say things like "I have no tips for you, not all of us can go to Paris for a weekend!". Or, "Gosh, I'm so jealous it must just be awesome to be there and get to Travel all the time".  Yes, it's awesome to be here. Yes, we feel very blessed to have these opportunities...however...
I get to go on a 4 day birthday trip to Paris, because I gave up having holidays with my family.  I get to experience this wonderful culture, because I am willing to deal with the 6/7/8 hour time difference from people I love. 
Not everything here is rosy, and it's not wonderful all the time (But it is pretty close!). Just remember that being in Germany isn't all beer, schnitzel, and traveling throughout Europe. It's also missing home, missing family, and a language/culture barrier that is insurmountable at times.

Sunday Slowdown

I love Sundays.
It's one day of the week that I strive to really slow down, not rush through things and just enjoy the day with the husband and the animals. We go to Church, we might eat lunch out, or we might just come home and do laundry and hold the couch down.
Believe me, after this week-this slow down  was MUCH needed. Nothing was overwhelmingly bad, just seemed like we had a hard time getting things to break our way. 
Of course, it's also much easier to slow down when you have a cold and the Mr. has Arkham Origins to keep him occupied.
What's your Sunday ritual? Are you a slow down person, or do you keep running?

         

Getting to know Deustch...Getting to know alll about Deutstch(land)

Last post, I mentioned that I had been doing a 3 day course called culture college. It was intense! 9-3 for three days, with about 40 of my new friends.  Day one: Classroom learning     This was an all day thing in a chapel basement with poor acoustics..not so good for the deaf girl. The information was great, however. They taught us a lot about German history, culture, and language. Our instructor is from Germany so she was SO helpful.      Day two: walking tour  

    So this was my favorite day, because it was the most applicable to daily life. From post, you can walk downtown, and we did! They took us to see all the major historical sites, some interesting  places to shop and eat, and some places that are just helpful to know. For instance-they took us into the train station so we could aquaint ourselves with how it is laid out and how to get tickets. Seems self explanatory, but it was actually good info to know.     Day 3: Garrison Briefing By far, my least favorite day. Is that bad? It was a bunch of the different offices on post telling us about the services they offer and what's in store for our post. I did love learning that there is a new PX opening in the near future! Currently, our shops are all spread out. The main PX isn't with the outdoor stuff, which is separate from the electronics, which is separate from the sports store, which is separate from the home store. It's incredibly frustrating-especially for someone like me who isn't driving.  I did end up winning a sweet BMW sunshade for the car because I can say 9:30 in German.  

  All in all, I'd definitely recommend this (FREE) seminar to anyone moving to Wiesbaden, or it's equivalent in other garrisons. Even though we've been here for a month and I thought I wouldn't learn anything, I walked away with a lot of good knowledge and orientation to the city. Here's to another couple of years of German adventure!

The Odyssey to Germany, pt 2

Good gravy--y'all came back for more?! ;)

So, last I left off we were about to land in Germany.

We landed around 1 PM German time, so it was about 7 AM EST. Again, deplaning was done in sections. High ranking officials, people folllowing on (Our flight was making further stops in Turkey and Manas), and lastly people stopping in Germany. Once off the flight, we were directed to get rid of meat products, so I had to dump a TON of slim jim's that C had bought, which he was sad about. He was instructed to stay in a room to fill out some paperwork, while I got to go ahead and get in line to have my passport checked. A quick question about where we were headed and we were through to baggage claim!

Baggage claim at a military passenger terminal is pretty much nothing like baggage claim at a regular airport. You walk in and bags are everywhere! You just have to grab yours and arrange them. Our girls were also at baggage claim! Both a little mad, but okay otherwise. ;) We had to have them checked out, pay a fee, and then loaded our bags onto the carrier they were already on, and got herded into a different waiting room. This one had wifi and it seemed like things were going to go easier-more people to help us out. ;)

Here's where we hit a hiccup. See, we thought our sponsor was picking us up. The reception desk said he hadn't checked in, so we had to take the bus. We walked out, and a very enthusiastic man took my bags and loaded me on the bus telling C to wait...only for our sponsor to arrive shortly thereafter. After a few more pieces of paperwork, we then loaded everything up in our sponsor's van and headed out!

The autobahn was terrifying to me. I'm fairly certain I will not be driving here, or at least not on the autobahn. It too us about an hour to get to Wiesbaden. Now, at this point it's about 1430 (2:30 PM). Last time we ate was around midnight, or 6 AM German time. We're starving, but exhausted. All I wanted at this point was to go to the hotel...but apparently there was a form that needed to be signed. So we spent some time driving around to find him... to give up and go to the hotel, and find the guy there. Typical Army, right?

It's probably around 4 by the time we got in our room, with the animals. C took JB out as soon as we got there, I went straight to the room with Adi to set her up.  We decided to rest, and then C would go get food at the bowling alley (less than 5 min walking from the hotel). Well, by the time that happened I was exhausted and starving...so nauseous. C picked up on that and grabbed me some plain food, plus some things he knew I loved (Pizza with hot sauce). We had been napping on/off for most of the afternoon, and fell asleep still almost right after we finished eating.

Since then, it's been a flurry of activity! We've set up an apartment and our phone/internet/cable/etc. We're working on cell phones, and trying to keep our heads above water.

More to come on the pets, our apartment, and Germany in general!
J

The Odyssey to Germany, pt 1

Hello all! It has been crazy here. We have an apartment and are moving in this weekend, we've got everything but cell phones set up, and C should hopefully be getting his license this week! Once that happens, we're officially mobile. :)

I figured I'd go back to actually getting here, then blog about the pets/housing/ everything else later.

