Jet Lag!

Flew to USA last week... getting there takes almost 22 hours. By the time I got to the Reynolds house I had been awake for 25 hours (well not entirely true I did manage to get a few winks on the plane). Alan met me there and we had a great weekend with them and got to spend some special time with the kids and the grownups. I did not sleep much on the trip because while I was tired I was not sleeping on a normal schedule and would wake up often (counting forward to what time ti was in Stuttgart (of all things). Then on the return trip it was a dark flight but neither of us slept much and I had a 4 hour layover. But when I got home I stayed busy doing stuff so that I would be awake with Alan got home (his layover was almost 7.5 hours). Once we were back it was difficult to stay awake but it was way too early to go to bed. We went out to eat (but I slept in the car on the way) and walked around some stores and then decided to give into it and headed home. We went to bed at 730 and I woke up at 11:09 (almost 16 hours later). It is good to be back in my own bed and being with my husband!

Seems like every time I come back I get a cold and this trip was no different! Working through this one and gad or lives are
getting back to normal (normal for our lives in Germany anyway).

Dumpster Diving

So on Post there is an area where the Americans take their trash and sort it into dumpsters based on what they are getting rid of. There are glass dumpsters (1 each for white (clear), green and brown glass), a dumpster for paper only, one for plastics, one for cardboard and one for anything else... Then there is an area where they put things that are not trash but either are no longer wanted, they are over their household goods shipping weight limit heading home and must either pay of offload a few things or they are 220 voltage appliances would be of no use back in the states. People put perfectly good appliances, slightly used furniture, garden tools, you name it out here for others to pick and use...I relate this area to a consolidated big trash day back in Oklahoma, you put your discards out by the road and what is left 3 days later the city comes and hauls off. I think most of the stuff on Big Trash Day gets picked up by neighbors and flea market retailers and this keeps these items out of the landfills and saves the city money in pick and disposal costs.

So back to the Germany on Post version. This winter rescued 4 perfectly good ladder back, cane bottom chairs and will put these on my back porch this spring. And this weekend I found a 2 drawer bedside table. It was a sturdy table (good bones) but it had a couple of kid stickers on it and “Kristin” had practiced writing her name in a few places on the top surface in pink and blue ink. I soaked off the stickers and thought about painting it but the stickers gave me an idea. I had collected several sacks full of pamphlet of things to do in Germany and so I cut out pictures, maps, overviews of areas and have used these to decorate the drawer fronts and top (covering Kristin’s first attempts at writing her name). It is looking pretty good! I bought some varnish for sealing that I will use after I get everything in place. I think this wil go in the guest bedroom once finished. When we head home we will probably take a few item and leave them for the new comers, but I plan on taking this “treasure” with me as a memento of our journey!

bedside tabe - free
pamphlets from around town - free
paint brush and varnish - 11.95
Memory Table - Priceless!


Pictures to follow~

Driving in the dark with Purple Car

AS I have gotten older driving after dark has gotten less enjoyable. I will drive after dark but I prefer driving during the daylight hours. German Purple Car has funky headlights and I feel like I cant see more than about a cars length in front of the car and at Autobahn speeds I feel like I am constantly out driving the light. And they don't have very many lights along the road ways here so it is very dark. Seems to me that it is much darker here than in Oklahoma.

Early this morning after taking Alan to the airport I headed back home via a 7.6 KM detour. I took a wrong turn and ended up on the Autobahn headed away from home; in the dark and driving high speeds (or get run over). Had it been daylight I might have been able to navigate correctly but in the hours before sunrise I just made wrong turns! Had it been daylight I might have seen some interesting country side, but it was way too dark for that.

Purple Car and Navi (our GPS) got me home despite the darkness. And once back in my town I drove past a car wash that I did not know was there and it is very close to home (Purple Car really needs a bath so maybe this was a Car/GPS conspiracy just to route me past the car wash). So after the sun rises and a short nap I think I will reward Purple car with "The Works".

If all goes as planned I will add a picture of Purple Car, she will be so thrilled for everyone to see her!

This is not Purple Car, I still don't have a good picture of her. (not sure she will sit for a good picture so I thought I WOULD POST A REALLY COOL BMW).....

Grandparenting!

9 years ago our son brought home a precious little baby girl. Little did we know at that time we would melt when she called our names, her smile would light up the room when we walked in. She would want to spend nights upon end with us. She would look at us with wonder and amazement while we told her stories. We used to take walks exploring and always curb walking our way back home (you know like Leave it to Beaver did while walking home from school with Wally). Shopping with her as a 2-4 year old was often a challenge as she had a mind of her own at a very young age, but when we couldn't decide on one specific thing she would always tell me, Cappy says we could have both! And usually this is what we would do. We became a little child like ourselves playing with her over the years. Now we SKYPE with her. She sees us online and calls us. She is amazed at how this works and thrilled that see can see us while she talks with us being around the world in Germany. We have toured our home with her via SKYPE; of course this is not the same as being here in person, but when she does come she will see it is very much like the Greenview in many ways because our furniture (the furniture she grew up with) and things are here but this is not what will make her feel at home, it is the love we have for this child that will make her feel at home in Germany when she comes to visit!



