Now for our family update....

Well Vodafone(our internet provider) is failing me and has completely crashed. We haven't had internet in four days and its driving me nuts! its crazy to think that I survived so long without it when we first got here! But I have gone back to my "pre-internet germany" days and am using the army internet and computers. The bad news: All of my pictures from the trip a couple weeks ago are on my computer at home and I have no way of uploading them until I can get our internet up...The good news: I can update about how we personally are doing!! haha and of course most of this post will be revolved around baby Illianna! Because honestly-she is the most exciting thing occuring in our lives right now. haha.

Well lets start with Julian. As most of you have found out by now, unfotunately we did get the news that he will be deploying 10 days after our Illianna arrives. Its making delivery and her arrival pretty bitter-sweet. Although it will be extrememly difficult that he has to leave so soon, I am SO thankful that his command is at least allowing him to stay behind until the birth of our daughter; because to be honest: that doesn't happen in the army very often. So on that topic, he has spent a lot of time lately trying to get everything in line for deployment so that the ten days he gets after she is born, he will get to spend that with us and not having to work on "army stuff." He is doing great otherwise though! He is getting back into shape and enjoying life! He is getting very very excited for his daughter's arrival.I think that is one thing Julian and I have come to an agreement on. Although we know that her arrival will mean a departure is on the horizon, we have agreed that we can't focus on that. We have to be happy with the happy things and just not focus on the other. We are feeling so blessed knowing this little feisty bundle will be joining us soon and can't wait to meet her!! Julian has also been thinking long and hard about what he wants to do career wise. Whether that be stay in the army as a career and get his doctorate through the army, or get out and just do "normal life" again and go about school that way, i don't have any idea what he is going to choose but we have been talking a lot about it and seeing where the Lord directs us. The Lord has been so faithful with laying a path in front of us and taking care of us that I know that this will be no different. We are just looking into all of our options and know that the right one will present itself in due time.

I know a lot of you are probably wondering, what I am giong to do after he leaves...well be patient that is coming...hehe

As for how I have been doing...well the best way to describe it is.... I am 36 weeks pregnant. I have officially hit the point of "being tired of being pregnant." I have LOVED being pregnant my entire pregnancy. It has been amazing seeing my belly grow and to know that there really is a baby in there. I have loved feeling her move inside of me and trying to figure out what she likes and doesn't like. Trust me when I say, this child is already quite opinionated, knows what she likes and doesn't like and isn't afraid to tell me!! haha! She makes me laugh though. Anyway, so in the grand scheme of things, i have loved these last nine months. Now that i am in my 9th and final month of pregnancy, knowing that she can come anytime(starting in about a week anyway) I am tired. I hate that I feel 80. I hate not being able to bend over to pick anything up, I have officially listed the help of my husband to tie my shoes and I might as well forget about a good nights sleep now. Everyone says "Enjoy your sleep now!! You won't ever get it back!" Well what those well meaning people forget to mention is that you can kiss your sleep away when you can no longer breathe at night, which for me started around 32 weeks and has only gotten progressively worse. And thanks to this amazing child, as soon as i finally get comfortable and begin to think about sleep, she starts, not so kindly, letting me know that my bladder is in her way and needs to be emptied.  Although I know that once she is here, I will probably miss feeling her move inside of me and will miss being pregnant, as of right now I am ready to get this show on the road!

As for baby Illianna, she is one happy camper! Most of the time. She gets irritated when she is getting squished, which is almost daily now that she is almost out of room. I also laugh because she will get herself all worked up inside me trying to move around, flailing and kicking around ( I swear she is still trying to stretch me out!!). All that movement results in her getting hiccups about 90% of the time. Then she gets mad at those!! I start getting kicked as if I gave them to her!!! haha She is hilarious! The one thing I learned about this child pretty early on is she LOVES her space to be able to move around and do as she sees fit and without that room anymore, she tends to get frustrated. I do have to say though that less room for her does mean less violent kicks for me! I don't get kicked nearly as hard!! hehe. Other than the space issues she is having though, she is amazing! I absolutely cannot wait to meet my little pumpkin. At the last doctors appointment she was weighing 5 pounds 11 ounces!! I think its safe to say that we will have no problem with this baby not being underweight!!! She is also super-duper long!! The doctor is shocked every time she measures her femur bones because of how long they are! The last appointment she also just happened to have her little foot in the right position that the doctor was able to measure the bottom of her foot and its measuring 3 inches long already! I was a very long baby when I was born so I know she is getting that from me!

