Penguin Sighting :)

Awww, doesn't he look nice!?! Phillip had to go to ALS graduation this evening for one of his troops, so he had to get all dressed up in his mess dress. I find it funny that they call it a mess dress, even though it is his nicest uniform! He only wears it once a year so I had to get a picture! And actually, this is the first time I've seen him in it because the last few times he just took it out to base with him so he wouldn't have to make the long commute twice.

Frankfurt Auto Show

This past weekend we went to the Frankfurt International Auto Show. It was amazing!! Beautiful, beautiful cars, all for our viewing in one place. They even allowed you to sit in the majority of them, all except the high end models or concept cars. Here are some pictures of some of my favorites (I had lots, so this is a very edited list)! I took close to 200 pictures!

Lamborghini Revention Roadster

Cost: $1.6 Million

Lamborghini is making less than 20

Lotus Evora Type 124 Endurance Racer


Audi R8 5.2 Quattro
Completely polished chrome!

Audi e-Tron Concept
4 motors, 1 battery, 3,319ft-lb torque


Ferrari 458 Italia


BMW Vision EfficientDynamics Concept
Has an in-line 3 turbodiesel engine and 1 electric motor per axle
62 mpg, 0-60mph in 4.8sec, 155mph top speed

P90X

So Phillip and I decided that it's time to get our flabby butts into shape. We thus ordered P90X and began the program today. We're sticking to the workouts, but doing our own variation of the diet. I'm having us focus more on lean meats, lots of protein, fruits, and veggies, and little carbs and processed foods. And really focusing on easy, basic ingredient meals. None of this 15 ingredients to make a soup! Much easier to do and more realistic!

Day 1....umm currently can't really lift my arms above my head. Found out I suck at diamond push-ups! Other than that, it went really well. The premise is that you set a goal for each exercise and focus on your reps and weights, not trying to do an insane number that the highly fit person in the video is doing!

And for those who might think this is a gimmick, Phillip's aunt and uncle lost ~20 and 40lbs each respectively. And they were already in great shape! We're just going to stick to the plan though and not get too caught up in what weight we want to lose. Figure it will all happen on its own!

Oh, and a plug for Livestrong.com. Website lets you set up a profile and will track all your dietary intake and exercise! The "daily plate" function is a massive database of almost any food you eat, and is one of the best that I have seen!!

Merry Christmas!!

We recorded our Holiday video message to be sent back to the states today!

Should be viewed all over Kansas as we had to record separate messages for each area of the state! We tried to say everyone's name, but it was hard to remember everything to say.

Look for us come Christmas time! Clara also got to be included, and looked so nice with her black and white fur!

Ugh!

Note...German front doors lock behind you. Make sure you have your keys!

Arms are now black and blue from trying to break in through the half open back door. Only positive note is that I now believe it will be harder than I origianlly thought for someone to break into our house.

Thankfully the neighbor had the number to my landlord and I was back inside within an hour.

For those wondering, "why didn't you just get Phillip's keys?" Of course this would be the day that he left to go do training at Ramstein. Awesome.

Lazy Sunday

Enjoying our Sunday by having brunch out on our patio! Even got some of our wall decorations hung up today. Pictures to come soon!

House Exterior Pictures

So I am finally getting around to posting these! Here is our little German house!! We are really loving it. It is brand new, and very eco-friendly. I'm only going to post some exterior pictures today. This weekend is our first weekend in over a month where we will not be traveling anywhere so we are going to spend the time finally decorating and hanging pictures! I'll post the interior pictures after we're done.


Back of our house. Really nice patio and the sun sets on this side of the house, so it is a nice place to spend the evenings. Clara also loves to sun herself back here!

Front side of our house. I am posting this picture because you can see our heater, the big grey box. This is brand new technology where instead of using gas or oil to heat your house (extremely expensive!!), it pumps the warm air into the house. Think how a freezer works, but instead of pumping in cold air it pumps in warm air. It runs on minimal electricity. Normally oil and gas runs about 2,000 Euro per year. This system should only cost about 500 Euro. We are the first to live here so I guess we will find out!

Our view off the back porch. Corn and wheat fields in the distance. A little piece of Kansas in Germany!

Another view shot.

