Running with the bulls

Sanjoaninas Fest - running of bulls

Today we went down to the big city, Angra, for the children's version of running with the bulls. Angra has been having their big Sanjoaninas Festas and there are daily events to celebrate. They call it the running of the bulls for kids because it is young bulls out there running, so the kids who are brave enough can go out there and run with them and taunt them. It's all pretty mean in my opinion. I just don't get the whole bullfighting thing. At least here they don't actually kill the bull at the end of the bullfight. Anyway we made our way to the street and watched the bulls run up and down and the young boys out there with red umbrellas taunting them and pretending to be bull fighting legends. The streets are all decorated up beautifully for the festival, and this street was done up as well. At the bull run they had young boys working and handing out free ice cream to anyone that wanted it. I was rather amused that the ice cream boys all had to wear bright red T shirts as they paraded up and down the road giving away their ice cream bars. So at all times the poor kids are watching their backs trying to keep track of where the half dozen bulls that are loose in the street are. They have to be very aware so that the bull doesn't surprise them from behind. Once we'd had our fill of animal cruelty we wandered around the old streets of Angra taking note of the shops we might find useful later on, and restaurants we should try. We did a little sightseeing and picture taking and then decided on a small cafe place for lunch. The menu was totally in Portuguese and I didn't know what anything was aside from batatas (which are potatoes) and bifana (a grilled meat sandwich on a roll), so we ordered some of those, a soup that the waitress said was good, and then some kind of sausage thing to try. The potatoes were cooked with some sausage, peppercorns, garlic and onions and were pretty tasty, and the soup was also very good. The sausage stuff, well Colin had to ask if it was poop or food, so I can't really tell you how that tasted. I have to agree with Colin, it did look like poop and there was no way I was going to taste it. Shelby did and said "it tastes kind of like a stink bug smells." Mmmmmmmm, cut me some! LOL After lunch we hopped in the car and had Colin take a nap and then we drove around the last third of the island that we had not seen yet. We traveled the western side of the island, some very pretty sights and now we can say we've been around the entire island.

We got wheels!

This morning we finally found a car to buy. As I've mentioned before it is slim pickings over here right now. Today we met an older couple to see the car they are selling. He's a civilian worker over here who is retiring and this was his wife's bomb. It is stick shift, but I figure if this little old lady can drive it around then surely I can too! It's a 1993 Nissan Micra. You American folk are scratching your heads right now wondering what that looks like, because surprisingly this car was never popular in the US. Except perhaps at the circus, where you may have seen one filled with two dozen clowns. :) Mine looks just like this, except white, and a little less shiny...

It's a tiny little thing, cute in it's own way. They are wildly popular here on the island and you can count a half dozen or more of them in any parking lot you visit. When I see it all I can think is "meep meep" because I imagine it makes this pitiful, puny honk. Shelby swears we are going to pimp my ride and make a joke out of it. He wants to put flame stickers on the side and who knows what else. I figure I should probably just learn to drive the damn thing before I go drawing any more attention to myself in it! The only drawback is that the couple was hoping to hold on to the car until July 12th, which we agreed to, but also let them know that we are very eager to get it home and if they are willing to part with it any sooner we'd be greatly appreciative and even pay more. We'll see what happens. Colin also got new wheels today, sort of. Shelby pulled the training wheels off his dino bike and started trying to teach him to ride. He had an attitude about it and didn't want to try. I can tell we are going to have issue with this boy when ever anything gets challenging, he just wants to give up. Shelby refused to let him quit and after just a couple runs up and down the road Colin had the hang of riding straight and was on his own with Shelby just following along to catch him if he fell and guide him through the turns. Here are some pictures from the bike rides...

Sometimes all you can do is laugh...

