Foley Hot Air Balloon Festival...

My mom and I were trying to do things we had never done before. We had realized how much we take local things for granted. When we found out that there was a hot air balloon festival in Foley, Alabama, we decided we wanted to check it out. Turns out Foley is WAY out in the boonies and not exactly easy to get to. And the balloon festival was not as exciting as they made it out to be, but we had a good time anyway, lol.

First Tattoo!

My sister and brother (but especially my sister) have been trying to talk me into getting a tattoo for years. I have told them over and over that IF I was to ever get one, I wanted it to be something I really wanted and not just something spur of the moment. Plus, I have always been quite a chicken as far as how much it might hurt.

So, once I decided on what I wanted, and after going through months of giving myself shots with huge needles, I came to the conclusion that I was ready! I had decided that I wanted a rose with black and white tiger stripes. My sister had a place that had designed her last tattoo, so she took me there. It was definitely an interesting experience and I will probably do it again, once I decide on something else I want.

John Michael Montgomery In Concert...

On June 18, 2009, the Pensacola Naval Station put on a concert for the troops in the area to attend. It had a couple smaller acts first, Joshua Stevens and Stephen Cochrane. But the main attraction that night was John Michael Montgomery. He was really pretty good. He played a lot of old stuff that we knew, and some new stuff that we did not. I think Matt was ready to leave way early. I refused to leave right after the main guy came on. By this time, we were all really warm. And by this time, Matt's view of the stage was severely blocked by the "whale and the chihuahua." But we stayed til the end. I got super teary on the love songs and especially when he did "Letters From Home."

We ended up getting back pretty late. I don't think our pics turned out so great though. We were a good ways back. And since the main singer is at the end of the concert, it was really dark. Oh well, it was free and it was pretty good for that price, lol.

New Buddy...

This is our family's new Buddy. He is another mini wiener doggy. He was born February 14, 2009. He is definitely a baby. He has had a few accidents, lol, but we all know that that is part of him being a baby. He is getting better though. He is a big time cuddler. He sleeps the best if he is curled up next to someone. He is quite the thief though. A few times in the past week he decided to steal undergarments from my room or from the bathroom. LOL. I knew I left them in a certain place and the next thing I knew, they were in the living room.

He will never replace the Copper man, but he is helping to take some of the pain away from losing him. You just don't have tons of time to sit and think when you have the Wild Buddy Man to run after. I do think he has a lot of Copper's characteristics in him though. And so, Copper will live on through the little man that has helped to fill the hole in our hearts.

Much Better!

Well, since I am going on vacation, I needed to get my hair done before I went or else it would look pretty badly by the time I came home. This also gave me the chance I needed to get the color to calm down a little. The red before was the best after a month, lol. So, Astrid decided to add a little natural brown to the red before she put it on. At first I was not sure about it, but when I saw it closer, I really like it. It just looks more natural this way.

RIP Copper. We Will Miss You.

We are completely saddened by the loss of my parent's dog Copper. He was on the larger end of the miniature Dauschund . He was 11 years old. He was given to my parents when he was just a couple years old. He immediately became a part of the family. With his prairie dog trick, his rat face, and is loud barking and snarling, we all loved him tremendously. Lately he had been showing signs of his aging, but still always wanted to jump up into the chairs or onto the couch. Who would have thought that one of his favorite things would be what we end up hurting him so much?

Last night he tried to jump up into the chair and fell backwards. From what I was told, you could tell that he was in a lot of pain. It did not seem too bad at first, but it ended up getting worse as the night went on. By the time he was taken to the emergency vet, he could not move the back half of his body. After a long time, the vet said to call back in the morning to see if the steroids had reduced the swelling. This morning there was no change. Their choices were limited; take him out of the pain he was in, let him stay in a cage in his current condition (he would have absolutely HATED this), or take him four hours away for an expensive surgery that may or may not help him. So, when my parents went to see him before making the decision, they saw the absolute pain and confusion in his eyes. At first he reacted to mom, but then later he did not. They left again to talk it over and I am sure pray about what is the best decision for Copper. And then they made the most difficult decision, they decided to end his pain. I am sure it was heart breaking to make that decision. I would not wish that feeling or decision on anyone ever.

Copper, we will miss you forever. You were a great dog. You were a warm body when mom was feeling sick, you were a protector when she was feeling sad, you were a playmate and friend for your sweetheart Honey, but most of all, you were a member of our family. You will never be forgotten. We love you.

RED?!?!?!

The lady who did my hair finally talked me into going red with blonde highlights. I was not sure I would go through with it, but I finally gave in. It is going to take some getting used to. It was a little brighter outside the salon than it was inside, but it is not bad.

Barry's Birthday Dinner!