Julian and I have been doing little things to get her room ready for her arrival. Obviously we can't do much because we have yet for our stuff to arrive from the states; but I have finished the cherry blossom tree, we have hung pictures that my mom got us, she has a pink rug for her room, and has curtains! So we are most defintely getting there! I can't wait for our stuff to actually get here( it is supposed to be in the next two weeks at the latest!) so I can finish her nursery. We originally didn't have a theme for her room but as we have gathered items a theme has kind of just formed...So the theme is like whimsical birds and trees and flowers....if you can count that really a theme! haha but its what we got and its looking amazing. Again, as soon as I can access my pictures I will post them! :)

Well OK, you have waited long enough for the other piece of news! Julian and I decided that it would be best for me to come home as soon as possible after Illianna is born. Now "as soon as possible" is dependent on how fast the government wants to work on paperwork and get her passport and we all know how fast they like to move ;)Hopefully, we have heard it takes around 8-10 weeks. Coming home will allow me to be around family and get some help adjusting to motherhood but it also presents the amazing opportunity to allow our family and friends to get to meet her and spend time with her! So the plane ticket is bought and Illianna and I will be home from December 16-February 28!!! And then if all goes well, Julian's unit should be heading home shortly after that! So that is what is in the works for us. Illianna and I should be home just in time for the holidays! :)

Well this is crazy long post(as most of mine tend to be....haha) so I am going to end it here. But we are all doing well and just preparing for the changes to come the next month or so. Please just keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we begin this new journey into parenthood! Hope you enjoyed and as I said, I PROMISE I will finish posting the story's and pictures of our trip as soon as I can get on my own computer again :) Have a great day everyone!!

Our trip to Garmish (Part 1 of 3)

Well well well... I have been promising to write these posts for about a week now...but we got really busy last week. So please forgive me. haha! Julian and I had been wanting to do a little trip somewhere but had NO idea where. We were put on restrictions since I was 33 weeks pregnant at the time, that I was not allowed to leave the country just in case something happened. Well... that still means we have a whole country to explore! BAHAHA!

So last weekend Julian and I decided last minute(literally-we booked our hotel the night before we left....) that we were going to go to a town called Garmish-Partenkirchen. I really didn't know what to expect or really even where in Germany we were going...(for those that know me...my geography stinks...royally. haha) Its a good thing I trust my husband, right?! lol Come to find out when we arrived there that we were actually located on the southern border of Germany and Austria!

For a little reference, you can see down at the bottom the border of Germany and Austria and the Red A is where we were! (the blue dot is a dang advertisement from google...lol)  So anywho we decided we were going to make a trip down to Garmish and spend the weekend doing little tours around the area. Now let me paint a picture of what we saw when we got to the hotel. Julian and I got an amazing deal with the hotel we stayed at and although it was rated pretty well, we didn't know that what we were really getting was a five star hotel with amazing ammenities. What we didn't expect AT ALL was that our hotel backs up to what is called the Zugspitze-the highest point in Germany! They say if you stand on the top of this mountain( and its not foggy out-this is key. its always foggy there....) you can see into four different countries at the same time. Despite Julian asking once or twice, I told him that his pregnant wife was not going to risk going into labor to hike this mountain, but that I would take pictures from the bottom ;) It was beautiful and to think we could look out our window everyday and see this magnificent mountain. It was definitely one of those moments that makes you really realize your size and the magnificence of what the Lord has created around you. It was breathtaking. Now my pictures on my silly iPhone do not do this mountain justice. So you will have to either google Zugspitze to get a better idea of this mountain or just take a trip to Germany to see it yourself :) 

The whole area was just this forestry, green, mountainy area and it felt like a dream. It was utterly gorgeous! 

Well there is so much to tell about this trip as we had our fun little mishaps getting around Germany, we took two tours-First was to the Neuschwanstein castle (pronounced new-sh-fawn-stein) , which for those of you who don't know is the castle that Walt Disney designed Cinderella's castle around for Disney Land! The second day we went to what was the first concentration camp in Germany and it is called Dachau (pronounced doc-cow). That day was not nearly as cheery as you can imagine but was a great history lesson and I definitely learned a lot. So yes-this blog post will have actually three different parts to it. 

