Festivites and Festivals

Well hello lovely bloggers! How was your Thanksgiving? I hope you all had a blessed holiday and it was spent filled with family and friends. Even though we are away from our families, we were so blessed this year to spend Thanksgiving with friends. It was a wonderful time!

Our cousin Matt just returned from a tour in Iraq and was able to spend all day Saturday with us, so I made a huge Thanksgiving lunch for him. We were so thankful he was able to spend the day with us and thankful that he made it back from Iraq safe and sound.

There is a huge Christmas festival going on right now in our town so of course we took Matt to see the festivities and to drink some Gluwein.

The Christmas Festival

Drinking lots of Gluwein, as you can see by my purple teeth! ;)

Pretty ornaments they had for sale.We are so glad we got to see Matt and spend some time with him!

We also had a chance to put up our Christmas decorations this weekend. We went to a tree lot, picked out a great tree and decorated it together. This is the third year in a row that we've decorated together so it has become a tradition. And every year I get to put the star on top of the tree ;)

2007, 2008, and 2009

A BIG THANKS to S&D for having us over for Thanksgiving! It was wonderful!!

I hope you all have a fantastic Monday!

Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I hope you all have a blessed holiday.

Until Monday, enjoy your weekend, enjoy your family time and enjoy LOADS of good Thanksgiving food!!

Yummies!

Hello LOVELY bloggers! How are you all on this wonderful Tuesday??

Aren't the fall leaves the best!

This is a pic I took last year around this time.

I can't believe that Thanksgiving is TWO days away. I have been looking forward to this holiday because it is by far one of my favorites. I can't wait to load up on all of the yummy turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, tenderloin, and pumpkin whoopies that I can fit into my body!!

Today was Jon's office Thanksgiving party (so we got a head start on all of the festivities) and we were in charge of cooking the turkey. I am not sure if you are familiar with German ovens...... but they are TEEEENY compared to the "normal sized" American ovens. Needless to say, it was definitely a chore to cook a 20 pound turkey in our oven, but somehow ladies and gents, we made it happen and I think it turned out great. All that was left were the bones, so I think we must have done something right!

I have been meaning to share this new recipe with y'all for a while now, so without further ado, here's a Double Layer Pumpkin Pie thanks to Kraft.com! I made this on Saturday night and we are still eating on it, it's SOOOO tasty. And if you are looking for something easy to make for your Thanksgiving dinner look no further because here it is:

What you need:

1 pkg. (8 oz.) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
1 cup plus 1 Tbsp. milk, divided
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 tub (8 oz.) COOL WHIP Whipped Topping, thawed, divided
1 HONEY MAID Graham Pie Crust (6 oz.)
Note: I made my own graham cracker pie crust because the premade Graham pie crust was not big enough!!
1 can (15 oz.) pumpkin
2 pkg. (3.4 oz. each) JELL-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves


BEAT cream cheese, 1 Tbsp. milk and sugar in large bowl with whisk until blended. Stir in half the COOL WHIP. Spread into crust.

WHISK remaining milk, pumpkin, pudding mixes and spices 2 min. (Mixture will be thick.) Spread over cream cheese layer.

REFRIGERATE 4 hours or until set. Top with remaining COOL WHIP just before serving.

To see the recipe and also a video on how to make this check out Kraft.com.

I hope you guys have a wonderful Tuesday!

My Poor Hiney

Helllllo lovely bloggers! Glad you stopped by the Adventures of Jon and Steph!

How are you all on this WONDERFUL Friday??

I don't know about ya'll, but I'm sooooo STOKED it's the weekend. I've been looking forward to it since Monday ;)

So, get this, Jon and I started a SPIN CLASS yesterday and it KICKED our hineys!

Hence the title of my post for today...... Not only did it completely wear me out, but my butt literally hurts from the bike seat!! Hello Schwinn, can you PLEASE make your spin-bike seats more comfortable??? Because, I can barely walk today hah! But really at the end of the day, it was a fantastic workout, I mean the sweat was profusely dripping, (EW!)

I really liked it a lot, minus the sore hiney.... but I look forward to going next week. It's every Tuesday and Thursday, so I think we can manage that. Plus we've gotta work off that humongo burger we ate last week!

This burger here:

It's time to get in shape and I think we are on the right path!! Salads with grilled chicken for lunch everyday and soups for dinner.... let's hope those pesky pounds just shed right off.

In other good news.... only 26 more days until we're home. I am sure that you all can't tell that I'm a little excited about our visit to OKLAHOMA! Jon and I had to get back into working out, because we are going to gain 10 pounds from eating our weight in American food. IT'S GONNA BE GREAT!

Anyway, I am off to get some things done around the house! Have a fantastic weekend, enjoy it!

See y'all on Monday.

oh and P.S. I am completely jealous of those of you who got to see New Moon at the midnight showing last night!! Sadly, New Moon doesn't even come out in Germany until JANUARY!!!!

