The holidays

We celebrated Christmas Eve with our potato salad and weiners just as planned, they were quite yummy. I will make some for any family or friends that come to visit! The rest of the day we spent time together and calling our families. Due to the massive amount of snow that we had the week prior we weren't able to go anywhere. On Christmas day we had planned on going to see the new Harry Potter movie at the movie theater, but due to the snow the truck was unable to deliver the movie. The movie theaters on all of the Army and Air Force bases in Europe share movies, so your theater may have a movie for 2 days then it is sent to the next base in line, but it should cycle back around in a couple of weeks. Anyways we made it all the way to the movie theater before we found out that they didn't have it, that was fine we just came home watched our own movies and called more family.
I wish I could say that we traveled more during the holidays, but we were unable to partly due to the snow, and partly due to trying to get all paperwork, etc. completed so that we can move at the end of the month to a hopefully safer house. We also had to spend another full two days waiting for an electrician to come fix our latest electrical issue here, I am getting tired of having to give up days upon days for electricians to only have a bandaid fix, forget fixing the bigger problem.
We were able to go to Heidelberg this time to explore the castle the city, we were there for a Christmas market in Dec. I have pics but since I am having a little bit of computer trouble I will post them later. On New Year's Eve we traveled to Baden-Baden which literally means Bath-Bath. The city is a little over 2 hours away from us, really close to the French border, we actually weaved in and out of France on one of the roads we had to take. We went to one of the many spas and enjoyed a day of relaxing in the hot mineral springs pools, brine saunas, aroma sauna rooms, hot tubs, etc. It was truly a very relaxing day for both of us. A couple of days later we headed for Trier, again we were there in Dec. for a Christmas market, this time we checked out all of the Roman ruins, city history and then headed for some wine tasting from the local vineyards. Trier boasts to be the oldest city in Germany, you can still see the old Roman city walls, the gate to enter the city, the Roman baths, and the amphitheater. The city sits right on the Mosel river and near the Saar river, so it is a great area for growing grapes. Most wines produced in the area are white wines. We found one place that will let you sample 120 of the local wines, we only tried 6 but if anybody comes to visit we will try all 120 with you!
With deployment quickly approaching we have been focused on what we want/need to do before Nathan leaves. We have made our lists, starting working on checking things off. I also have a list of things to do while he is gone; a letter a week, a package a month, etc. Because we did not get to spend as much time traveling as we were hoping over the holidays we are going to try to do so between now and when he leaves, so this weekend the plan is to go to Belgium, next weekend Italy, then 3 weeks of Girl Scout cookie sales (if you wish to purchase any for troops in Iraq or Afghanistan let me know, we can ship to them for free through the military mail system), then hopefully a couple last weeks of travel before Nathan leaves.