Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Check out the video I attached. Not only will you see us as we get ready for Thanksgiving but you'll also get to see Julia pretending she is a dog, pretending to be on Broadway, pretending to be a cook, etc. Pretty good stuff.

Being away from friends and family is always tough on Thanksgiving but rest assured we made the most of our day. Jen made a great turkey and Julia decided to play with me instead of hanging on her mom all afternoon. It worked out great. We also got to watch a little of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Julia, however, lost interest really quick.

As I write this, dinner is over and football is now on TV. We're all stuffed and the sleepy juice from the turkey is sinking in. Julia and Jen are practicing Christmas Carols and once Julia goes to sleep (early I hope), Jen and I are going to watch Oceans 13 which I picked up on the way home.

Tomorrow, we are going to brave the crowds at the base exchange and do some Christmas shopping. One of the benefits of being stationed in a country where they don't celebrate Thanksgiving is that there will be absolutely no rush on the stores outside the gate tomorrow. No such thing as Black Friday in Germany. Also, traffic flowed completely normal today. Besides the occasional farm vehicle slowing things down, I was able to go full speed to and from work today. Good times.

Anyhow, this Thanksgiving I have so much to be thankful for. A healthy baby on the way, no snow today, a princess for a daughter, most importantly, I am thankful for wonderful friends and family. Happy Thanksgiving!

Here comes the snow...

Being from Southern CA, I still get a tad excited when snow falls outside. I am sure it's a novelty and it will wear off in time but for now, I'm still happy to see the white stuff fall.

Now driving in this stuff is a different story! Rewind to the early nintien when Jen and I were first dating and we drove the T-Bird up to Big Bear in Feb to meet up with the family. We made it past the artic circle just fine but once we were on the road to moonridge, the car started to slide towards a snow bank. I recovered control in time and we fared just fine. Fast forward fifteen years and the same thing happened during our drive down to Garmish for the long weekend. It's the craziest thing! One minute you are going along just fine and the next minutes, it's as if some kid with a remote control started to control the car. We all decided that from now on, we're taking the train rather than driving in heavy snow.

We stayed at the Edelweiss resort hotel which is fantastic. With their spa, pool, gym, American food, woodburning fireplace, we never wanted to leave the place. See the pix below of the girls who look relieved to finally be there.

Edelweiss is in the middle of my favorite region of Germany: Bavaria. I'm not sure if this is where our German relatives are from but I definitely feel a connection to the place. Bavaria is home to all things distinctly German such as the Alps, Munich, Oktoberfest, liederhosen, etc. Ironically, Bavarians don't consider themselves German much as Southernerns didn't consider themselves Americans before the start of the Civil War.

I asked some Germans outside of Bavaria what they thought about this and they rolled their eyes and said with considerable distain, "Those Bavarians think they are sooo special..." I didn't admit say anthing to this guy but the truth is there really is something special about Bavaria. For one, this place is hands down beautiful. You see cool villages nestled in the middle of a forest, half timbered construction, soaring mountains, etc. Also, Bavaria is the Catholic hub of Germany. As a Catholic, it was great to see that these guys weren't afraid to be proud of their religion. Many of the buildings with beautiful religious murals painted on the side and crucifixes are displayed everywhere. And you better believe the biggest and grandest building in most villages in this area is the Catholic church. Finally, the traditional greeting in Bavaria is "Grus Gott!" instead of Guten tag. This loosely translates to "Glory to God". Jen wondered if a greeting like this would ever fly in PC minded America. Uh, no.

Anyhow, the trip to Garmish was great (besides, of course, the drive to and from). We stopped in Munich on the way back up and at lunch at the legendary Hofbrauhaus. The beer at this place comes in these massive one l liter Kugels (steins). Here's a rare pix of the entire family at this place. If you look closely, you can see Baby Luke in Jen's belly.

Auf Wiedersehen for now...

Happy Halloween!

A few days before Halloween, we headed down to Frankenstein Castle (its real name) in Baden Wurttemberg which is around Darmstadt area with some friends of ours and had a blast. The castle transformed into a haunted house of sorts and was crawling with creepy ghouls and monsters. Let's just say the adults love it, the kids...well, not so much.

On the left is a cool pix of JJ and I inside one of the cages within the castle. As you can see in the pix, Julia clung to my side the entire night. Hey, first time for everything.

After the trip to the castle, Jen and JJ went home and I headed to Grafenwoehr for a week for a work related trip. Graf, as the local army guys call it, is a bustling training ground for our Germany based soldiers and I was there to plan an exercise for next year. The trip wasn't much to write home about but the cool thing about Graf is that it was once a training ground for the German soldiers during WWI and WWII. After 1945, Graf, including the rest of Bavaria fell into the hands of the Americans and we've held onto this post ever since. As such, many of the half timber houses remain intact and are still used today. In fact, the centerpiece for the post is what they call the tower. This thing is about 300' high and is extremely ornate. I've never seen anything like it. It was one of those "Only in Germany" moments.

On a different note, we are now officially at our halfway point for this assignment. Thus far, our family has visited France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany,and Ireland. I can tack on England, Turkey, and Portugal as solo trips. Not too bad. Anyhow, we are headed down to the Alps soon to mark the occasion. We plan on enjoying the newly fallen snow and will be sure to post some pix.