My Brother is Famous!

Check this out:

http://www.news9.com/Global/category.asp?C=116601&autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=4314306&flvUri=&partnerclipid=

and he's in the Daily Oklahoma today.

How cool is my little brother?!!

Added in: He's in the fight scene and he's the one carrying the drunkin girl to another room........ but he's JUST ACTING!!

I Can't Wait To.....

See this:

Shop here:

and here:


and here:


Drink this:
Eat this:

At:
and this:

and this:
and this:


and this:


and this:


Well you get the idea! There's going to be lots and lots and lots of eating involved in about 29 days!

I can't wait for Oklahoma!!!

Hope y'all have a pleasant Tuesday!

Another Weekend Update

Hello lovelies! How is everyone doing? We are great! Especially because 30 days from today we'll be on our way home for a visit!!

I can't believe that it will be 1 and 1/2 years since we've been back to Oklahoma. We are both looking forward to seeing our families and friends. It is so strange to think that I haven't seen my dad, or Jon's family, or my nieces and nephews for a year and a half! WOW......... that is way, way too long!! But only one more month and we'll be home for the holidays. Time couldn't fly any faster!

And man, where has the time gone? I haven't blogged in over a week!! I'm so far behind on reading blogs!! Not a whole lot has happened in that week. I started a running program with my friend at the gym, got HORRIBLE shin splints, bought new running shoes, and am impatiently waiting for these shin splints to go away so I can get back out there and run again! Jon and I are looking into running a half marathon in May. We both are really interested in it, but I've gotta get these shins under control. Hopefully the new shoes will make a huge improvement......

Anyway, Here's what we were up to this weekend:

Friday was our friend Kevin's going away party. He works with Jon, and his time in Europe has come to an end, so he will be heading back to the states this week. All of the office went out to dinner at an awesome restaurant called Waldgeist. At this restaurant they serve XXXXXL servings...... any by XXXXL, I mean ridiculously honkin' big! Here are some pictures from the dinner:

My 1 liter beer!

Jon and me with our honkin' beers!

Kevin, Jon and Me

A picture of the ginormous schnitzel they also serve!

Our hamburger....We had to cut the hamburger like a pie because it was too big...

Sadly, this is all we could eat!It was such a fun time and a really fun idea! But I will have to make sure to not eat breakfast or lunch before we eat at Waldgeist again!

Saturday I had to work in the morning and then that evening we went to a friends to celebrate her birthday. She made chicken chili and it was DELISH!

Sunday we were lazy ALL DAY! We watched Transformers 2, which was pretty good, and super action packed. It was a perfect weekend!

Today is laundry day! I've somehow let the laundry get out of control, we have it coming out of ears.... so it's definitely time to nip it in the bud. It's another rainy day here in Germany, perfect for getting all of the house work done.

I hope you all have a wonderful Monday!

and I hope to catch up with reading your blogs soon.

Our Trip in a Nutshell

Hello lovely bloggers! How is everyone doing?? I hope you all had a wonderful week! I am super far behind on my blog reading as I COMPLETELY forgot to bring my computer with me to Cologne this week while Jon was working. Silly me.... so please forgive my absence, I will get to catching up with y'all soon, hopefully!

I'll just give you a quick run down of what we were up to this week:

Tuesday Jon left UBER early in the morning for Cologne, while I stayed behind to meet a friend for lunch. Later that evening I hopped in the car and pulled out my trusty Garmin and headed for Cologne..... only to of course have some serious issues with the Garmin. The thing WOULD NOT work for me. It took only about 45 minutes for me to finally figure out the last time we used it, we put it on pedestrian mode, YA..... so of course it wouldn't work properly, but I got it adjusted back to driving mode and was finally on the right track to Cologne. I made it there in one piece and we grabbed dinner at Farmer's Steakhouse, who grills the most fantastic steaks I've had in a long time.

Wednesday I started my Christmas shopping, which of course is always exciting! Then later that evening we ran to the Chocolate Museum just before it closed and did a quick walk through. Here are some pictures from the museum:

The outside of the Chocolate Museum

A chocolate fountain and some of the assembly lines.

And oh what fun it was when we came across a tiny car.
You know Jon loves tiny cars and doors.....

Thursday I did a little more Christmas shopping and spent the rest of the day engrossed in a the 7th Sookie book which I finished last night. I just LOVE those books. But I'm so completely weird about them; I love them so much that I put them off because I don't want to the series to be over. I am just hoping that Charlaine Harris will have another Sookie Book for us on the way.

That night we had STEAK again! I can feel my arteries clogging as we speak, but it was totally worth it.

Today I walked around Cologne for what seemed like hours.... it was a BEAUTIFUL sunny day, the first one we had this week, so I couldn't miss the opportunity to spend it outside. I got some pictures of my jaunt:

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!