Suprises

When you're married to a Stuard, nothing ever happens in a normal way. I learned this when I lived with his parents for a little while; but now it is a daily part of my life as his wife. Life is never boring to say the least because you never know what to expect. And when you do expect something, it doesn't happen the way you expect it to. Or maybe that's just from being in the Army. Yesterday we found out that we were indeed on the list to go on the marriage retreat. We had originally been told a few weeks ago that we were not and that the slot was going to a couple who actually had marriage problems. Well they were wrong. Hmmm, the Army has tons of paperwork, but they don't have any organization. Anyway, we learned this yesterday and the bus leaves tomorrow at 6am!! Woo Hoo!! We weren't expecting to go anywhere this weekend; but now we get to go to Edelweiss....and it's paid for! I am very excited and I promise I will blog all about it next week.

Another bit of news is that we got an almost complete living room set yesterday when we weren't expecting it. Tyler's master sergeant just bought a whole brand new living room set and he was going to put his 'old' (one year old) living room set in his downstairs room. The hitch was that it wouldn't fit through any of his downstairs doors. At that point his wife just wanted it out of the house so he sold us the whole set...including couch, coffee table, end tables, area rug and pillows...at a fabulous price. I have been searching the yard sale website trying to find living room stuff and then boom....one night, when we're not looking, we get a whole living room. God blessed us with that one. And now Tyler gets to put the little leather love seat upstairs and have his own 'man cave.' Pics will be posted when the furniture is all in place. Tyler was called out last night and didn't come home 'til this morning. So the furniture is all over the place right now. I just have to wait for him to wake up to move it.

I hope everyone enjoys their weekends!!

It's About Time!

I have found something to help keep me busy and productive thanks to my new friend! Recently I met a fellow Army wife who moved into a house right down the road. This is not her first time living here; so she knows a thing or two about Germany. She also has programs to learn German. Yippee!! She has graciously let me borrow this program called Linkword.

 I love it! It is such a cool way to learn German, and it is actually what I did in my own way to learn French. What Linkword does is help you with word association. It tells you the German word and what it means, but then it gives you a scenario to envision and link to that word. For instance....

Lobster = "hummer".....imagine a lobster with a sense of humor
Mother="mutter"........ imagine a mother who mutters to herself   (hey, I have one of those!)
Sister = "schwester"....... imagine a sweater on your sister

It does this for every word. It gives you something to visualize. For me, what helps is the quirky associations. I have always been able to remember facts with the most random associations. It also goes on to help you remember the gender of the word. The whole program is just very cool and I am in love with it.  Finally, I am beginning to learn some German!

Hello Again

Ok, ok, ok. I'm am very sorry about not blogging lately. Last week I was sick, and I'm sorry, but I didn't feel like blogging about my virus :) Unfortunately I gave it to Tyler so we were both knocked out for a little while. Thankfully we're feeling much better now. Last weekend we were even able to take a little drive. The idea was to go to a town called Saarbrucken. There's nothing of much historical value there, that I know of; Tyler and I just randomly picked a place to go. Little did I know, my husband had something up his sleeve. That is one thing I have learned about my husband. He is good at surprises. He's very good at making up stories along the way so I don't figure out he's trying to surprise me and he is excellent at acting surprised or keeping his cool when the big surprise is at hand. Point in case, my husband surprised me by taking me to France. Now, I was VERY excited; but really nothing happened. The border of France is like right next to Saarbrucken and with these open borders it's very easy to accidentally go into a whole nother country without meaning to. This is exactly how Tyler 'accidenatlly' went to France. The thing is he played it so well, I thought he really had done it by accident and I started to get a little antsy the whole ten minutes we were in France because he didn't have a pass to be in another country and that could have meant trouble if he got cuaght or something happened. We were in France about ten minutes altogether; which may not sound like much at all, but for me it was FANTASTIC. I saw French words and felt more at home than I do around all these German words. I am hoping Tyler can get a pass soon and we can go spend a day in France since it's only about an hour away from here. Now unfortunatley I didn't get any pictures. As I said, we were trying to find a place to turn around and we didn't get very far into it and we didn't see anything of picture importance. Next time I go though, I think I will fill up the whole camera because I won't be caught off guard. As far as actually making it to Saarbucken, well, we found it; but we couldn't find the 'heart' of the city so we ended up going back to Kaiserslautern and going out for lunch. But that didn't matter. I was out of the house, with my husband, and I got to be in FRANCE. That day was already perfect and nothing could bring it down.

 Speaking of sight seeing, Tyler and I are hoping to be able to go on a marriage retreat this month to Edelweiss. The trip is paid for by the Army and we would get to spend the weekend in a hotel in Edelweiss going to seminars and seeing the city. I would love to because Edelweiss is on my list of places o see. Tyler submitted the paperwork; so now we're just waiting to hear back from the chaplain whether we get to go or not. I pray we do. It would be awesome!

 And finally, I now have a way to get to our Army Ball picture. For those of you who aren't friends with my mom on facebook, I'll post it here so you can see it.

I just love the way he looks in his uniform! That was a very fun night. We had a good time at our first army ball. If Tyler's sergeant ever gives us the other pictures from that night, I'll post those too. And I will update the blog again soon. I value my life and do not wish to make any certain individuals...third mothers...Mrs. Angie... upset :) (just teasing!) I will do my best.