Well, Tuesday May 5th was Barry's 31st birthday! We decided to go to an Italian restaurant that some friends had told us about. It is in a nearby town. I had looked up the address before we left the house and had copied it to a piece of paper (more about that later). So, the restaurants around here are closed during the middle of the day on weekdays, so we made reservations for 5 p.m. We wasted time at the BX's and finally we were on our way there. I had put the address into the navigation system when we left, so we kind of knew where we were going (I thought).

So we drive down this street and when the navigation system tells us that we have arrived at our destination, we were confused. There were no restaurants here. So we decided to get out of the car (I was a little worried about another ticket, lol) and walk around looking for it. It was not at the address I had written down. We wandered a little while in the rain before Barry called the shop and asked where it was. Seems we had passed it on the way into town. So we got back to the car and found it pretty easily.

Anyway, we get into the restaurant, which is very cozy. There is a lot on the menu (pizzas, pasta, etc.). Barry ordered the Rigatoni Quatro Formaggio (4 Cheese Rigatoni) and I ordered a pizza with tomato, mozzarella cheese, pancetta, Parmesan, and rucola (wish I had known what the last ingredient was...). So, our order comes out and his looks like this:


And mine looked like this:



The greens tasted like grass! Maybe I would have liked it had the greens been baked in with everything, but this was a pile of raw greens on top of the pizza.

Oh, later on I realized why we went to the wrong address. On one paper, I wrote 45, but when I wrote it down on another paper, I wrote 54. UGH! Ooooops!

Steaks "vom heißen Stein"

One of our new favorite restaurants is called Waldhaus Eifel. One of its most popular menu items is the Steaks "vom heißen Stein" (steaks on the hot stone). I have been wanting to try it for awhile but I had questions about how it worked. I told Barry that I wanted to go there for lunch the other day. They are one of the few sit down restaurants in the Bitburg area that stay open during the lunch hour. The menu is smaller, but they always have the steaks on the hot stone so I decided to have that. Barry had jagerschnitzel.

I was concerned with whether the steak would be marinated, whether it would take forever (making anyone eating with me wait on me to cook my dinner at the table), and whether it would taste near as good as the other steak I had at dinner time. But I decided to try it and I am glad I did. The steak had a wonderful marinade with some sauce and peppercorns (there were actually 2 smaller steaks). They brought out some different sauces (which I did not use, but it was nice to have a selection). Then they brought the hot stone. Wow, it got warmer at the table right away. Then they brought the steak out with some herb butter to use after they cooked (the best part). Then you cook your steaks. It only took about 15 minutes and would have been better if we both had gotten the same thing since he was practically done by the time I was finished cooking my steaks. I forgot to bring the camera, but I did have my cell phone, so I took some pics of the process. I can't wait to take my parents to these restaurants.

Enjoy, I know I did!

London, England March 2009

Wow, what a long trip. This could take up a lot of space. I will come back and add the pictures later.
Friday night, March 27th, we went over to David and Amy's house for dinner before we went to meet the bus. The beer chicken was good as always and the guys played a little Halo while we waited until it was time to head up to the commissary parking lot. Jayden was in a pretty good mood (yoooohoooo, Daddy, LOL).
At 10pm, we left the house and arrived at the parking lot. We were the first ones there as we joked about how strange we looked just sitting in the parking lot. I figured that we would be sitting for a long time on the bus, so I got out of the van. As usual, I rechecked to make sure I had everything (for the millionth time, lol). Finally other people started showing up. A little while later, the bus arrived and we realized that we would not be sitting anywhere close to each other, which was a bummer. As soon as they made sure that everyone was there, we got started. It was going to be a long trip (4 hours) to the ferry, so pretty much everyone slept. Barry and I had a hard time getting to sleep. I did not feel too well and kept having to wake Barry up so that I could get to the bathroom. That was an experience in itself! The bathroom was about half the size of an airline bathroom. Fun times.
We finally made it to the port in Calais, France to meet the ferry. But first we had to dig out our passports, fill out a landing card, and go through customs. We were all exhausted and it was already (or still) raining. Finally, after waiting for our turn, the bus pulled onto the ferry. We all got off the bus after being told that we would hear an announcement as to when it would be time to come back to the bus. We went upstairs and watched as the ferry started to move away from the dock. We went outside and watched the city lights of Calais as they got farther away. We did not stay too long because Jayden was cold and there were some strange guys smoking something out there. So we went in to find something for breakfast. They had an interesting meal called the Farmer's Breakfast where you could pick 7 different items for your breakfast. I think we had like eggs, sausage, ham,potatoes, etc. I wish I had just had some cereal, but oh well. After we ate, we just wandered around a little more. Amy and I had planned to clean up and fix our hair and makeup, but there were no outlets and not much time by the time we were ready to do so. We were excited to see that it was getting light outside as we pulled closer to the white cliffs of Dover in England.