Part 1: this one! The overall trip! 

Part 2: Your own personal history lesson on Neuschwanstein castle and the king that built it(trust me, its actually kind of interesting :)

Part 3: Also a history lesson about Dachau, Germany at the time and all that stuff. Also interesting, and I will try and make it as non depressing as possible-but again-It wasn't a happy time in history. lol 

So for the rest of part one I will start with that morning we left. So I had a doctors appointment that morning and straight from there headed to the bus station. We caught a bus out of Bamberg around 1040. Now when you travel on train around here-they ask you:"Do you want the fast train or the slow train?" 

Julian says the proper response to this question is, "how much is the fast train?" 

They tell you 150 euro, 1 way. Julian's response to this: "We will be taking the slow train!!" 

The "slow train" cost us only 68 euro round trip for the both of us. So much much cheaper than 300 euro. haha. And although its the slow train, it really doesn't seem like that long of a trip. You tend to do a lot of changes and train hoppin (no not like the movies show where you are running and jumping on a passing train...haha) bouncing back and forth but its really not that bad. Not nearly as confusing as you would think it is. So we get on our first train that takes us to Nurnberg-this is about an hour away. Then we got on a train from Nurnburg to Munich. Lastly is from Munich to Garmish. Now inbetween Munich and Garmish, there was a bit of construction on the railroads so we also had the added adventure of getting dropped off in a town I do not remember and having to hop a bus to Garmish. haha but its an adventure right??!! Well going back, We get to Nurnburg, go to our next train, hop on and voila. Well halfway to Munich Julian asks the very daunting question- 

"Babe-Where is my wallet??" My heart stops. 

"What do you mean where is your wallet??!!" 

"Well I am hoping you have it because its not in my pocket or the backpack." 

Well come to find out, my husband fell into a deep slumber on the train from Bamberg to Nurnberg and it fell out of his pocket as some time or another. You all know me-I found someone on the train who spoke english and I was off chattin with her! I was sitting about 3 seats away from Julian and wasn't paying attention to his wallet! So to say the least we get to Munich and have our panic moments trying to call lost and found and talk to people who can't understand our English. Which is frustrating, because we are trying so hard to speak German but we are no where near good enough to communicate what the problem is. So we board our train from Nurnberg to Garmish and we are still trying to talk to Lost- And-Found. It was a MESS let me tell you! luckily-my husband is super smart and knows that when you pull out large amounts of cash/euro you divide it into different areas. So I had some on me, he had some and we had some in our suitcase. So LUCKILY! we had divided it up and Julian only had about 60 euro left in his wallet. So anyway:to make a long story short, we get to the hotel that night and Julian is reporting all of his cards and cancelling everything. I jokingly teased that "Well everyone says how honest the German people are, I guess we will see if its true!" 

So we wake up the next morning and begin our first adventure heading to the castle. On our way there, we get a call from Julian's sargeant. His wallet had been turned in! Not only to the lost and found at the train station but someone actually took the time to find it, bring it back to the military post in Bamberg and take it to the MPs(Military Police)! I could hardly believe it!!! It was amazing! Now-the money was taken out of the wallet but Julian teases that it was the finders fee! He didn't care that the money was gone, he was just glad to have his wallet back and get this: The darn boy was more excited to get the wallet back because of all his business cards he had aquired!! He didn't care that his US drivers license, his military ID and all his bank cards were lost: He was distraught that he had lost all of his business cards! Silly boy!

So that was our adventure on our way to Garmisch. I don't have much else to say in general. So give me a couple days to get all the pictures uploaded and the story written down and I will post part two for you all!! Thanks for reading!

just getting used to living here...

Oh my: I know I am due to write another blogpost but in all honestly nothing big and exciting has happened. haha A lot of little things have happened though so I guess we can start there...

All the magical things I have learned about Germany!

1) I have made myself promise to start REALLY trying to learn the language and although it is a slow process (...and I mean SLOW) I am definitely trying. One of my new rules for myself is I have to learn one new word a week and ACTIVELY use it and everything else that I have learned thus far. My word for the week:  
                                                                      Schönen Tag
When I asked a very nice german lady how do I say " Have a nice day in German" she stated it would just be "nice day"-in terms of "good day" and that is what she told me. If I am wrong, german friends, please correct me but thats what I have been using.