So, if you remember from my earlier posts, C and I decided we'd drive from Sierra Vista to Baltimore. We did this to ensure we'd have our girls with us, and because the Army agreed with us that $3k to ship them was ridiculous. So we stopped in Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, O'Fallon (IL), Union (KY), and then Baltimore. We were on the road from 8/28 to 9/1, then had an overnight in Baltimore.

So, the morning we were flying out from Baltimore, Cody ran around doing little errands, and I was organizing our bags. Looking back now, there's a few things I would've liked to have had, or grabbed in the States where we had more choices. Post on that later too.

Around 2, Cody went and returned our rental car. Our hotel had a shuttle and agreed to let us on there with the girls and all our stuff, so we figured that would make this whole thing a little less stressful. We were right! It ended up being pretty tough just to get us all out using the shuttle, I can't imagine having to do it with rental car return.

We took the 6:20 shuttle to the airport, for our flight at midnight. A little crazy, but since this flight was so packed, it was a great idea. We finangled all our bags into the vestibule between the two sets of doors into the airport. That's as far as we could go, untill we assembled JB's crate. That had a slight hiccup-the metal wingnut C had gotten to secure the kennel didn't fit, so we had to just use the plastic pieces. Then we had to convince JB to get in the crate, not freak out, and load the crate on a push cart. Thankfully, that went ok. ONce that and our other bags were loaded up quickly.

Special note: If you have pets or kids (or both) you can cut the line at check in at AMC in Baltimore. SO THANKFUL for this! We snuck through the HUGE line of people, and got helped nearly immediately. After all my worrying about the crates, the paper work...it was barely a second glance at them, and not expensive at all! You'll be shocked at how not astronomical it ended up being to fly them. So when we finished checking in, we were told to bring the animals back at 10 PM. That was at about 7... so we had 3 hrs, and couldn't go through security. We ate, talked with families on our flight, and answered a lot of questions for kids about how big our dog was.

Finally, 10 rolled around and we dropped the girls off by the check in desk. I was pretty emotional-not only had it been a long day, but these girls are my babies and I would have been devastated had something happened to them.

Going through security was surprisingly simple, and I didn't have to throw out my water. From there we went to our gate, just to be the last group to board. The boarding order was: High rankers, Families with small children (Or really any children, because there were defintely some with teens who took advantage of that. LOL), those travelling in Uniform, and then "Others". We lucked out and had in seat entertainment-not that we got to use it much! We took off around midnight and I only cried a little. It's just hard to leave a family and country that I love...

In the most confusing move, they served a dinner?! I would've much preferred that they give us breakfast, because at 0100, I really don't want food. So we had oreos and drinks, I fell asleep but Cody ordered me a meal (that I ended up not eating), then snacks again in the morning, which we also slept through.

I'll write and publish the journey about once we hit the ground in Germany later; This is long enough as is! Cookies if you made it through. :)
-Jess

The post that isn't really cohesive at all.

So.

I'm still not pregnant. I actually started AF this morning. I want to say I'm shocked, but I'm not. I'm tired of trying, but not losing hope. There is nothing sweet/romantic/sexy about trying to have a baby.  It's stressful, it's upsetting. Upsetting to get your hopes up each month, to have it dashed. To not know what you did wrong- if anything! Some websites say you have a 20% chance each month... That's low. That means that most people will not succeed. But what does it say that We've been trying for 6? Nothing. It says nothing.

This also means we are now taking a break from all of it. It's sad for me, but good in the long run... I need some time to lose some of the weight I piled on, use our wine tasting groupons, and move.

My brother had a beautiful wonderful wedding and I'm so glad I was here for it. I'll do a picture post once we get those back from the photographer.

The move is really becoming real. I have less than 20 days left with my car, I'm under 60 days till our flight. Lots of organizing to happen. Lots of selling crap to happen.

I read the divergent books and loved them and need the third one to be out already.

C and I are taking some time to work on us and that is needed and lovely.

We've received sponsors and they're pretty helpful.

I'm trying to remember to praise in the middle of this storm. What is for me will not pass me by.

Wilkkomen

It's been a crazy few weeks, but I'll start with introductions.


I'm Jessica(Jess). I'm starting this blog to keep family and friends up to date with my H and I's move to Germany, to vent, and to give myself something to do. I'm 25. I love food, cooking, crafting, the whole nine. I'm a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor, and I'm trying to start the process (a long one for me, most likely) of becoming an Registered Dietitian.

H is in the Army, got promoted to Captain recently, and just a soon after found out he would be going to Germany-Wiesbaden, to be exact. He will be going to MI brigade there, hopefully to take Company Command.  He's 27. He's all things wonderful, 98% of the time. ;)

We're also trying to start our family. We've been TTC for 4.5 months now, and are crossing our fingers for a BFP sometime soon. We've been pretty quiet about the fact that we're trying, because we didn't want to get people too excited, or get the unsolicited conception advice. However, as the months drag on...I find that I want people to know. I don't want to have a huge coming out when it's been over a year. I think so many people (myself included) that thought this would be a quick process. It's not easy for everyone, and that story needs to be told just as much as "I didn't know I was pregnant" and the much longer infertility struggles. I never thought it would take half a year, or maybe even longer for us to conceive a child. I didn't think that taking my temperature every morning would become old hat.

 I do think and know I want support from my family. I promise, if there is something worth updating about, that I will tell you, but please don't ask otherwise.  If you are pregnant-I want to hear your updates and support you! It gives me some ideas of what to expect, what I want to do or avoid... And I love you, so there's that too. ;)

Note to self...start acronyms glossary..

I think that's all for today. Updates to come!
Jess