Today we woke up to sunshine. Even better than the sunshine was very little wind! Today was an absolutely gorgeous and perfect day. It gave me a little more faith in this place and I sincerely hope today's weather is more the norm and this nastiness we've been having is some kind of freak occurrence. Anyway, beautiful day so Colin and I went to the big playground on base and it was packed with kids. He had a blast and I got to meet some people. We discovered that young kids actually DO live in our neighborhood, including two little boys who live just up the street. Whew! The parks in our housing area have been so dead I was beginning to thing there were no children at all! After the park we walked around to a couple places (we gave the loaner car back to it's rightful owner yesterday)and then headed home to meet the cable installation people. INTERNET AT THE HOUSE NOW! Happy dance!! With the internet now working at home Shelby was able to restore and repair the used iphone I bought yesterday and get it working, I was getting worried I was going to have to return it to the guy and get my money back because it wouldn't do a thing for me once he dumped all his data. I was so relieved when it finally worked. Yay! I spent a lot of time mulling over some career options today. Yesterday I went by the DOD school on base to inquire about vacant teaching positions. I learned that as of now there are no classroom teacher vacancies (which is not a huge shock) but that there are kindergarten aide and sure start aide slots available. So I could definitely work full time, but not as a teacher, right now. The school is so small compared to my last school, it only has about 300 kids in grades PreK-12! If we were going to be here for a while I'd take the job as a stepping stone to a teaching position, but given I am only here for one more school year by the time I got my foot in the door it would be time to close it and move again. So, I've been considering graduate school. I really, really don't want to fork out another 15K in tuition and fees. But, when I do land a classroom position I'd make a lot more money with a masters. I'd have just enough time to do it here and not have to worry about missing work or trying to get it while working later on. It seems like a good idea, but I am not sure if I can deal with staying away. The good thing about it is I would have several practicum hours and observation hours that need to be done at the school, so I would still have to be involved at the school and with the kids even if I wasn't working there. Which is good because honestly I don't think I could stay away completely. I love my job. I have some time to think about it since school doesn't start until the very end of August (both work school and graduate school)so I'm trying to make sure I don't just have a crazy bug up my butt or something. We finally met the neighbor tonight. We moved in on Saturday and they had flown to another island for a long weekend and just got back home today. She seems very nice, they have two dogs which Colin thinks is the coolest thing ever. So do I actually, now I can let him play with their dogs and never have to get one of our own. Win win! They have two little girls, one Colin's age and one just a year or two older. I went upstairs to get Colin's bath ready and I kept calling him and calling him and he wasn't coming upstairs. I came downstairs to find him and discovered that he wasn't coming because he and Shelby were outside meeting/talking to the new neighbors. I popped outside too...and completely forgot about the running bath water. For, oh, say, 20 minutes or more. Shit. Apparently the overflow drain on the tub doesn't work either. Double shit. I successfully flooded three of the five rooms upstairs. And we have 5 towels in the entire house since our household goods are not here yet. I was pulling every scrap of absorbent anything out of every drawer and closet to throw on the floor. Thank goodness for the spin cycle! LOL At least my upstairs floor is really, really clean now. Ugh. Aside from that little incident it was a really good day! LOL