Our town's church clock tower in the distance. Chimes every hour, and really gets going at noon and 6:30pm. Thought it would be annoying, but I am liking it.

London, Day 2

Day 2 we headed over to Buckingham Palace. We actually got to go inside Buckingham Palace and tour the 19 State Rooms!! They are only open for about a month each year while the Queen is away on vacation. It was AMAZING!!! Not only do you get to see the rooms, but also the art collections, some of the Queen's dress collections, as well as lots of her jewelry and gifts from other countries. The entire tour lasted around 2 hours. Unfortunately no photos were allowed.



Phillip on the back steps of Buckingham Palace!


Next we headed over to the Brown's Hotel for a proper English Tea. The Brown's Hotel was voted 2009's best place in London for Tea. It was fantastic!! In addition to your choice of tea there were finger sandwiches, sconces with strawberries and clotted cream, and an assortment of desserts. And you could have as much as you liked! We ended up having 2 plates of sandwiches they were so good!! Not nearly as bad as the table of ladies behind us who had 3 plates! Haha!! You can even see in the picture the live piano musician behind Phillip. The whole experience was wonderful!


To end our trip to London we took a ride on the London Eye! So much fun!! We chose to go on a Pimm's ride, which cost more but included a Pimm's, which is a light alcoholic drink. We are so happy that we picked this type of ride because not only could you skip the 1 hour wait, but you get to ride separate from the other patrons. Since they don't allow alcohol on their regular rides they have to send the alcohol rides separate. Normally there are up to 20 people per capsule; we only had 6!!


The whole trip was fantastic, and this was the perfect way to end our weekend.

Below is a link to lots more photos that I posted to facebook. I am working on getting my flicker account set up so that I won't be overloading facebook with photos. Copy and paste!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2295469&id=17019382&l=fcdedb0b81

London, Day 1

This past weekend was yet again another 3-day weekend for Phillip (that is 3 in a row now!), so we headed over to London!! It was AMAZING!! There is so much to see and do there; so much so that I am splitting my posting into 2 days so that you can see more pictures of all we did.

We started Day 1 at the Tower of London. Of course you have to pay to go inside of anything, but it was well worth it here! Not only do you get to see the castle, but they also had lots of memorabilia displays, as well as the Crown Jewels!!

Here is Phillip outside the main entrance.

Rockin the audio tour! An extra charge, but at least then we knew what we were looking at. There were a total of 5 different tours, but we only made it through 3. Just that took us 2 hours!! My favorite part though was seeing the Crown Jewels! They are incredible, and you are allowed to view them right up close!

Tower Bridge. We would later go out on it.

Having Fish n' Chips and a Pint at the Dicken's Inn! Heard about this place from a guard at the Tower of London and it did not disappoint.

Parliament and Big Ben. We also went over and visited Westminster Abbey. Only got exterior pictures as it was getting late and things were starting to close down.


We also went over and visited the original Hard Rock Cafe'. We went inside the vault and saw all of the memorabilia, but we didn't stay to eat because the line was too long. Either way, the collection of items was worth seeing!

Mosel Cruise/Dinner and Wine Probe

Continuing our adventures over the 3-day weekend, we decided to go on a Mosel Cruise and Dinner/Wine Probe. The tour was organized by our base's ITT office, so everything was already planned out for us!

After about a 20 minute bus ride our tour started in Bernkastel-Kues, a very pretty little German town. We got a couple hours to wander the town and its Marktplatz before our cruise started.

Sitting above the town is the Castle of Landshut, which was built in 1277, but has since been destroyed by a fire. Apparently though they allow people to spend the night in the castle!


The vineyards as viewed from the cruise! It was really pretty!! It is amazing how steep the hills are that they plant their vineyards on. I can't imagine what it is like to harvest the grapes!!

Our group at Sebastiani's Winery. What we did was called a Wine Probe, which is different from a tasting because he just gives you the bottle and lets you decide how much you want. There was not much swishing and spitting going on at our table! Sebastiani guided us through each wine and why it was unique. We were also served a wonderful dinner of pork and the most amazing potatoes ever!

The final tally of wines that we tasted!! We enjoyed the majority of them and made sure to buy some to enjoy at home!