I know, its been a while, ha!

Happy New Year!  Or as the Germans say, "Frohe Neue Jahr!"  I FINALLY have some time to sit down and update this thing now that Cameron is away on field training for the next week-ish.  He's been gone almost a week now and, although I miss him, its kind of been a nice break.  I'm sure I won't be saying that in March when he'll be gone again, but instead of two and half weeks, he'll be gone for almost four.  And don't get me wrong here, I love being around that silly man, but sometimes I think the statement "absence makes the heart grow fonder" is true (but not too much absence, ha). In 2011, we spent a total of about four months together, collectively, two of which were in a new country, newly married.  It's been an adjustment, and a lot to take on, but honestly I think that's our way of doing things, ha, and I love being married to my best friend.  That makes it easy :].

Since my last post, so many things have happened!  "Duh, its been almost a month," you say, and to that I say, "my bad," ha.  We've been on a few trips, experienced our first Christmas and New Years together as a married couple, and done a lot of exploring!  Around Christmastime, we discovered many things in our little town of Arnstein.  We live on the edge of town, so we decided to drive over to the other edge and see what all was there and in between.  We found a park with a big slide and decided to let Riley take a ride!  He didn't make it all the way down though...he jumped off about halfway down, silly dog!  Here are some pictures from Christmas and our adventures:

Our first Christmas as "The Powells"

The beautiful Christmas feast

The crazy slide we sent Riley down

Thanks to an untimely incident with our car right before Christmas, we spent our new year just hanging out together at our apartment, and creating our own dance club, ha.  We got to watch fireworks from our window and I got to kiss that wonderful man of mine at midnight for the seventh year in a row. I'm such a lucky person to be able to say that!  I know we'll have many many more to come, whether in person or thru skype, ha.  (Soapbox!) Skype sure is a wonderful thing!  It has made this move away from our families a little bit easier, but I am still homesick at times.  I miss my goofy family and the simple pleasures of "American life."  And I miss my friends, and texting them random things at random times.  Now I just tell Cameron the random things I think but I can't tell if he thinks I'm a crazy person or not, ha. 

Well, its almost midnight here, and I'm getting kind of tired.  I'll try and update this more often!  Right now, I am in the process of painting our apartment and I have to get everything done before Cameron's parents come to visit us in February!

Love to All!

It's too funny not to share!

I bought Riley some snow booties for Christmas to keep his feetsies warm!  Too bad he can't walk in them, ha! 
I'll be updating this on Monday, after all the holiday festivities, but in the meantime, I just had to share this!

I'm an automated woman! This is a big update!

MY CAR HAS ARRIVED!  AND I CAN DRIVE IT!!

It is official!  My car has arrived and I am a legal German driver!  I took my driving test today and passed!  By one...but who is really counting, ha?  It was pretty nerve-racking but I went through the class, had an extra chance to study, and then took the test.  There was another guy in there who was taking it for the second time who failed again....I'm just glad that wasn't me!  After I passed the test I had to go "hurry up and wait" for my car.  It was taking too long so we ended up just going back home because we were going to meet up with Cameron's friends (one who has known him since he was born) in Würzburg. 
Also this week, Cameron and I got temporary stockings and were able to send off our Christmas gifts to our families.  We had a lot of fun wrapping them...well, Cameron did.  So family, when you get your gifts, don't be alarmed by the "wonderful" wrap job he did, hehe!  
Let's see, what else happened?  I've been getting more confident about my minimum skills in the kitchen!  The website "Pinterest" has got me wanting to try so many different things, so we tried a loaded baked potato soup recipe, which turned out pretty good!  We also went to the grocery store to buy food for our Christmas feast that just the two of us will have.  That 8 lb ham is going to last a loooong time!  I can't believe Christmas is in less than a week.  We're both pretty bummed to be spending this time of year away from our families and our family traditions and numerous get-togethers, but we're glad to at least have each other.  It'll be our first married Christmas, which is really exciting, considering he'll be deployed this time next year.  Right now we've only got a few gifts under the tree (which are all for him!) but tomorrow we are venturing out to Grafenwöhr to do some more shopping at their huge PX!  
Oh, before I forget!  HOW TO MAKE A COMMENT:
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And now, a few pictures!

In Wurzburg!

Getting ready to make my potato soup!

Our tree and our stockings!

Putting the topper on, just like at home.  Cameron is standing in for my dad.

Our little family!  :]

I look crazy, BUT that is my temporary DRIVER'S LICENSE!!  Yay!

One of these days, Cameron is gonna write a post!

Pictures and Adventure

As promised there will be pictures in this post!  I might as well start now before I forget, ha.

This is a view from one of our windows in the living room.  It looks down into part of our town :]

The first actual dinner I made that wasn't spaghetti with our new wedding dishes!  BBQ meatloaf, mmmm!

Our beautiful REAL Christmas tree in our dining area, with all those windows I was talking about!

My sweet boy!  He gets so many compliments wherever we take him.

This is the Brandenburg Gate at night in Berlin!  Our first "far-away" trip in Germany together.

The Berlin Wall....or what's left of it anyway.

I'm in two countries at once!  Poland on the left and Germany on the right!

There's way more pictures on Facebook, but y'all can look at them yourselves.  I've had so much fun here so far!  My car is still on its way over here, but I was told it'd bet here by the 19th.  One week.  I have to pass the German driving test and my Führerschein (driver's license), yikes!  Its kind of daunting.  I passed the Texas driving course 6 years ago, never thinking I'd ever have to take one in another country.  I feel like an old person having to renew their license but all the rules changed, ha!  I'll be so glad to have my own car though!  I'll finally be able to get out of the house during the day, maybe even make some new, much needed friends.  Maybe I'll take a day trip and explore something new.  Hell, its all new for me.  Well, until next time!  It's bedtime for the lieutenant and his wife!

Hallo Freunde!

Well, hello everyone!  This is my first blog post!  Sorry if there are a lot of things in German...I created the blog on the German version of this website, ha, whoops.  I have officially been here for one month!  Can you believe that?  Time has really flown by, especially on the weekends.  My weekdays are filled with three main things so far:  playing with Riley, a little bit of cleaning and organizing, and a lot of sitting on my butt waiting for Cameron to get home.  But if ever I get bored, I just walk over to our huge window with a view that goes on for miles and stare.  Simply beautiful.  We've already been on a few trips around the country, including Berlin, the Baltic Sea, Würzburg, and even Poland, even if it was just for a moment, ha.  Its Christmastime here and everywhere else!  We got our first tree together on Friday and according to Cameron the experience was not how it was supposed to be.  I reminded him we're in Germany.  This passed weekend we took a trip to the famed Christmas market, or "Weihnachtsmarkt" in Rothenburg.  Many of the shops have lots of Christmas stuff in them and we stocked up!  I'm ready to decorate our Christmas tree but we still have more than a few boxes in the way.  Our little apartment is turning into a nice little home for us and it very exciting for me to decorate it!  In case people don't know, with the time difference, it is about 7 hours later here so I should probably do something with my day!  There will be pictures soon!