Life on the Island

Exploring the Island

It was nice to wake up in “our house.” Even if none of our stuff is here and it is all loaner furniture. I really cannot wait for all our household goods to arrive, I’m dying to set up me new furniture! I’m also dying to get internet at the house…we arranged for service to be set up, and I believe the text I received from the company said that on the 26th between 3-5 they would be coming to install it. The text was all in Portuguese, so that is what I think it said. My Portuguese is seriously lacking, it sounds like a combination of Spanish, Italian and Russian to me, it’s very confusing. Their written words have a ton of letters but only one or two seem to actually be pronounced or enunciated. I thought being fluent in Spanish would give me an edge, clearly not! After our cinnamon rolls we cleaned up and headed for another drive. Yesterday we covered about 1/3 of the island and today we went the other direction to see what we could find. The northern coast of the island is much more rural and less populated than the eastern and southern sides. There is the occasional pretty house, but most of the houses are very old and weathered. It’s a pretty poor place and the more we drive around the more you feel as though you are visiting a third world country. Today we walked out to a point at the far end of the island and discovered a family’s home. It was nothing more than some tarps in a makeshift cave of rocks and trees protecting them from the elements. There was a man, a woman and two or three kids. We nodded and waved as we walked by and I didn’t want to stare long enough to count the children. They were sitting around a fire and eating lunch. There was only an old worn out bicycle propped up against a nearby rock, and it’s a long way into town. The back road we were driving on was simply rocks, busted old tile, and trash with asphalt poured on top and smoothed down. Here you can see under the road to see what it is made of: The flowers however, are amazing. There are hydrangea bushes ALL OVER the place, they grow wild and everywhere. There are also a lot of calla lilies growing and a couple other types of flowers I do not know the names of yet. We drove on the Via Rapida, which is the only highway on the island and it runs for maybe 10 miles, tops. The speed limit on it is 100 kmh, which is about 55 mph, LOL Very different from our German autobahn experience. Today while driving we stumbled through an old town and on the steps of the church there were many people dressed up. Being Sunday and all we didn’t think too much of it. Up the hill and just around the curve we hit the brakes to slow down as we passed a parade of people all in traditional dress walking down the road towards the church. My guess is a wedding and I am so mad I didn’t have my camera out and ready to snap a picture. The dresses were very pretty and there was a man in old clothes carrying a yoke with wooden pails on the end. I hope we get to see another one in our time on the island, I want pictures! We also passed an old man, riding sideways on the back of a donkey up the road and strapped to the donkey was an old, metal milk can. We’ve seen several of those metal milk cans around here, in the backs of trucks, being delivered and such. It the States it’s an antique and here they use it on a daily basis. I’m so sorry I did not get to snap a picture of him riding the donkey, by the time I had the camera out we were right up on him with the car and I didn’t want to embarrass or offend him taking his picture. We found a few scenic pullouts and then stopped at a beach to do some walking. There are not really any sandy beaches here, and if there are they are manmade. The ends of the island are pretty jagged and tall and drop off as cliffs into the ocean. The beach we discovered today you went down several stairs to some cemented areas that serve as sitting room. There is a network of stairs and rocks that create tide pools and places to get wet and play on the rocks. The weather was lousy today so the beach was empty and we pretty much had it all to ourselves to explore. Colin had a blast throwing stones in the water and picking snails off the rocks to throw in the water and feed the fish we could see in the tide pools. We saw crabs, shrimp, barnacle snails and lots of fish, I can only imagine all you’d see on a good sunny day with plenty of light to see down deeper. On the way home we had to stop for a herd of cows coming down the road. There was a man at the back of the pack herding them along and the cows were just trudging along right down the middle of the road. It was a main road too! We had to laugh at the cars trying to weave through the cows to get by. I did manage to get pictures this time, woohoo! We made it back to base and stopped by the post office, Saturday is the big mail day when the plane comes in from the US to deliver our mail. Of course we cannot pick anything up on a Sunday, but we did have four package notices in our box, score! Guess we’ll be going to the post office tomorrow and anything that didn’t come in these packages we’ll have to wait until next Sunday/Monday for! LOL

Maybe this is hell? My GPS can't confirm it.

This morning we packed what was left, cleaned our hotel room up and headed to the new house. Next it was a massive grocery run to stock the fridge of an empty house. You have no idea how many condiments and things you keep in your fridge until you have to start all over from scratch. After all the groceries were put away and we’d unpacked a little bit we hopped in the loaner car to go look for a car of our own. On the way through the towns we got lost and then found again a couple times. We stumbled into a really cool looking festival in the biggest city on the island, Angra, and it looks like it runs through the 30th, so we’ll have to come back and check that out. We found the Azorean version of Walmart, called Continente Modelos, and shopped there for some stuff. We got some fresh mussels and shrimp for dinner from the seafood counter inside. We have European maps for our GPS, and amazingly enough it has maps of the Azores and this island on it. People here give horrendous directions, all landmark based and confusing as hell, and I wondered before I got here haven’t these people ever heard of a GPS? I finally got brave enough to ask the question on a Lajes Facebook group and many people said they didn’t want to pay for the European map update to their GPS (which we already had because of living in Germany) and those that did said they couldn’t rely on their GPS to be right. Well we experienced firsthand what they were talking about today. We had a receipt from a place we wanted to check out, a store called Deborlas that is kind of like a Big Lots but a little better and more selection. We typed in the address and our GPS couldn’t find it. We tried everything to get it to pull up. Nothing. I used the iphone to google the place and found an address on the website, no luck. Finally I noticed the webpage also had GPS coordinates on it, so we tried putting those in and voila! We weren’t so sure the GPS was even taking us to a legitimate store since it seemed to be in the middle of absolutely no where, but we figured we’d follow it to where it wanted us to go and see if there was anything good there. It was right for the most part and we found it. So now I have to navigate my way around this island without a GPS , looking for landmarks, while attempting not to destroy my car, myself or anyone else because I am forced to drive a manual in the land of never ending hills. Yep….prisoner! LOL I’m fairly certain I may soon have the best ass on the island, considering the amount of walking and bike riding I will be doing to get anywhere! While on the subject of appearance, at least my ass will look good, because my hair is going to be a total rats nest. We were told before arriving that it is windy all the time here. Windy is an understatement. Seriously. This is not windy, this is worse than most hurricanes I’ve boarded up the house for in my entire life! Today’s wind was sustained at 18 knots and gusts up to 40 knots. Strong enough to almost blow poor Colin over! I’m going to be restricted to knotting my hair in a ponytail or bun for the next two years, and even then it gets all wild and windblown. Sigh. 5 days down, 725 days to go!

