Easter 2011

We had a great Easter! We started out by having our friends, Kevin and Amanda, over Saturday to help dye Easter eggs!

Then, Sunday afternoon we had everyone from church over for refreshments (cupcakes, candy, punch, strawberries!) and an Easter egg hunt! We had a great turnout, and the kids had a good time!

Hope everyone had a fabulous Easter!

New Job!

I have now completed 2 weeks at my job.  I am in a classroom with 10 one year olds.  I love being able to play with the babies every day and watch them learn new things!  But it is EXHAUSTING!!!  I am up and down, here and there, bending over to help them up or stop them from falling.  My feet hurt, my back is aching, but I still really like it!!!  It's been a rewarding experience so far.  I hate when people say you can't teach babies.  They learn so many things!  I'm sure all the parents out there can attest to that.

Some good things that come with my job are the benefits!  Jesse and I had to get our health insurance through a company that sells to Americans living overseas.  While it's good insurance, with good coverage, it's a big chunk of money that we pay out of pocket, and it doesn't cover us when we go back to the states.  With my job, we get on a group plan, with dental!!!  Much better!  Also, I get holiday pay and paid leave days (vacation!)!!!  But the best part is, Jesse doesn't have to work at the golf course anymore!  He isn't going to quit just yet though.  He doesn't want to just leave his supervisor hanging when he gave him this job and so quickly too!  So Jesse has talked to him about reducing his hours, and only working there a few days a week.  Plus, it will be nice to get that little bit of extra income for now :)

So that's the update on my new job!  Now I'm getting ready for our Easter gathering tomorrow!  I've already made the cupcakes, now I have to decorate them (hopefully they'll look like Easter baskets when I'm done).  Cleaning the house, boiling eggs, and decorating them later tonight!!!  Easter egg hunt tomorrow for the kids!  Pictures to come soon :)

Happy Easter!!!

What's been going on!

We've had a few things going on since I last posted.  First off, I got a job!  I will be working at the Child Development Center on Ramstein Air Force Base!  The Child Development Center is sort of like a day-care, but runs more like a pre-school.  They start taking kids at a couple of months old, and it goes through 4/5 year olds.  There aren't pre-school classes at the elementary school.
I've been spending the last few weeks running around, working on paperwork (there are so many security, medical, and whatever else, checks to be done).  I finally got all of the paperwork done, and had my general orientation last Thursday.  It was kind of boring, but not too terrible (I got paid!).  I officially start work tomorrow, Tuesday!  I will just be going through training and what not.  I don't know yet what age group I'm going to be with, but in my interview I requested pre-school age.  So we'll see!
Other things:
- We are still doing our ladies' Bible study every other week.  It's been going well.  We just finished our lesson on Bathsheba, and we're moving into the lesson on Mary next week.
- We went to a singing that our friends, Kevin and Amanda, had at their house.
- Jesse's been doing a men's song-leading class.
- I got a massage! (it was part of my anniversary present)
- Went to my first Pampered Chef party!  I'm going to host a catalogue party on-line the first 2 weeks in May!
- Went to a baseball game!  Ryan (who worships with us) is on the varsity team at the high school (and he's only a freshman)!
- Jesse started back at the golf course.
- We went to the circus.  They had it here in Weilerbach.  It was really tiny, and pretty lame.  But it was definitely a cultural experience.  Interesting to see what Germans think "country western" is!
- Rusty got a haircut, and he looks so cute and tiny!
- I got to go shopping with my friend Michelle in Kaiserslautern (like 10 minutes from my house).  First time to go shopping since we've been here, and I was surprised at the number of stores that had reasonable prices!  I got an Easter dress for 20 euro!
- Had a potluck/surprise Birthday party at our house!

So that's the run-down of what we've been up to.  It looks like we were busy when I put it in a list form like that.  But it didn't seem like we were that busy...  Anyway, planning an Easter Egg Hunt that we're having at our house!  I'm looking forward to it!  I'm going to make cupcakes that look like Easter baskets!

Here are a couple of cakes I've made recently.

Our friend Caleb re-enlisted, and I brought this to his office for his ceremony.

Strawberry cake with cream cheese filling.

We had a potluck/surprise Birthday at our house.  This was for our sweet friend, Michelle.

Butter pecan cake with cream cheese icing (she requested it a month ago)

Well, that's it for now.  Hopefully I'll have some good things to report after I start my job :)

2 Year Anniversary Trip

We are back from our AWESOME trip!  We left Monday morning to drive to a little town called Reith, Austria.  This is the very small town where our hotel was.

Driving into Austria!!

Our Hotel - Reith Wirt!

We got there, around 4, went and rented our skis, then headed to the neighboring town of Kitzbuhel (only 3.5 miles away, and where the skiing is done!).  We went exploring, ate a fantastic dinner, and took a long walk around!

Centro - We loved it so much we had dinner here twice!

We found the sword in the stone! (random...)

