Having a baby is always an experience.  And no two experiences are ever alike!  So here’s a list summing up my experiences of having Olivia in Germany.  Enjoy! 1. It is true that most Germans speak some English, if you ask nicely in German 🙂  “Sprechen Sie Englisch?” is...

It’s been right at a month since we moved into our new house.  In that time, we have arranged and rearranged furniture, hung pictures, bought and built Ikea furniture(we should just by stock or let them use our home for catalog photos), and are finally feeling settled in.  The...

We have officially moved into our house and been there about 2 weeks.  Unfortunately, we are still waiting on the internet to be hooked up so I can resume my blogging and we can use our internet-based US phone to make all the calls to family and insurance and...

Every weekend we have been here it has rained in Stuttgart.  All day… like the “Don’t want to walk across the parking lot to go to the food court,” kinda rain.  I’ll go out and walk around if its misting or even a really light drizzle for a few...

Madelyn loves stuffed animals as I am sure most children do.  I had quite a collection of animals as a child that I slept with every night.  Madelyn has 2 main favorites – Rufus and Calvin.  Rufus is her large  golden retriever dog from Ikea that she got first....

I’m a driver.  I pretty much am the one who volunteers to drive when in a group and drive anytime we go out as a family.  I think I’ve sat in the passenger seat of my own car maybe a dozen times in 5 years.  So not having a...

We’ve been here about 12 days now and starting to venture off base a little bit more  The idea of ‘living on base’ is a new one for me and has a novelty all of its own.  There are a LOT of things I like about it – safety,...

I’ll have to admit – The idea of living in a hotel with 2 other people kinda makes my skin crawl.  We usually spend about 10 days a year in a hotel when we travel to Virginia for Christmas and they aren’t ‘too bad,’ but not ‘enjoyable’ either.  ...

Jon, Madelyn, and I are starting on a great new adventure and figured this would be the perfect time to restart my blog.  I have taken a ‘hiatus’ from blogging and placed it on the back burner for almost a year.  But since we moved to Germany at the...

Madelyn has discovered the wonders of the neighborhood park.  I took her there some last year, but it was never as wonderous to her as it is now.  Last year, she couldn’t walk on her own, and everything was at our discretion – where to play, how long to...