Homeless No More!

Well today we signed for the keys to our house, so we are officially not homeless anymore, woohoo! We got more good news too, remember the bed fiasco from Wednesday? Well apparently they had a cancellation for today and they had a slot open up and were able to deliver beds to the house this morning. So not only did we get the keys to the new house, but we also don't have to sleep on air mattresses all next week. We also lucked up on the delivery of our unaccompanied baggage and they were able to bring it by this afternoon right after we had accepted our house. So now we have our bikes, a grill, our camping gear (which has grill tools, some dishes and some supplies in it, that is why we sent that tote), a space saver bag with sheets, towels and linens in it, and of course the most important appliance in the kitchen, the coffee pot! Tomorrow morning we'll check out of the hotel and start living in the house. We went looking at some cars but nothing jumped out at us. I'm a Florida girl and I can drive a stick, but I learned to drive it in flat, level, Florida. Here an automatic transmission is almost as mythical as the unicorn, and since I didn't ship an American car here I'm pretty much not going to get an automatic. This stresses me out greatly because the hills here are ridiculous. You are never, ever driving on flat ground...you are always going up or coming down. I just know I'm going to have to stop halfway up some giant hill and my car will go rolling backwards into the ocean. That is if I don't crash into anyone behind me first! At least I've got accident forgiveness! LOL Colin enjoyed some much needed play time at a little indoor play area this afternoon. Yesterday we went to sign him up for swim lessons but of course the classes were already full. He kept asking when he was going to swim school and we keep telling him maybe in August. Then I went to enroll him in the base daycare (CDC) and he got to see his new preschool, he can't wait to go there and play with the kids. He must have asked a dozen times this morning when he woke up if he could go to preschool today. I feel so bad for him, I'm hoping once we get to the house he'll meet little neighborhood friends. I'm not holding my breath though, the base housing seems DEAD. It's like all the wives and kids packed up and went to the States for the summer while the kids are out of school. You hardly see any kids at the playgrounds or outside during the day right now. Hopefully we meet some good playmates soon! This evening when we got back to the hotel there were two boys about his age on the playground and he joined them for a while and had a blast. He was proud of himself for hanging here and asked me to take this picture.

Welcome to The Azores!

