Life continues in a wonderful place

So there hasn't been much to report here in Deutschland.We have just recently switched to dayshift, so it has been an adjustment. Blake has started taking me to the gym to play raquetball with him. That's been fun and it gets me out of the house, although I'm not very good at it yet. I'm hoping, with practice, I'll get better. They also give cardio/kickboxing classes which I'm thinking about taking. It's so easy to fall into the "I don't feel like doing anything, so I won't" rut. I'm working on my quilt, which is coming along very nicely, and still trying to come up with some type of routine. It snowed one last time a couple of days ago, and the last remnants of the snow have finally dissappeared. Spring is here and everything is starting to turn green. I'm excited because this means more walking outside and getting to see this beautiful country we live in. I guess we live very close to a very old place where the kings of old gathered. It's a bunch of really big stone chairs, but it sounds interesting! Easter is the next big thing to hit for us here. We are planning on spending it with our friends, Jason and Kimberly. We will be going to the service on base and then coming home (to thier house) to a wonderful meal of roast beef. I'm pretty excited. I won't have to do much of the cooking (to everyones delight!), but I might make a cake for the occasion. Our newest news is that we might be going to England in May. That should be exciting. Blake's cousin's husband's cousin is getting married there and we were invited to come and join them. It will be nice to see a face from home. His cousin lived only a couple of hours from us when we lived in Texas, so we got to know her pretty well. It will be nice to see her again. I was just thinking about my mother being in Georgia. They really love it there and it's nice to see them home again. Blake and I love Georgia as well, however, we will most likely end up in the panhandle of Florida. That's close, though. Only about a 6 hour drive. Now all we need are Bud and Amy and Jess and Craig to make it down to that part of the world. Well, this is it for the moment, not a whole lot going on here, but I did want to at least update everyone on the apparent nothingness :)

The Black Forest

The largest kuckoo clock in the world.
Right outside the cafe where we ate our black forest cake.
The gnome...
The clock we traveled all this way to see. Not the largest, but pretty impressive.

The big squirrel.
The river that comes down from the waterfall.

Coming down from the waterfall walkway.

Kimberly and I went to The Black Forest today. It was quite enjoyable. We saw the worlds biggest kuckoo (sp?) clock. We ate black forest cake and saw the tallest waterfall in Germany. We actually didn't climb up to the very top of the waterfall, but we still saw it and it was beautiful! There are tons of clocks everywhere and the scenery is wonderful!!! It took us about two and a half hours to get there, but the drive was definetly worth it. The german's are sooo into the gnome thing. The squirrels are really big in the Black Forest, too. Now, I'm just waiting for Blake to get home from Spain. He's due in tonight and I can't wait to see him!!!!

Home again.

So, I'm back home again. It was a nice couple of weeks. I enjoyed spending it with my sister and it was very fun getting to know my sister-in-law better. I came home to my Valentines day gifts. The coffee table, two black bookshelves, curtains and pation furniture. They are beautiful! So, life is getting back to normal again. Blake is in Spain until Saturday or Sunday, so I havn't seen him yet, but I've talked to him. Gratch was so happy to see me. All I did was walk into the house and he started purring. My friend Kimberly's parents are in town, so we have a week of fun things planned. We are going to the Black Forest on Saturday. That should be intersting. I'll post pictures.

Some vacation fun!

This is just some more fun we've had!

Pictures from the past

This is the quilt Grandma made me. I still have it.
So, Grandma was going through her pictures and she came across some she wanted to give to me. These pictures are so old! We were so very young!!
Me at Tim and Cindy's wedding.
Me at a very young age...not as cute here...
Jess and I at 2 and 6. We have the same b-day.
My family before Bud was born.

My newest cake

This is the birthday cake I made for Elizabeth's party. She wanted a triangle cake with a rainbow, a butterfly and flowers on it. The butterfly wouldn't fit and the colors ended up making it look like a My Little Pony cake (which, by the way, was great). I don't really care for cake, but everyone else said it tasted great. We are having another party when my mom and dad get back form Georgia. I get to make another cake then. I'm excited!!

My scarves

I was going through all my scrapbooking things the other day and I came across some yarn, so I decided to make a scarf. The red one turned out so beautiful, but you can't really tell in the picture. The other one turned out nice too, but not as nice. It's a little wavier than I wanted. I was worried it was going to turn out looking like mold with the color combinations, but it didn't. We had a very late night last night, so Gratch didn't sleep at all, and I caught him totally curled up today. Isn't he cute sometimes??

Our New Toy

Blake went and checked the mail today and came home with a new toy. It was at the shoppette. It's a laser pointer. Oh, boy, does the cat love the laser pointer. we wore him out completly! He runs, literally, up the walls. He can jump to just about eye level! Its just amazing. He gets just frustrated that he cannot get the little red dot. He really gets frustrated when the little red dot is on his paw, but he can't seem get it or eat it. It gives us endless fun!

My new bookshelf

So I went out the other day to buy a bookshelf and I came home with the one you see in the picture. It doesnt fit all the books on it, but I'm loving the idea of the shelf. It can be as wide or thin as I want it to be. It rolls in and out. I love it. The rest of the books are still going in various places in the house. I also realized that I never sent Mother or Jess a picture of where I put the secretary. It now holds our towels and linens (seeing as we have no closets). It snowed a little bit today again. It was beautiful as it came down. It, however, didn't stick as it fell, so there was no accumulation. This is good since Blake has to go into work at 1100 at night. I just saw pictures of my new little neice! She is so adorable. It just makes you think how great God must be to make something that small so perfect.

Super Bowl XXX...(yah, I have no clue)

So, we are going to our friends house tonight for Super Bowl. Yup, we who watch no sports during the year what-so-ever. It should end up being somewhat okay, though. Although the game will be dull for us, the commercials are fantastic. I decided to make a cake for Kimberly as a surprize. I had to go online to look up who was even playing in the superbowl and what their colors where. the cake didn't turn out like I wanted it to, but it's totally okay for the four of us. Tons of frosting....frosting makes everything look better. the cake broke in half when I took it out of the pan. Then I used mother's chocolate chip frosting recipe, and i think I may have let the frosting cool down too much. It did NOT spread at all. So, there went another layer of white frosting to coat the chocolate. then, of course, all the decorations had to go on. There aren't enough ten yard lines, but mother says simplicity is best. the football is two candy kisses melted together. that was so messy and not worth it. it doesnt really look like a football, but this was my first try at a football cake. and it didnt turn out horrible!