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.

One Month

My blogging buddy Maggie at Gussy, left me a comment yesterday asking if we had any plans for our 1 year anniversary. (She got married on the same exact day that we did, how cool.) Of course I just started thinking, Oh my goodness, I CANNOT believe that in ONE month exactly, I will have been married for ONE year! 6/07/08 is our wedding anniversary. To me that is just mind boggling. This year has just completely flown by and our anniversary is almost here!! YIPPIE.......

I just love this picture, how it turned out really grainy and dark by accident, but now I adore it.

We are still working on the plans, but I think we are going to do some sort of hiking trip to the Black Forest in Germany. We had planned on a long trip to Croatia, then are plans changed to go to Italy, but at the end of the day we decided to just do something a little smaller due to the crazy schedule ahead of us. (And to save money.)

Jon knows if he takes me hiking, I'll be the happiest little lady in the world.

If you've been a reader for a long time now, you know that Jon proposed to me while we were hiking. Go figure!!

So the story goes.......

I had tagged a long with him to Grants, NM for an audit he had. After spending the week in Grants, we headed to Santa Fe to spend the weekend there. While we were visiting, we went hiking along the Tsankawi Ruins. It is Pueblo Indian ruins and really is an amazing site to see if you ever get the chance.

Once we reached the top there was an unbelievable panoramic view, it was just incredible. I was in complete awe of it all and was staring out at the scenery, all the while Jon was on his knee behind me. Not knowing he was behind me, I said, "Hey babe come here, you have to look at this view." at which point he said "well I really can't at the moment", so I turned around and BOOM there he was on his knees holding my ring out in front of him and he asked me to marry him.

I wish I could show you a picture, but I left my other hard drive back in Germany. Anyway, he did an amazing job keeping it all a secret. He asked both of my parents and my brother if he could have their blessings, before I even knew a thing. It was definitely the one of most incredible and memoriable moments (except for our actual wedding) of my life and I will never forget how amazing it really was!

What was REALLY crazy, is he had my ring in the CONSOLE of his CAR for a couple of MONTHS....... and I had no idea. I mean what if his car had been broken into or stolen, ooooops, there's goes Steph's ring. Just crazy. I always wondered why he checked every door of the car to make sure it was locked when we got out. I just thought he had an OCD or something.

Anyway.... yeah for anniversarys, how exciting!

I thought I'd end with some pictures from the Souq (market). Last night we had dinner at a great restaurant in the middle of the souq. Here are some pictures of the area.

Click on the Picture to Enlarge them
Mind the poor quality of the pics,
my little camera doesn't take great night shots.

I hope you all have a great Thurdsay! It's actually Jon's Friday, so the weekend came early for us here in Qatar. Woohoo for the Qatari work schedule!