Oh what a day! We woke up and were finally able to see outside and what this place looks like. Colin has been keeping us laughing because he really doesn’t know anything but European style homes and living. Here at the base hotel everything is American style. As soon as we got into our room last night Colin went into the bathroom and got himself locked in there. He had never seen a round door knob before and then it had a push button lock on the knob, so of course he pushed it. I had to explain to him to unlock the door. This morning he couldn’t find the button to flush the toilet because it’s an American toilet with a handle, not a button. He also had to figure out the light switches, he didn’t know what they were for because they look different from the ones in Germany. I had to show him what they look like and how they work. LOL We got up and unpacked some and got ready to go. Shelby’s sponsor picked us up and showed us around a little bit, drove us a few places to meet some people, and then let us borrow his island bomb (old, worn out, but perfect for the island, car) for a few days until we are able to buy one of our own. That is a HUGE help! We are RIGHT on the water and pretty much everywhere you look is ocean. After lunch we went over to the housing office to see what number we were on the wait list for a house. Turns out we’d move to number one and they were able to offer us two houses today. The first house was in a four-plex, and it was in the middle, which was not at all what we were wanting. We were both a little disappointed to see that it had next to no back yard, faced other yards out the back and didn’t really have a view of the ocean. We both got a little nervous after seeing that house and hoped the second one would be better. The second option turned out to be pretty much our base housing dream house. (If there is such a thing, using base housing and dream house in the same sentence just seems totally wrong) It is a duplex, not a quad, it has a large yard on the side and some in the back, it sits up on top of a hill and has an amazing view of the ocean. We pulled up outside and without even walking in I told Shelby I thought we had a winner. We were pretty excited to get that house and headed back over to the housing office to make it officially ours. Our home! The view from our backyard/back windows! Now this is where the stupidity comes in. The house is vacant, and just needs a cleaner to come in before we move in. All the loaner furniture is there and in place with the exception of beds, it has no beds in the house. That is fine and good because housing will loan us some until our household goods arrive from Germany. The trouble is that they claim their first available delivery date to bring us some beds is on June 29th. So we couldn’t actually move in then until July 2nd. Well that was lame, so we suggested that we get two of the four beds in the first house we looked at, which were all in the garage, and they can just move them down to our house (which is just a block away, if not less). They said they cannot do that because they still don’t have time until the 29th. OK fine, WE will carry the beds down the street, it’s really not far at all. Nope they can’t let us do that either. So pretty much the house has everything we need except beds and is ready to move into but we would still have to live in the hotel for two weeks until they could deliver beds. The housing lady seemed clearly annoyed with the furniture coordinator who was being a pain in the butt. So we asked her what if we said we would move in without the beds there, would that be ok. She agreed to that if we put in writing that we accepted the house without beds and we knew we would not be getting any until the 29th. Done! We can go buy an air mattress, if no one in Shelby’s squadron has one we can borrow, and Colin can sleep on the couch downstairs. It’s worth it to not have to live in the hotel for an extra two weeks over a silly bed! It makes no sense. We got the housing ordeal all straight and then moved on to the phone company. We needed to schedule internet hook up at the house now that we had one, and get ourselves a SIM card for the iphone so it has a Portuguese number. That was a bust. You cannot buy just internet, you have to have their cable TV to get internet. We don’t want TV, so I’m telling myself I’m paying 60 Euro a month for internet. Ugh! The cell phone didn’t work out, T-Mobil Germany was supposed to unlock my phone after we finished our contract before moving, but they did not. So the new SIM card won’t work and a new iphone here is a staggering 500 Euro. Um, NO! So we’ll work on the cell phone thing again tomorrow, we ran out of time today. We did end up heading to Praia, one of the towns right outside the base, looking for cell phone service and assistance. We walked around downtown, saw the beach and then ate dinner down there before driving back to base. It was a long, busy, but mostly productive day. Pics from Praia...

Wordless Wednesday

Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland

Today is the day, we got up bright and early to finish packing our stuff so we could be ready when the airport shuttle came at 9:30. Packing was a disaster, we just have too much crap, you know that high maintenance husband of mine. We managed to get it all arranged in what we thought was the weight limit (it was the weight limit according to the website, which apparently means nothing to the people at the airport) but still had some stuff left over. Luckily we had a box at the apartment and our hotel was right across the street from Colin's preschool teacher. Poor Amanda, if you are reading this, I am SO sorry and thank you so very much! Shelby took her the box with our new address on it so she could mail it for free to us. We got to the airport in plenty of time and got all checked in. We soon learned that the website was very wrong on the max weights of the suitcases and we ended up having to for out 100 Euro in over weight fees, plus an additional 140 Euro in excess baggage fees (that 140 we'll get back when we file our travel voucher at least). Ouch! We made it to the gate and Colin was SO excited to finally be getting on the airplane. All the waiting for this day, then riding in the van to get to the airport, then waiting forever at the gate, poor kid probably thought it would never come time to board the plane. He did great and aside from being a little overly excited he was fine on the flight. The first leg was three hours from Frankfurt to Lisbon, Portugal. Then we were supposed to have a two hour layover before boarding our flight to the Azores. Our two hour layover turned into a 4+ hour layover when they did not have a co-pilot to fly. They kept pushing back the departure time and eventually gave us all dinner vouchers to go eat at the airport. We had some yummy tapas and drinks and it was all free. :) Finally about 9:30 PM we took off for our three hour flight to the island. We were all exhausted, Colin fought off sleep so hard even though it was hours past his bedtime. I finally got him to pass out on my lap for about the last hour and a half of the flight. When we landed on Terceira it was right about midnight (which was actually 2 AM Germany time) and we'd been up for over 20 hours. We were met at the airport by our sponsor, his wife and another squadron spouse. I felt bad for them having to wait up for us to come in almost four hours late. They drove us to the base hotel, where they had already checked us in, picked up our keys and stocked the fridge and pantry! They have this welcome wagon thing DOWN over here, we've never had treatment like that from any base we've moved to. We got to our room, dug out some PJs and hit the sack! Looooooong day, but I can't wait to wake up in the morning and actually be able to SEE the island!