After hearing the announcement to go back to the bus, we went down by the bus and took some pictures of the cliffs and the other ferries that were at the port. It was still a little dark, but you could see some things. We loaded back on the bus and after a few minutes, we headed on our way. I had not even noticed that we were now driving on the opposite side of the road. Barry noticed it and mentioned it to me. It was strange. We were still about 2 hours from London, so the ITT guide showed us a movie about London. It was interesting. Then she proceeded to tell us that we would be going on a 4 hour guided tour (2 hours on the bus and 2 hours walking). We were not thrilled. We had been told that it was maybe an hour to 2 hours, not 4. So, now we did not have near as much time as we expected to have.

Finally, we reached London. We picked up our London tour guide (a British man named Simon) near Piccadilly Circus. Then for the next few hours, we drove around London and learned many random facts about the city and the people and places in it. Many of the buildings were beautiful. I was surprised to find that London was quite a dirty city. After Barry and I had gone to Paris and it was so clean and beautiful, I expected London to be the same. Maybe it had something to do with so much of the city being destroyed by a fire. On the tour, we were so disappointed because we just flew right by so many important places (St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, the gates of Buckingham Palace). Half the time, I could not even see what he was talking about. Plus, it was raining, so may of my pictures are either streaked from the rain on the window, or blurred from going past so quickly. We did drive across the Tower Bridge (learned that Tower Bridge and London Bridge are not the same thing, lol). We went and found the platform 9 and 3/4 from the Harry Potter films. That was neat to see, but the walk there was not so fun. We also went and saw the crosswalk and the studio of the Beatles on Abbey Road. They encourage people who visit to sign their names on the gate outside (the whitewash it every so often), so Amy and I signed our names. We found it neat that, unless they tear it down, our names will be there forever. Barry videoed Amy and I crossing in the crosswalk. We saw the area of town where Jack the Ripper killed his victims, where Prince Charles gets his hair cut, where the Royals go to party, where John Lennon had a store, where Sherlock Holmes lived, and the probably 6 inch long (or more) barbed wire that surrounds Buckingham Palace.

Finally, the tour was OVER! It was over a little earlier that she had said, but now we were tired and kind of bored from the tour and worried that we would not have time to see everything we wanted to see. Our tickets had not arrived that we had bought ahead of time (for the London Eye and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum) so we needed to go to the Eye first and find out what we needed to do. So we jumped on the TUBE at Piccadilly station and went to the Waterloo station.

When we got there, we were excited to know that they were not extremely busy and we could go on the Eye right away and then go to the wax museum whenever we wanted to go. So we got right in line and got onto the London Eye. It used to be the tallest ferris wheel in the world, but now it is like the 4th tallest. It was beautiful up there. Even though it was extremely windy, you could not even tell. You could see all of London from there. We could see Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham, St. Paul's Cathedral, and of course the River Thames. We made sure to take pictures of us with Big Ben behind us. The ride takes about 30 minutes to go all the way around. One thing that irritated us was that they had this mat on the floor and you were supposed to stand on it when the wheel got to a certain point and it would take your picture. We had been sitting right near it the whole time so that we could get the picture taken, but at the last minute, this British lady had her whole family push in front of us and they got the picture instead. We were not thrilled.

After the London Eye, we knew we needed to get moving. Our next stop was going to be the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. I believe we took the Tube again to get to the bridge. As we were walking across the bridge, we saw the HMS Belfast (no, Amy, it is not moving, hee hee). When we finally got there, they had us take a picture in front of a blue screen. We were not sure what this was for, so we went in anyway. You take an elevator up stairs and then walk across the walkway above the actual bridge. It was neat to see a different view of the city and the river. We went through this rather quickly since we knew time was short. We had tickets to see the engine rooms for raising the bridge, but we did not go because we did not want to run out of time. When we got near the exit, we found that they take the picture from the beginning and place it on a picture of the Tower Bridge. It was pretty neat. We all got one and then left the bridge.

Next stop was the Tower of London. This was the part I was looking forward to the most. Recently, after watching the show The Tudors, I have been really interested in the story of Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII. The Tower was the place where Henry had her held and executed (she was actually held in the same room that she stayed in before her coronation). I was pretty sure we were supposed to just show our London Pass at the side gate, but everyone else thought we needed tickets. So we walked up the hill and when I went inside to ask someone, everyone left me. I found out that I was right and I yelled for them to turn around. After chasing everyone down, we turned around and went to the gate. Had we had more time, we would have waited and gone on the tour led by one of the Royal Yeomans (or Beefeaters). That would have given us the information and stories that I was looking forward to. But by this point, the guys were really starting to whine about not getting to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. I was getting upset because I knew that there was no way that I would get the Tower of London experience that I was hoping for. Basically, I got to see the outsides of all of the buildings. We saw the ravens that stay there all the time and the legend says that if they were to ever leave, then London would fall. I did get to see the site where the scaffolding was for the execution of Anne Boleyn. They have changed the monument there, but her name is still there for being one of the notable people to be killed there. We were going to see the crown jewels, but the line was so long and the guys kept mentioning how we would never get to see everything if we went in there. I was disappointed. Plus, if we went to London one week later, we would have gotten to see a huge Henry VIII exhibit. Oh yeah, Amy and I did get to take a picture with a Beefeater, but then we left. Yeah, disappointing.

