The house!

Just wanted to post some long requested house photos. Nothing special but everyone has been bugging us for the past 10 months so here they are! Click on the title for more!

Oh! And we're gearing up for a trip to London and Ireland next week! Can't wait to tell all about it!!!

Catching up

Hey, all! It's been a while! Let's see... last time we talked was back in May. To catch you all up, we've had 4 visitors out here since April, we celebrated Kirk's birthday, we've taken a few wine tasting trips, visited Crete, gone white water rafting and we're gearing up for a visit home!

So in April, Kirk's cousin Bridget came out from Turkey. We had a lot of fun taking her around to all the sights out here and cooking all sorts of American food for her. We got to see a couple of new places like Ercolano and the Naples underground city. Then Kirk's friend, Dave, came out from Washington, D.C. and we pretty much did the same thing. Kirk spent much more time taking him around because I was really sick and ended up with pneumonia. I did get to go out to Paestum and Capri with the guys and that was really neat. Our last two visitors were my sister, Kelli, and cousin, Casey. The girls came and spent a week with us before taking a two week tour in Greece. We spent some time at Caserta Palace, Capri, and downtown Naples. It was a nice relaxing week. We think everyone enjoyed their trips a lot and we are so happy that they came out!!!

Greece was great! Kirk had to be down there for the week for work so I flew down with him and hung out with the other wives on the trip. We ate good food and really enjoyed exploring their little port town, Chania. It was a fun and relaxing trip!

We've started collecting wine and we've been learning so much about it. We got an "Italian Wine for Dummies" book as a wedding gift and we've been pouring through it. It's been a lot of fun and we really enjoy going to the little wineries and tasting all the types of wine around here. We've explored Umbria, Tuscany and Campania so far and have big plans for Piedmont. We were in Tuscany last weekend and had such a good time. We visited lots of little hilltop medieval towns and even happened on an amazing antiques market in one of them. Our last stop for the trip was at a wonderful family run winery and the man didn't speak a lick of english. To our amazment, my Italian was good enough to translate most of what he was saying! He ended up gifting us with a bottle of dessert wine called 'Vin Santo' which they do not sell. It's a 5-generation special bottle that they make and only give to friends and family. It is our favorite winery so far and we are going to see if we can help with the harvest in September.

Kirk is on his way to Spain right now for work which leaves me alone with the kitty for the week. The next door neighbor's husband is also with Kirk so us girls are going to hang out this week without them. Then, the day after he gets back, we hop a train up to Rome and fly back to California. We're so excited to see everyone and eat at all our favorite restaurants! We miss people and good food so much! Can't wait to see everyone!!!

Germany, take two

   We just love Germany.  We got to go up to Garmisch again because Kirk had some work stuff to do up there but we made a fantastic trip out of it!  We stopped on the way up in Innsbruck, Austria where we spent the night in the heart of the beautiful little city.  We stayed in a building that dates back to the 16th century and had a delicious dinner there.  The next day we stopped at the Swarovski Crystal world, which is one of the strangest places we've ever been and we don't recommend it but oh well.  On to Germany!

   We drove past Garmisch that first day so that we could visit the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.  It was really interesting getting to see all the places where things happened and there was a huge museum that documented the entire 12 years of the camp's existence.  It was such a profound experience.  We stayed at the Edelweiss Lodge again at the military base there.  Our neighbors, Jake and Kim, stayed at the cabins that the lodge has so we got to hang out with them a bit too.  We loooove the food in Germany so we spent most of the week planning for our next meal.  We went up to the Partnach Gorge again to walk around and we discove

red a hotel and restaurant up above the gorge that we ate dinner at later in the week with Jake and Kim.  Very tasty!  We spent some time at a festival that the town was throwing and listening to live music and ate more food.  Kirk played a shooting game and won a blue rose on his first shot!  On our last day in Germany we went parasailing off one of the huge mountains in the area.  It was unbelievable!

   Then we headed out for France.  We stayed one night in Nice and walked the beach front and ate savory crepes and ice cream.  Then we went to a little historic town which we can't remember the name of but we found out about some cool caves while we were there and we just had to see them.  We took a 45 minute detour to a little town called St. Cezaire which isn't even in our navigation system.  The caves were discovered in the late 1800's by some miners and they're super neat with tons of stalagtites and stalagmites and little passage ways.  The guide accidentally turned off all the lights for a split second and Nicole almost passed out, haha.

   So from the caves we headed back towards Italy and stayed the night in the port town of Genova.  We got to do some exploring the next morning and just fell in love with the place.  It

 had such grand old palaces and building and the harbor was amazing.  We got to check out a ship that was built for a movie made in the 80's but it was a replica of an old ship that sunk in the 1700's.  It was nice just walking around the city.  We then drove on down the coast and went

through Cinqueterre where there are tons of vineyards on the terraced hill sides and beautiful views of the ocean.  We went on to Pisa and hung out with the leaning tower for a bit.  And then it was time to head home.

