Our Weekly Weekend Update

Wow, where did the time go? I feel like I have been away from blogger for so long! I have slowly been reading and catching up with all of your blogs! Sorry for the lack of posts and commenting on your blogs, I must have needed a little break from blogger.

I'll catch you up on what we have been up to. And what better way to post about our weekend, than with lots of PICTURES ;) This weekend went by in a flash! and I think I say that every week, but that is because they really do go by in a FLASH!

Friday Jon and I met our friends Sarah and Deaner at the Wilhelm Strasse Festival in our town. It's a really great festival that is on Wilhelm Strasse (hence the name), they shut down the entire street and have several tents and vendors set up selling lots of food, drinks and alcoholic beverages. They also have vendors selling jewelry, art, paintings, clothing, etc. Definitely my kind of festival! Here are some pics from the fest.

We hadn't seen S&D in what felt like forever so it was so good to catch up with them!

They're always a blast to hang out with!

After several drinks, good food and good chat we decided to call it a night! S&D had to get up early to leave for Cologne and we had a full day of festivities the next day.

Saturday morning Jon and I lazed around and I made breakfast. We ate our weight in pancakes and bacon and watched a new movie, New in Town. It was really cute, but I am biased, I just love Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr.

After watching the movie we got ready and headed to Hofefest, a festival put on by the firefighters in a nearby town. Our friend Georgina's husband is a firefighter and was working at the fest. The afternoon was really a lot of fun. They had fire fighting demonstrations and showed us why you never put out a grease fire with water. BIG EXPLOSION! It was so neat to see. They also had a fun little fashion show where each fire fighter showed off a different uniform that they use. And not to mention, they had a huge barbecue, so Jon and I had a cheeseburger.... YUM! We also got a tour of the fire station which was very interesting to see, as I don't recall ever being in a fire station before. Very cool stuff!

Later we all headed down to Wilhelm Strasse Festival. We walked around to several vendors, the guys drinking beer and Tara and I drinking Prosecco. (Which is a type of sparkling wine.) If you've been reading along for a long time, you know my love for wine. How cool that this wine was served in a mug!

Tara and I felt so classy ;) We met up with several of our friends and spent the remainder of the evening listening to a live band in the park.

Funny story, the lines for the bathrooms (which are small trailers with maybe 10 toilets) were RIDICULOUS! Once we decided to head home, I told Jon there was no way I could make it, I had to tinkle so bad and our house was a little over a mile walk away. We stopped by each trailerpotty on the way and everyone was PACKED. I couldn't hold it any longer so, that's right ladies and gents, I jolted to a nearby alley hidden by shrubs and plants and pee'd in the alley. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go. And I didn't have to pay .50€ to pee.

Sunday we headed out in the afternoon and met up with our friends Tara, Ben and Sampson (their Golden Retriever) for a hike. The weather was fantastic, we couldn't have picked a better day to get out and enjoy the wilderness. I love living in this city because there are so many hiking trails. It's like a hikers paradise! Here are pics from our day.

I love these little thumb nails!

Click on the picture to enlarge.

While we were hiking we came across a ropes course. Jon got super excited and grabbed a pamphlet for this course. Looks like we'll be doing this in the near future!

Tara and Ben took us to see the Russian Church. It's absolutely beautiful.
I love that it is tucked into the woods.


Continuing on our hike we got to see a great view of the city.


We stopped at a cafe for lunch and some refreshing Trocken Riesling.
After lunch Ben and Tara took us through the woods to a beautiful meadow.

We ended up doing a little over 6 1/2 miles. Not too bad. The last time we got together for a hike we did a 10 miler. Of course the best part was stopping for a glass of wine and lunch ;)
It really was a great weekend and we were blessed with good weather for the festival and our hike! Sunday night after we arrived home it POURED down rain and all day yesterday it rained buckets. Thankfully this weekend mother nature was on our side.