Now we are expecting a new grandchild. In the fall our youngest son and his wife will be blessed with a child. We wont get to be there for this child like we were for the first grandchild. It makes my heart hurt to think that we will not get to see this precious addition to their family on a regular basis. We wont get to forge the same kind of bond with this child at an early age, but we will definitely try! Of course I am already looking at all the baby things when we go shopping but am holding off until we know if it will be a girl or a boy. We will be going back to Oklahoma for the birth (or shortly there after) and we plan to go for a visit at Christmas. And then we will have to try for weekly SKYPE sessions with the baby (and parents) but this just wont do. It will make our stay in Germany bitter sweet, know this little one is growing up not getting to know the in person touch and feel of Nana and Cappy.


I know with our mobile society grandparents have adjusted and many do not see their grandchildren even yearly, but having both sets of our grandparents in Oklahoma most if not all our lives and the same with our children's grandparents especially being in the same metro area all their lives, we will definitely have some major adjusting to do. I don't ever think I will get used to it but I will try and make the best of it for the short time we are in Germany. But this Oklahoma girl thinks she might just land back in the OKC metro area and be there forever more...

The Greenview

So here is the deal....when we got the initial word about the contract on our Greenview house, I did not get excited. I told Alan, lets just wait and see how it plays out. I refused to let it get to me. After all we were the 2nd bidders on the house in the beginning and the first contract fell through that time...I was not going to get excited until after the paperwork had been singed and the money transferred hands.

Yeah right!

I got excited! I could not control it. I was happy that we would no longer have to deal with a house back in the States. I was happy to have Alan going back to the states for the closing, I excited that we would be able to travel without the looming thought of what if ...(absentee landlords does not appeal to me). I was excited about the financial freedom this would afford. We shared the news with some family, then we shared some more news with friends. Alan planned out a new budget excluding the costs associated with the Greenview. We were excited!

And then it happened. Our lot is located on a 100 year flood plain, when we bought the house we were provided with a letter from FEMA stating that due to the elevation of the lot and the distance from the water our home was not considered to be at risk and we did not have to procure Flood Insurance. This paperwork had all been provided upfront to our realtor, but the buyers lending company would not accept our paperwork for this and the buyers got scared and backed out of the contract stating the new evidence that the house was in a flood plain was the reason behind their withdrawal. The ernest money has been returned, the deal is off.

So now the contract is gone, the 15 March closing date will come and go and we will still have the Greenview. Should we keep it on the market longer? Should we take it off the market and go the rental route?? This would give us the interest tax break that we might need but do we really want to do this? Property management from Germany doesn't seem like the thing to do. At some point we are going to have to make up our minds because maintaining 2 households will eventually constrain our budget. And what fun would it be to be in Europe and not be able to afford to experience Europe?

Yes, I got excited, but now it is time to reel in the disappointment, say a prayer acknowledging Gods hand in all this and move forward.

Advances in Communication and other things....

20 years ago my husbands sister moved to Germany with her husband. At that time our only means of communication with them was via letters written on paper and mailed back to the USA or very short expensive phone calls! We also recorded their favorite TV shows and shipped VCR tapes to them every few weeks!

20 years later we moved to Germany and we have multiple methods of communication back to the states. We have phone service that includes unlimited free calls back to the states. We have something know as a Magic Jack that for $19 a year we have VOIP calls back to the states and it is a 405 number so family back in the states can call us like it was a local number. We have IChat, Google Chat, Facebook Chat and Skype chat, but more importantly we can video conference with all of these applications except facebook. WIth face book we stay connected with friends and family and share pictures and experiences just like we were back home!

Plus we have internet with email programs that allow for instant email back to family. I can post a picture and within seconds family and friends back home have access. I can video tour my house live! We watched it snow with our friends from Oklahoma City last weekend after I showed them our new home.

And with our GPS we can drive right to a planned destinations. The GPS even checks the traffic and routes us around know heavy traffic patterns. This amazing gadget shows us the priority roads (very important because these are the ones that get snow plowed!).

We also have a gadget that allows us to watch live OKC TV and record our favorite shows for replay on our time zone. The Slingbox is a great!

My oh my how things have changed in 20 years!! These reasons are part of what allowed us to make this very exciting journey while staying relatively close with our family back in Oklahoma!

TRAIN RIDES

We took a train from Stuttgart to Munich this past weekend. It was exciting, challenging and fun! The exciting part was that I had never ridden on a train for any distance. Back in kindergarten (a German word by the way) my class rode the train from Yukon to El Reno. But this was so very long ago I only remember the fact that we went, not the actual train ride. I grew up going to the train depot in El Reno (only 2 blocks from my grandparents home). We would walk down there and watch for trains to come by. I would day dream greeting family and friends as they arrived or better yet a porter ready to load my traveling bags as I boarded for some distant city! So this romance with trains has been with me for most of my life. THe challenging part was that everything was in German, the weather was horrible so everything was running late, our train was 1/4 mile long and our wagon was at the other end of the platform and boarding time was not really very clear to us because of the language barrier. The fun part was watching the German country side fly by for 2 hours and not having to worry about the heavy snowfall making the roads treacherous. We rode through some beautiful country, all covered with snow as well as some mountains with gorgeous cedar tress frosted with snow. We saw frozen lakes, fast running rivers, vineyards and of course some graffiti that graced the bridges along the inner city tracks.

The gentle swaying of the train while in motion (even at 220 KPH) reminded me of my backyard hammock. At one point my eyes grew very heavy and I drift off into a sweet sleep. This nap only lasted a few minutes but I woke relaxed and ready to take on our destination city. Needless to say I neglected to get any pictures of the train itself (ICE 516) but next time I am at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) I will take a picture and add it to this post!