The days all run together

I got too busy and waited too long to blog. Now I'm behind, I can't remember details and I am overwhelmed trying to catch up. Urgh! Last week was a whirlwind, movers packing us out, leaving the house for good, my last days of work, saying goodbyes to people, craziness! Leaving our house was so sad. We loved that house and it, along with the neighborhood, was home. Leaving work was also very hard for me, I loved my job. I am not sure if I will get work at the school here because it is so small, but if I did I don't know that it would be the same. Once Friday rolled around and I was out of work, we were out of the house and living in the hotel/apartment things calmed down a little bit. We took in a movie or two, enjoyed a lot of last meals in Germany, spent time with friends and did a few going away deals. Then came Monday. What a disaster of a day! We had a lot of last minute loose ends to tie up and appointments and such. I started off the day dropping Shelby off at his final outprocessing appointment and then went to run some errands myself. I had to stop at the Youth Center on base and run in to pick something up, Colin didn't want to get out of the car, I didn't feel like fighting with him, so I let him stay in the car, strapped in his car seat with his ipad watching a movie. I was parked in the shade, it was 9AM and it was MAYBE 60 degrees outside. Any idea where this is going??? I returned to my car a few minutes later to find two security forces police talking to Colin. Crap. According to the cops someone saw me get out of the car and leave him and decided to call the base police to alert them. (Seriously, some people have no life.) They asked if I knew why they were there and I said of course I did, because I am not supposed to leave him in the car and they did a little shame on you, don't let it happen again and walked away. I back out of my parking spot and the cop walks back up and tells me that I need to wait a minute, that he thinks his supervisor is already en route. Lovely. You just let me go and now I have to wait to be yelled at again? So his boss rolls up and she seems to be on a power trip and she has a newbie Airman in training tagging along behind her. Fantastic. So she decides to use this opportunity for some training and decides she is not going to let me go, that she is going to take me in for questions. So off I go to the police station with a police escort in front and back of me. We get there and they are not asking me any questions, they are reading me my rights and telling me they are charging me with child neglect! You have GOT to be kidding me right? I played all their games and gave my statement and Shelby had to walk over and spring me from the base slammer. Colin was charming the cops left and right and giving them autographs and asking for tours of the station and water. He seemed totally abused and neglected I tell ya! So after I get out my main concern is how far up the chain does this go because I have a teaching license and a job and I'd like to keep them both. Is this going to stay a little base infraction (like our speeding tickets that don't actually get reported to insurance or incur a fine) or does it get filed in a real state court. Within 3 hours the base legal office had called to tell me they had already thrown it out and they were not filing any charges. They pretty much thought it was stupid of them to haul me in for this too and so everything was tossed and as far as they are concerned it never happened. Thank God. Now I would NEVER leave my kid unattended in a car in the US or if it was even remotely hot outside, but ON BASE, in Germany is different. Did I know I wasn't supposed to leave him in the car, sure. Was he in any danger whatsoever? Not a single bit. So yes I was wrong for leaving him there, but the whole thing got SO blown out of proportion it was beyond stupid. But wait, it gets better! When the supervisor with a chip on her shoulder came up to my car in the parking lot she asked for my ID card. I gave it to her and she never gave it back to me. Later on I realized she had not returned it when I was signed out of the facility and they let me go. So Shelby called and they said they did not have my ID. I went over there and they told me they did not know what happened to it, but to leave my phone number and they would call me if they found it. I politely explained to them that I was getting on a plane THE NEXT DAY and needed to have my ID, so calling me when they found it was not exactly going to work for me. They continued telling me they could not do anything but let me know if it was found, so I started the process to just get a new ID card made. I sat and waited in the line for over an hour while Shelby ran around collecting signatures and gathering the required paperwork to get a new ID card when you lose your old one. Even though it was straight BS because I did not lose my ID card, the cop did! So sure enough the last signature Shelby had to get was from the police station and when whe went to get that guess what they had waiting for him? Yep, my old ID card....they found it I guess. Thanks for the phone call! (Grrrr!) By the time Shelby arrived to me I was the next in line so I figured I may as well just go ahead and get a new ID made anyway. So many things to do and instead I spent the day dealing with police and lawyers and trying to get a new ID card made. Aye yi yi. What a way to spend my last day in Germany!

