I'm here, I'm here, I'm here...

...yes and I know you guys are wondering what the heck I've been up to here in Germany!  Well, I can't get it all typed out tonight, but I would like to give an overview of the things I would like to share with you in the near future.  More on that later...

As for right now, Sam, the girls and I are all doing fairly well.  The girls and I are in the last stages of suffering from either: bronchitis, ear infections, or Strep throat.  Having our antibiotics since Friday means we're starting to feel better.  Here's hoping we can get through autumn without any more illnesses.

As for living in Germany, we're still loving it, mostly.  There are days when I wish I were anywhere but here, but they are fewer and fewer.  Sometimes, those feelings come from an overwhelming sense of lonliness.   (I know Kelley and Caitlin feel that way, too.  I can suppose that Sam feels that way, as well.)  But, I'm finding my place and am working on making myself the best I can be each day in hopes of making my world a brighter place.  According to my teen, sometimes I'm not too cheerful.  Imagine that!  Said by a teenager!  In all honesty, when you're not happy, sometimes it's hard to be cheerful.  But I've gotten over that hump and am really making an effort to be more cheerful.

So as to what's going on around here, we are currently without U.S. base privileges and have been since September 30th.  Sam's contract expired and we are awaiting a new one, which should be issued very soon.  I took precautions and stocked up on those items at the commissary (grocery store) that we can easily store.  I only need to go to the German grocery store for fresh vegetables and bread at this point.  I bought a case of 1 liter milk containers and we've been using those, so we're not in need of milk purchased "on the economy" (which means at the German stores).

We go to a German doctor mostly, so we've been able to get medical attention as needed.  Kelley has gone to the U.S. hospital at Landstuhl for some of her care, but we're able to wait until we get back on base for any further attention she needs.  It really has been reassuring knowing we had the ability to get medical attention wherever we deemed best, whenever we wanted.

We love the town we live in, Queidersbach (rhymes with spiders bock).  It's rural enough to have a rooster crowing during the day on the hill across the valley, 2 resident horses being walked to various fields in the neighborhood or a little farther away in the pastures that are an easy walk from our house, tractors driving by as they do their plowing or mowing in those same pastures, cows being moved closer to pastures near us, but our town is also large enough to have a butcher directly across the street from us, allowing us to buy fresh pork, beef and chicken weekly (although we haven't done that often enough), a nice grocery store with a large selection of items and church bells from either the Catholic or Protestant church chiming each quarter hour with a lovely 15 minute chime at 45 after the hour when someone in town has died.  I understand that if the chimes are softly run, the death was that of a woman.  If the chimes are loud and strong, that indicates the death was that of a local man.  We're also close enough to a military training facility for pilots practicing war games that we get frequent fly-overs from U.S. and other NATO nations aircraft honing their skills in the sky.  We LOVE that, although we hear them more that see them, because they are so very fast.

Our nights are getting darker earlier, as I'm sure yours are, too.  Our leaves are starting to turn colors and leaves are starting to fall.  We have a larger percentage of hardwood trees, compared to deciduous trees that keep their greenery all year long, so we're starting to see the leaves fall during windy days.  Because we are closer to the Canadian latitude, I expect we're seeing more of upstate New York's autumnal changes that we are seeing with North Carolina's changes.  It looks like it's going to be a very beautiful autumn here with sharp color differences.

I got a Facebook message today reminding me that our time change in Germany happens on October 30, although yours in American happens on November 6th.  Speaking of late October, it's sure to be an interesting Halloween in Queidersbach.  We live in a newer part of town with many Americans.  I hear that the German people have gladly embraced our Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating.  The Ramstein base has traditionally held trick-or-treating on the weekend before Halloween, but the towns in the area hold it on the actual date.  We certainly don't want to confuse our German hosts by trying to explain that trick-or-treating needs to happen on a weekend for the convenience of parents or because it's not a school night.  So, we will have our pumpkins carved and lit, while the girls go around with their neighborhood friends getting lots of yummy candy from our Queidersbach neighbors on Monday night, October 31st!  Kelley thinks we need a carved pumpkin for each of our 14 or so columns separating the sections of fencing around our yard (we have the front of a duplex, so it's the front yard).  I'm thinking if she can do it, it might be a nice idea...

We have a new kitten names Chessie, which is short for Cheshire, which is short for Cheshire of Wonderland Akers!  She's Caitlin's kitten and she's almost 13 weeks, which is almost 3 months!  She's teething and loves to try to eat our fingers.  I learned to push my finger back into her mouth along her gumline to get her to stop.  She is very surprised when I do that.  Today, she was practicing jumping vertical on the bathroom door frame.  I think she's trying to learn how to open Caitlin's door at night so she can let herself out to play!  She saw our 2 year old, Dash, do it recently to get in to her room for her kitten chow and now she wants to do that too!  Our 75 lb Standard Poodle, Zeus, has had his heart stolen and is totally smitten with this little kitten.  He is FINALLY settling down while being around her to let her just WALK through the house.  Prior to this week, she was "IT" and he was on a mega game of "Hide N Seek".  She has a 7 foot tall cat tree that she escapes to when he's getting a little too crazy ['];m
 \  (oops, she must have known I was typing about her, so she decided to say hi to you all via walking across the keyboard) dasuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye7's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaau - or as I was saying, and she's back!  I think she smells the crumbs in my keyboard, because she tries hard to get into the keyboard when she's not lying on it! 

We had a scare with her a few days ago.  She managed to choke herself with a headphone wire and a cloth laundry basket nylon handle in Kelley's room.  It's a great thing that Caitlin was up there with her and that we were both home at all.  It took some doing, but I was able to cut the cloth handle from around her neck which freed her, only with Caitlin's help.  She managed to get caught up in that stuff and then get caught up in a chair hinge which had her standing while she was being choked.  It was all very quick and very scary!  Thank goodness Caitlin and I were there.  Chessie is no worse for wear now, except that I was doing my nails at the time and she received fresh nail polish on her lovely shiny kitten coat, which I had to cut parts of off.

So here's the overview of that I'd like to tell you about in the near future (with photos):

* Fasching Parade on the Tuesday after Easter in April
*Metz, France and the Cathedral there
* Munich, Germany and the Lincoln Park concert
*Trier, Germany and it's Roman ruins
*My drive through Germany, Switzerland and Italy to take the girls to Girl Scout camp in Livorno, Italy, along with our stays in Swiss Youth Hostels on the way there and a week, later on the way back.
*Our family trip with Sam to Grindelwald, Switzerland to stay in a Youth Hostel in August.
*Our family trip to Munich the first weekend in October for Oktoberfest via train.
*Our upcoming trip to Austria to the Alps over the Thanksgiving weekend to learn to ski and, for the girls, to learn to snowboard.
*Plus so much more.  A photo journal of the artwork on houses in Germany.  Beautiful gates and fences of Europe.  Animals of Europe.  Cars of Europe.  Food, candy and beer in Europe!  The language.  Cooking in Germany; electricity; heating the house; the lack of air conditioning.

So as you can see, I have SO MUCH to say about our 5 months here.  I can't wait to make the time to tell you all about it.  PLUS  I have a lot of photos.  Now to figure out how to upload those to my blog...

Chrissy