Sunday, October 26, 2014

Menu:

Dinner:
Turkey Meatballs (all the stores have been out of turkey!)
Pizza Sunday :)
(I don't really like using the "cream of" soups, so I will probably improvise that)

Breakfast:
Cereal and fruit
Greek yogurt and fruit


Lunch:
Annie's mac&cheese
Leftovers
Avocado, blueberries, pecan crackers, and hummus
Noodles, fruit, goldfish

Snacks:
Granola
"Pesto" dip
Fruit/Veggies


So there's my menu for the week.  It's been a long fun weekend with friends, so I'm off to bed.  

xoxo

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Menu and fun

Breakfast:
Greek yogurt with honey and fruit
Cereal with apple slices

Lunch:
Boiled eggs, blueberries, and pecan crackers
Ques. with black beans and spinach
Bagel with PB&honey, goldfish, and veggies
Leftovers
Annie's spaghettios, veggies, &hummus

Dinner:
Turkey&quinoa enchiladas with black beans
Leftovers
Crockpot chicken over nachos
Turkey meatballs and pasta (same as last week, we just didn't get to make it)

Snacks:
Apple slices with PB
Smoothies
Veggies and hummus



That's all for now, I gotta go get ready for family pictures!

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Back from pictures and we had a GREAT time.  The photographers were incredibly nice and I'm hoping that we got some really good shots. I'm ready to get some of these white walls decorated.

Had a very fun and exhausting weekend.  Friend fun on Friday night, slept in Saturday and watched movies all day, and then today we had pictures and ran around in the woods.


All is well.


Sunday, October 12, 2014

I've been in 3 countries in 3 days!

Before I get to that, I'm gonna list out my menu for the week:

Dinners:

Lunches:
Bagel with PB&honey, banana, carrots
Boiled eggs, waffle, and grapes
Leftovers
Spinach quesedilla with black beans
Annie's mac&cheese, apple slices, broccoli

Breakfast: 
(all served with apple or carrot juice)
Cereal&fruit
Yogurt&smoothie pop
Waffle with PB&honey
Oatmeal
Eggs with English muffin

Snacks:
Hummus&crackers
Smoothie
Fruit kebobs
Broccoli and greek dip


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now onto the travels:

Tuesday, Ben took some leave and we got to go on a little vacation.  He was gone most of the summer, so being able to take a trip together was really awesome.

We headed out on Tuesday after Delilah's gymnastics class and drove straight to Trier.  It's the oldest city in Germany and is just BEAUTIFUL.  We parked in the city center and just started walking around.

St. Peter's Cathedral!

In front of the Cathedral

In the Porta de Nigra


Ben and Delilah in front of Porta de Nigra

After we were done wandering around, we went to our beautiful hotel overlooking the river and had dinner.  

Next day, we headed out for Waterloo, Belgium to see Butte de Lion.


These steps were AWFUL to climb. It was so steep!



It was super windy

Stayed at the Air Base in Belgium which was pretty OK.  Had dinner at a Thai place there before heading to bed completely exhausted.  Next day, we headed to Bruges!  We had heard that Bruges is much better than Brussels (and didn't have the dirty cat pee smell to it either), so we decided to go there.




Famous Bruges belfry. Built in the 1400s and we got to climb the narrow spiral staircase all the way to the top!

Hanging out by the canals.

On the way back to the hotel after Bruges, Ben took us along the coast of the North Sea. This is on a beach in Oostende, Belgium.  It was beautiful.


The most well traveled kid. She had a great time and was amazing on our little adventure.


I cannot wait to go on the next trip. It was so much fun.  So thankful to be living out here!





Sunday, October 5, 2014

Dallas, TX can kiss my butt.

First of all, I just want to say that moving to Germany has been a wonderful experience...


HOWEVER

I have been separated from Rilo and Margot since April now, and that does not make me happy.  We had to leave them in the care of my mom, and thank goodness she could do it, but I miss them.  We ended up spending almost 40 days in a no pets allowed temporary living facility before we were able to get into our house...so there wouldn't have been a place for them right away.  Then we tried to get them out, and it was too hot.  Then we were planning on Ben bringing them back when he was on TDY in OK City...but his flight flew through Heathrow, and no live animals can be flown in there. 

SO.

Now we are just waiting for temps to go down in Dallas so that we can get our babies over here.  They will fly out through American Airlines from KC to Dallas and then straight to Frankfurt.  There have been a couple days where the temp is listed as below 85, but it's still too close and I don't want to chance them not getting to fly out.  This is just so frustrating.  Everything is very difficult.

*********************************************


This is a view right outside my village.





My little model.  

Family day!


Apple-Happle picking!

She had a complete blast picking apples to take home.

 




Walking through the orchards.

Tart apple dipped in chocolate (that she got to dip herself!)


Ended the day with a pony ride.


Super fun day, getting ready to take a short little family trip to a nearby city.  We haven't gotten to travel much out here since he was gone so much this summer and was in training.  It's not very expensive to travel, especially when there's a military instillation near where we want to go!  Cheap hotel and then going and walking around in Belgium!  Inexpensive family trip in Europe.  It's pretty awesome.  Looking forward to it.  



Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Long long long hiatus...but I'm back!

I'm not really sure why I took such a long break.  I know I didn't really think about it much when Ben was gone those 6 weeks in the summer...and then we've just been getting back in the swing of things.  I'm ready to start posting meals/talking/sharing pictures from our adventures.  

I'll start this off with something funny.  

35 Negative Military Spouse Stereotypes:


35) We are fat.
I'd say 90% are.