So, we left there and took pictures of the Tower Bridge. This was the best view, since you could see the whole length of the bridge. We each took turns taking the pictures and then we were on our way. About this time, I started really feeling like something was wrong with my throat (more about that later). We decided that, since we had not been able to really see the Parliament and Big Ben, we would go to them. So we went to the Tube station and thank goodness it came out right in front of Big Ben. We took a bunch of pictures there. Some are better than others. Kind of hard to take pictures from right underneath something like that. There were some people protesting across the street in front of the Winston Churchill monument. In a way, I am glad we did not come next week. They are having the big summit in London next week. A lot of big leaders in one city always brings some interesting happenings.

So, next, we were off to find Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. We took more of an all the way around the city approach to the tube instead of getting straight there, but eventually we made it there. We had priority entrance, so that was pretty fast. When we got in, it was pretty interesting, but I have never before felt like I did there with Barry practically dragging me through the exhibits. There were so many people in each room. You really had to zoom in and cut out the people that were also trying to take pictures with the figures. There were some REALLY good figures and there were some that just did not look anything like the people. I had Barry take my picture with Henry VIII and I thought that was really neat. I tried to get Barry to take a picture with Jimi Hendrix but he wouldn't do it. Oh well, too bad for him. Wow, the one of President George W. Bush was really bad. It did not look anything like him. But of course, the Royals of Great Britain were really amazing. SHOCKER, I know, lol. After flying through the museum, I did not even get a chance to get a souvenir.

We left the museum and headed toward the Hard Rock Cafe. By the time we got off the tube, it was getting dark and really starting to rain. We walked a few blocks til we finally found it. There was a really long line. Thank goodness for the London Pass. It got us moved to the top of the waiting list. Okay, back to my throat thing. While we were waiting for a table, I was really having trouble. I thought I just had phlegm or something in my throat, but every time I tried to swallow, I felt like I was either gagging or about to throw up. So I went to look at my throat. Turns out my uvula was hanging down and laying on my tongue. I was practically choking on my uvula. I was freaking out. I told Barry and he of course told me to calm down and relax. Not helping when you feel like you are about to choke every time you swallow or breathe. Ugh. But anyway, we finally got a table and after we ordered we went over to the store to get souvenirs. We had made sure to tell the waitress that we did not have much time. She was really quick in getting our food to us. Barry thought I was just super dehydrated (I had 2 bottles of water since we left Friday night and nothing to eat) so I ended up with a lot to drink at dinner. I thought we would not have time for much to eat so I just got a sandwich instead of what I wanted. Needless to say, I still did not eat much. We finished with only enough time to get back on the tube and head back to Piccadilly Circus. We made it there in time for Amy and I to take pictures inside a red telephone booth and to have some drama with Jayden (poor kid). Then we got back on the bus. Everyone must have been incredibly exhausted because I believe everyone was asleep by the time we left London. We all woke up when we were back in Dover and getting back on the ferry. The ferry on the way back was not near as exciting. We were all so tired and just kind of sat around til it was time to get back on the bus to go home. The food they were serving for dinner was not very appetizing, so again no dinner for me. I lost a few pounds while on this trip, between the not eating and all the walking. Finally we were getting back on the bus and going to try to get more sleep. We actually lost 2 hours when we left England because of the time difference and Daylight Saving Time. About an hour in, I thought I was going to pass out and had to go sit in the little teeny tiny bathroom so I could get some air (little window in there). Finally at around 7 am, we made it back to Bitburg. We were exhausted. We rode home and went straight to bed. I slept til 2pm because I needed to go get groceries and Barry slept til after 8pm.
Overall, it was a pretty good trip. The bus ride was too long and the time in London was too short. I was disappointed in the lack of time that I got to spend in the place I wanted to see the most. And the weather was horrible, so I am extremely disappointed in the pictures that I took. I told Amy that she won the best picture award for this trip because mine were very disappointing. All in all, Barry was right. We tried to pack too much into the time we had there, and we did not get to spend the amount of time we had wanted at the attractions. We have decided though, that when we come back to do a cruise that originates in England, we will go visit the places that we did not have much time to see (Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and the Tower of London). But I do have to say, if ever given the choice to go to either Paris or London, I know I would choose Paris any day.