   We really had a great time the entire trip and could not praise Germany enough.  But as always, it's nice to be home.  Oh, and Nicole had her first day as a substitute teacher for a very rowdy 3rd grade class at the NATO school.  But she survived and is looking forward to her next shot at it!

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean.....

On April 3rd we celebrated our 1st anniversary!!! We can't believe how fast it's gone by. Kirk surprised me by sweeping me off to the Maldives for the week for the honeymoon we never had. We stayed at the most beautiful little island resort and spent the week relaxing, swimming in the warm ocean, kayaking, snorkeling and eating super good food. The people there were so nice and attended to our every need. The weather was amazing and we got a little too much sun but not so much that we couldn't enjoy everything thoroughly. We actually stayed in 2 different rooms, the first few nights we were in a beachside bungalow with a back deck, huge room with lounging areas and the most amazing bathroom in the world! It was an indoor/outdoor bathroom with a huge double wide tub and a shower set back among the tropical foliage. We finished our trip staying in an overwater bure that had a back deck with stairs down to the water where tropical fish swam around and a section of the bathroom opened up down to the water so we could enjoy the fishies while we showered. We had so much fun snorkeling! We saw some amazing and rare animals including turtles(endangered species!), humungous eels and a great big octopus that changed colors for us. Kirk even saw some nurse sharks! The water was like bath water, sooo warm. It was such a beautiful place. We also saw a huge flying fox bat on our island! We spent our last night in Male' city and got to experience the real Maldives culture. We took a walking tour around the 2km island and went to a fruit market, a fish market and got to see all the important places in the city. We had our traditional fresh coconut, which we've now done in 3 different countries! Then we jumped on a plane and headed home. What an unbelievable vacation!!!

Gemany

Just got back from a great trip to Germany! We stayed at a military resort in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The weather was beautiful with snowfall the first few days and then a clear and sunny day on the slopes. We saw Neuschwanstein Castle and took a night hike into Partnach Gorge where we used torches to light up the massive icicles all over the place. We ate some fantastic German food and relaxed in the hot tub under the snow. We went snowboarding on Sunday and then decided to trade in our boards for some plastic tobbogans. They had the wildest tobbogan run ever and we flew down the mountain at unbelievable speeds. On our last run, Nicole's sled broke so we both got onto Kirk's little sled and finished up the mountain together. Amazingly we made it down without going over a cliff. We stayed the last night in Munich and took a walking tour of the city. We saw a lot of places with Nazi history, went through an outdoor market and bought dragon fruit and stuffed olives, saw the devil's footprint in a church and had a finishing beer at a local beer hall before taking the train back to the airport and heading home. We had so much fun! We're really looking forward to our next trip to Germany, whenever that might be!

the house!

We're in! It's been a busy week for us trying to unpack and get situated. We still have a lot of work to do. Things have been slowed down a bit by unexpected circumstances. For instance, we have no electricity upstairs right now, our dryer didn't fit through the bathroom door so we have to wait for a smaller one, the dishwasher refuses to work and our couch is a bit too big to fit in it's space. But we're figuring things out and things are moving along. We don't know when our internet is going to get set up but it's been ordered and hopefully will get all taken care of really soon here so we can start calling people and really catching up. Can't wait to have everything organizing and livable!!!

What's up with us?

Here we are again! We just passed the anniversary of our engagement! Last weekend we took advantage of the extra day off and took another road trip through Italy. We visited Orvieto, Perugia, Gubbio, San Marino and Umbria. They were all little hilltop medieval towns and they were so charming. The weather was nice to us aside from the cool temperatures and a bit of wind. The views along the way were beautiful and we found some great little hotels to stay in along the way! Oh, and we had some really great food. It seems like the best way to eat in Italy is to figure out if the restaurant has a Menu Touristico. It gives you 3 courses for around 15 euro a plate and then you just have to buy your drinks on top of that. We're so glad to have figured it out, it saves a lot of money and you leave with a very full belly! Recently, we have been spending a lot of time bowling. We even found a great bowling alley on our trip that we went to after everything else closed around our hotel. It was a lot of fun. Our next trip should be up to Germany where there is an amazing military resort just 56 miles from Munich. We'll be skiing, sight-seeing, hot tubbing and maybe even take a nice hike up a crazy gorge. Should be fun!

This week we're moving in to our house! There's been a lot to do to prepare for it but Friday we're out of the hotel and all of our stuff is being brought to the house. We're so excited! We'll put up pics once everything is set up and cute.

Until next time...