I do have another movie recommendation. We watched Defiance, with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber.
It was a fantastic movie about two Jewish brothers that escape "Nazi occupied Eastern Europe" and hide with thousands of other Jewish escapees in the Belarussian forests. Definitely add this to your next movie to see list! It really is an incredible true story.

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend and I sure hope your week is as equally fabulous.

Photography, New Bags and a Trophy

Hello ladies and gents!

Thanks for all of the wonderful comments about our anniversary! Every comment just made my day. It's so nice to have a wonderful group of friends via blogworld! You guys truly are awesome!
and another thanks for all of the lovely comments about my pictures! I really love photography and taking pictures. I really do want to pursue a side career in photography, but goodness do I have A LOT to learn, and when I say a lot I mean A LOT! But I'm just practicing and having fun with it all at the moment. One of our friends just had a baby and I am working with them on planning a photo shoot for Addison (their new baby girl.) I have never done anything like that before, so it will definitely be an experience, I know it will be fun no matter. Addison is so adorable, she will make my pictures look great, just by her preciousness! (Is that a word?)

Anyway...... you guys have to check this out!

I just got my very first Gussy bag the other day and completely adore it.

It's a brand new, custom made makeup bag by Gussy herself!

Isn't it precious????

Now here's the scoop, Gussy custom makes everything; from makeup bags, purses, clutches, wallets, coin purses, computer bags, baby totes, you name it, she can do it!
I loved my makeup bag so much I am looking at having her make me a wallet and a new laptop bag. She's got so many cute and fun fabrics that you can choose from or you can look at the FANTASTIC items she has already made on her:

blog here!


or her Etsy shop HERE.

She has some adorable things guys,
you really have to check her out!!

So, the weather is coo coo here! I went for a walk in the park with my friend Tara today, the weather started out nice and pretty, but as we were heading back home, it starts raining on us, and once I finally get back home the sun is shining and the sky is blue??? I feel like I'm back in Oklahoma ;) I swear the weather changes as fast as I lose my attention ;) (Or so my husband says!)

But I can prove that I am a good listener!!! This trophy right here proves it! See, Take a look at this:

Yup, you read that right Best Listener at Vacation Bible School, 1987!

Okay but in all honesty, trophy aside, I really do have a child's attention span! I can't help it, but I'm working on it! I once had trophy winning listening skills and will strive for that again. ;)

Tomorrow is Friday and boy I can't wait. There is a festival going on this weekend in Wiesbaden and they are already setting up for it! Lots of food and beer/wine, now that's my kind of festival!
Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday!

Guest Post - Colmar, France

Hello everyone -

Since my name is actually in the title of the Blog, Steph and I thought it was high time for me to actually write a post, instead of my usual job as editor-in-chief. So, here it is, and only after Steph has authored 175 posts. So at this pace, I'll write another in 2011.

For our anniversary trip, we decided to just take a short overnight trip to Colmar, France. Colmar is in the Alsace region of France, near the Rhine River, which forms part of the German border. (And you have my permission to stop reading and go straight to the pictures if I start to sound like Rick Steves and/or a high school history teacher, who doubled as the gym teacher.)

Anyways, Colmar has been called "the most beautiful city in the world." Before you ask by whom, I'll tell you; it was Georges Duhamel. Before you ask who that is, I'll tell you; he was a very famous French author, so he may have been a slight bit biased. Colmar actually dates back to A.D. 823, so it's made it through countless European wars. During World War II, Colmar was spared from bombings because the Americans and British military thought it too beautiful. There is of course a super-long history of the city, and numerous famous people have lived there. The one we thought was really cool was that Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, was born there. I hope you enjoyed this short history lesson. I thought it was all very interesting, since my family is French, and my great-grandparents are from the Alsace region.

Thanks for reading, if you were able to make it through this far. I'm a man of few words, and I'm married to a woman with the shortest attention span in recorded history, so I've learned over the past year to be very concise. And of course, Steph had to add her personal touch to this post, with pictures. So now you can enjoy the best part of the post.

If you'd like to see all of our pictures from Colmar,
click here.

I hope you enjoyed our walk through Colmar.

Jon