34) We are lazy.
Again, 90%.

33) We pop out a ton of kids.
Eh, I wouldn't necessarily say that. I will say that military families tend to have kids super early on..and sometimes it's a way to solidify the relationship. Saw that a lot in Clovis.

32) We don't have our own identity.
Most do not. They define themselves only by what their husbands do and by their children.  It's hard to get to know anyone, because everything about them is very shallow.  No depth.

31) We don't care about our appearance.
The KMCC at any point can look like a Walmart.  The people waiting for the bus with their kids before and after school...they are still in pajamas and messy hair.  What do they do all day? Why do they not care about showering?

30) We care too much about our appearance.
Day after payday is the day to avoid the KMCC.  The Coach/Michael Kors/LV/Chanel/etc...purse section is filled with women grabbing a new designer purse. Same goes with shoes and makeup as well.  Yikes.

29) Officer spouses are snobs.
I can't really comment on this one as I've only really spent time with one officer spouse and she was very sweet.

28) Enlisted spouses are uneducated.
Unfortunately, the majority of what I see are women who got married really young, popped out some kids, and aren't trying to further their educations after high school.  

27) We wear our service members rank.
Totally accurate. Spouses will assume that because their husband is high ranking, then they deserve the same reverence from everyone.

26) We are whiners.
There are people complaining about there not being anything to do here in GERMANY.  I have asked some of them after hearing this, and they admit to NEVER leaving the base.  They shop, eat out, live, etc...on base. They never get out and see the magic right outside the gate checkpoints. Pathetic.  If you can't be happy here, then you probably won't be happy anywhere.

25) We have a sense of entitlement.
I get so tired of seeing women on the spouse pages on facebook complaining and expecting businesses and the whole country of Germany to bend over backwards to suit their needs.  It's just infuriating.  

24) We are incompetent during deployment.
I can't say much to this as I had help during the 1 year long tour when Ben was in Korea and I haven't seen too many people alone during deployments.

23) We are free-loaders.
I would say a lot of the ones who got married young and quick are more likely to be this way...but the mindset still follows them as they grow older. 

22) We don't want to work.
The most work I see spouses do out here are home based businesses like Scentsy, those stupid "It Works!" wraps (that don't work, obviously), and DoTerra stuff.  Rarely do you find spouses that work outside the home.  I don't know if it's a "don't want to" work (although there are a lot with that attitude) as it is a I have to leave my job every 2-3 years so it's hard to get something permanent. 

21) Our marriages are doomed.
The marriages that came from the spouse wanting to just be married to a military man or the shot gun wedding style marriages probably won't last.  

20) We are unfaithful.
I saw WAY too much of that in Clovis.  At least 5 people that my husband worked with who were also in relationships or married were also posting their profiles on plentyoffish.com to find women to hook up with.

19) We thrive on drama.
This is true for 99% of military spouses.  If I wanted to spend the day doing so, I could post the fights and craziness that I see on the spouse facebook pages.  It's funny and also really sad.

18) We knew what we were getting into and should stop complaining.
I don't think that's too fair.  I mean, that can be in any situation in life.  Just because you know what you're getting into doesn't mean that it's easy or that you're not allowed to complain.  People complain about their jobs every single day, but they decided to work there, so should they stop complaining?  Sometimes you don't have a choice and it just sucks.

17) We are coattail riders.
This kind of goes around with not having your own identity and wearing your husband's rank.

16) Our behavior or appearance negatively affects our spouse's career.
Oh, 100% it does.  I knew someone in Clovis who got stripes taken away (meaning less pay, lower ranking now) because his wife was making fake myspace profiles to harass another spouse.  He got into big trouble, and his wife continued to do so.

15) Nothing we do can affect our spouse's career.
See #16.

14) We are all right-wing conservatives
Here's another stereotype, I think it's more Army/Marine that feel this way.  I haven't seen much of that in the Air Force.  More hate and contempt for the president and what not from people in the Army/Marines that I know.

13) We are swingers.
ha, I hadn't heard this one before. 

12) We are all submissive.
I'd say (at least in the Air Force) that most of the time, the spouses (mainly women) bowl over the men at home.  The guys are in charge at work, but I've seen some of the spouses be pretty emasculating when it's just them.

11) We all sell Scentsy, Thirty One or Mary Kay.
Yep. You can get 30 people trying to sell you scentsy from one facebook post.

10) We think we can demand anything from our spouse's command.
Yep.

9) We are all threatened by female military service members.
I have heard some spouses taking some pretty nasty gossip about female service members that their husbands work with.  Jealousy fuels that.

8) We are all women.
98%

7) We buy Coach purses instead of diapers for our children.
I wouldn't say INSTEAD of diapers, but I will say that those Coach purses are darn important to a lot of spouses.  Status symbols. 

6) We are welfare Queens/Kings.
I don't know anyone on welfare, but I do know people on WIC.  I think that should say more towards the pay that we get instead of a negative reflection on spouses.

5) We eat Bon-Bons.
No. 

4) We wear tons of military gear because we think we are also in the military.
If I could go the rest of my life without seeing another boudoir style photoshoot wearing something military related, I would be happy. 

3) We are gossips.
98% of spouses get energy from gossiping about fellow women. It's toxic.

2) We con Tricare into giving us breast implants.
Yep, I've heard people talking about how to do it too.  

1) We married them for the money.
I wouldn't say for the money (because we really don't make that much), but I will say for security and not having to work is a big deal to a lot of spouses...esp the young ones.