Wordless Wednesday

Last day of preschool, sniff sniff. :(

Moving Madness

This moving thing is starting to see so real all of a sudden. We've been busting our butts getting stuff taken down, cleaned out, cleaned up, etc... We had a big yard sale and that was a success, pretty much everything but a few small boxes of stuff was sold, so that was great. After the yard sale it was time to really start getting the house in order, taking down pictures and curtains and getting all kinds of stuff washed. Last weekend I managed to get all the sheets, towels and blankets packed into space saver vacuum bags. That very night Colin wet the bed for the first time in ages. Of course I have packed up and sealed every sheet and blanket that was not currently on our beds. So at three AM I was rummaging through storage bags trying to find a sheet and a blanket for the poor kid to sleep on. Murphy's Law I guess. We bought all new living and dining room furniture for the house. It was all delivered last Saturday and sadly it's in the basement, all wrapped up in the original packaging and protective stuff so that there is less chance the movers will damage it. It's exciting to get all new furniture, it's no so exciting to have to wait 2-3 months to actually get to use it! Here is a link to the manufacturer's website and some pictures. We didn't get some of the exact pieces in the pictures, but you can get an idea from here. It is the Mexiko line from this company. I love it! Today I had to sell my car. I knew it was coming, but I'm sad to see it go. We've had it for almost 10 years! I bought it brand new and we've been all over and back in that car. It's been from Key West all the way to Maine and Canada on the east coast. From Jacksonville to San Diego on I-10, and to over half the states in the US. It's driven all over Europe (Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and few others I am sure I am forgetting) too. Good memories and a lot of fun times/trips in that car. We are shipping the beloved Jeep to the island and I will buy what is affectionately known as an "island bomb" when we get there. I'm not too thrilled about having to drive around a hoopty when I loved my truck, but considering the farthest I can possibly go in one trip is like 20 something miles (the island is that small!) what good does a luxury car do me anyway? We plan to live on base, so I plan to walk to most places anyway when the weather cooperates. This move has been so stressful. Other moves have been pretty smooth, but this one I'm working literally right up until we leave and trying to take as little time off as possibly. The military keeps throwing us curve balls but we are rolling with it best we can. Part of it I think is that this is the first time we've really moved with a child. Colin was a little baby when we moved over here, and he was a good sleeping, happy, piece of cake baby...so getting stuff done and ready with him was no big deal at all. The amount of crap that you acquire with one kid is just ridiculous. Just try to weed out and pack up said crap with the kid around unpacking as fast as you box it up. The neighbors have been wonderful, they take Colin a lot at the moment so we have time to pack in peace. We gave them our kick butt swing set as a thank you, they have a boy just older than Colin, one turning two in August, and she is due with baby boy number three in 7 weeks. I'm thinking that swing set will get some pretty good use between three little boys! I've been bad about blogging because I haven't had time to think. Work is typical end of the school year chaos at the moment (assessments, grades due, wild kids, parties, conferences, packing up the room, etc...) and then throw in trying to move all at the same time...ouch. This weekend we have to get the rest of the house organized because we move into the hotel on Sunday. Movers come next week, and we'll be on a plane on the 19th. Time is going by so fast, I'm definitely not ready to leave Germany!