This week I was a bit ambitious and learned a couple extra ones. I also learned...
                                                                      Entschuldigung
This means, "excuse me" "pardon me" 
                                                               eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf
Yeah Yeah I know I am a bit behind in learning how to count in german HAHA but this is simply "1,2,3,4,5" and I have only learned up to five...lol But I am getting there.  :)


So adding this list to the list of five or six words I knew before, my vocabulary is....slowly developing! lol my survival German is a bit more developed and I have a little more confidence in functioning when asking for something. I still cannot say any full sentences but, although I get Germans that kind of giggle when I ask for something in a very chopped sentence, at least they see that I am trying and they really appreciate that. I have even been able to help a couple Germans with english words! hehe that is fun too! Little words get lost in transition or they forget a word here and there and when they ask me how to say it, it is nice. :) I at least feel I have something to contribute!


2) I have been much more comfortable with traveling downtown by myself and using the bus to get there. This sounds really inconvenient, but as I said in a previous post, almost everyone walks, rides bikes or rides the bus to get around town. My OBGYN is located downtown so I have to get myself down there every other week for my appointments and I feel quite accomplished to be able to navigate myself there!!.....Ok Ok....you caught me. I have a very specific route I have to take, I get dropped off in the same spot, I walk through the very same store and walk directly on the same path through the market to get to my doctor. If you dropped me off in a different place than normal or messed up my route in any way  there is a good chance I wouldn't know where I was going but hey, again, its a working progress! :) Doing this also requires me to walk EVERYWHERE! So anytime I do go downtown, I am walking about 5-6 miles a day and when I stay around post it is about 3-4. All this walking better help me with labor! haha


3) Julian and I used the train for the first time!! My that was fun! hehe there was nothing too exciting involved but hey I had never been on a REAL train before! (according to my husband, the little kid train that goes around Freestone park doesn't count...haha!) We traveled to Ansbach and Katterbach where a couple really good friends that we knew from the states live! It has been so nice having the Brennan's here as we adjust to life in Germany. They have helped us get settled so much and honestly its been the biggest blessing. Even cooler, Diane is due one week after I am! So we are able to go through the last part of our pregnancy together and that has been really neat. 


4) Although it wasn't the hospital that I will be delivering at, I was able to visit a German hospital-labor and delivery suite and see how things operate generally. I understand there will be slight differences as there are with all hospitals but from what I learned about the general concept of how labor and birth are perceived and how things are done, I am SO excited to have the chance to have Illianna here! Just about everything I believe with labor, delievery and post partum is supported by the German beliefs so knowing I do not have to fight to have things the way I want them is such a blessing. They complete support me and agree in my decision to have an all natural birth and I am very excited about that! It shall be a very very nice experience! The hospital that I am choosing to deliver in will also have a NICU in the same hospital so if Illianna needed anything when she was born, she would still be in the same hospital with me, instead of being transferred anywhere. So that brought a great piece of mind! 


I think that is all that has happened ...haha as I said, nothing too crazy exciting. Julian and I DO have a trip planned next weekend with his unit to do the "Tour under Bamberg." Honestly, I don't know what it entails...haha besides again, a lot of walking. We are looking at a couple different other trips also. We are looking to head to Prague(the capital city of the Czech Republic), we are planning a trip to Poland around the first week of December and we are looking at dates for places such as Rome and Paris. So there are definitely exciting things to come! 


Other excitingness....we only have one more full month and then like 20 something days to get through until our precious bundle of joy joins us!! I absolutely cannot wait!! :) 7 more weeks! Julian and I painted her room this weekend and had a lot of fun doing that! We have been deciding the details that we want in her nursery and I absolutely CANNOT wait for our stuff to arrive so I can set up her nursery! We are still waiting on all of our House Hold Goods and those aren't expected to arrive until the middle of September sometime....But hopefully they get here before she does! lol 


Well that is all the updating I have for now. Hopefully in the next couple weeks I will have something more substantial to write. haha but I hope you enjoyed this little update on what is going on in Bamberg, Germany!
Schonen Tag!