 Tuesday morning, we hit the slopes!  And let me tell you, it was HOT that day!  We were burning up... But boy did it make for some pretty pictures!

The Alps!

So pretty with all the snow!

Riding the lift

We  stopped at the top of one of the runs to take this!

Sunning ourselves!

And resting after lunch!

Our view while eating lunch!

Wednesday was a great day of skiing!  We didn't take many pictures because it was overcast, but that also meant cooler temperatures!  It was pretty comfortable!  We did manage to get someone to take a pictures of the 2 of us when there was a little bit of blue showing!

2nd Anniversary - Kitzbuhel, Austria!

Thursday was quite miserable skiing weather.  It was raining in town, and snowing on the mountains.  Snowing I can handle, but visibility was practically 0...  It was SO foggy.  It's really hard to ski down a mountain when you can hardly see 50 feet in front of you (at times it seemed more like 30).  Needless to say, we cut that last day of skiing short.  We were tired though, so it was ok.

We rounded off our trip by stopping in Munich, and going to the BMW museum!  Jesse was quite excited :)  And we ended up taking more pictures at the museum than we did skiing!  It's just easy to click away in a museum :)

BMW museum (the round part)

James Bond's car!  THE actual car Pierce Brosnan drove in "Golden Eye"!

Pierce Brosnan drove this one in "The World is Not Enough"!

What Jesse would love to have...

What Jesse would love for me to do...

There are TONS more pictures where those came from.  Coming soon to a facebook near you!

March Madness!!!

No, I don't watch basketball, I just like the phrase!  February is over and March has begun.  February was a good month; nice and calm.  This past Sunday we had to say goodbye to our friends Jeremi and Michele.  They're time here in Germany was up, and they are moving on to their next duty station.  We will miss them.  They are moving to Mississippi, so our potluck on Sunday was a Cajun/Mardis Gras theme (since they'll be so close to LA).  It was the most DELICIOUS potluck we've had yet!  Gotta love Cajun food!!!  My friend Amanda and I made a going-away cake for them.

Marble fudge cake, w/ chocolate cream cheese  filling!

Now March is here!  The month of our anniversary!!!  In less than a week, Jesse and I will be celebrating 2 years of marriage!  It's been a great 2 years!  God truly blessed me with such a wonderful husband!  For our honeymoon, we went skiing in Colorado.  For our first anniversary, we went skiing in Ruidoso, New Mexico.  For our anniversary this year, we're going skiing in Austria!!!  How awesome is that!!!  So we've kind of started this tradition of going skiing to celebrate our marriage :)  Don't know how long we'll keep that up, but it's fun!  We are actually going on our trip the week after our anniversary (they were running a special then).  I can't wait!  Lots of pictures to come ;)

Here are a couple of pictures from our previous skiing trips.

Honeymoon - 2009
El Dora, Colorado

1st Anniversary - 2010
Ruidoso, New Mexico

Coming soon...  2nd Anniversary - 2011  Austria!!!

Valentine's Day in Paris!

Jesse and I have wanted to go back to Paris ever since we took a whirlwind trip there back in August.  So Jesse decided we should go for Valentine's Day!  It was fabulous!!!  Not too cold, and not too crowded!  We went to Paris Monday morning on the ICE train.  For those of you who don't know what that is, that's the really fast train!  We got to Paris from Kaiserslautern in only 2 1/2 hours!  It was wonderful!!!  No sitting in the car for 4 1/2 hours, no going through toll roads.  Just get to the train station (which is only 15 minutes from our house), get on your train, and 2 1/2 hours later get off your train in the middle of Paris!  We got to Paris at a little before 10 am, and started sight-seeing.  We had already done some of the big things last time (i.e. went up the Eiffel Tower), so we just wanted to relax and look around.  One of the really cool things we did was going up the Notre Dame tower!  That was neat!  We went to several different places that day too!  And that night, we went to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle!  I think it's my favorite thing!

 At the train station EARLY in the morning.

 Notre Dame

 My favorite Gargoyles!                   View from the top of Notre Dame.

 The Eiffel Tower is so pretty at night!

I can't rotate it because it's a video.  I just need to learn to stop videoing vertically...

The next day (Tuesday), we went to Place de la Concorde, and walked down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.  It was nice to just walk down the street, go in some stores, and just enjoy the city!  And we found the Louis Vuitton headquarters!  Yes, we went in the store!  No, we did not buy anything :)  Before our train home, we went back to the Eiffel Tower (got a million pictures of it), went to the Pantheon, had a crepe, and saw a rainbow!!!

 Place de la Concorde

 Champs Elysees                           Louis Vuitton Headquarters!

Arc de Triomphe

Eiffel Tower!!! 

Pantheon (this is not a church)            Pantheon with a rainbow!!!

Church behind the Pantheon with a rainbow!

It was a great trip!  Best Valentine's Day ever!!!  To see ALL of the pictures, look on Facebook!!!