Worst blogger ever...

Sorry guys, I'm officially the worst blogger ever.  It has been like 4 weeks since I last blogged, which wouldn't matter if nothing exciting was happening...  maybe I can claim I was too busy.  Or use the excuse that we don't have internet.  If you're Colin's friend on facebook, you've probably seen some of our goings on.  If not, I'll give you the picture story.  We got a house/apt in Melingen, Germany.  It's a pretty sweet house in an awesome town.  Its about 2000 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and the best kitchen.  Here is the virtual tour.

this is the dining room from the kitchen

This is the dining room from the living room

Me in the living room (pic taken from the dining room)

Our beautiful kitchen.  Best kitchen in all the houses we saw.

Our tiny German fridge.

The fan and light come on when you pull out the cabinet, but when you aren't using it, it just looks like a cabinet, not a range hood.

cool drawers in the kitchen

our kitchen shrunk(closet)

half bath downstairs off of the entry way

me at the top of our stairs

Colin in one of our spare bedrooms.  We have two nearly identical.

Colin in our huge tub.

our upstairs bathroom

Master bedroom from the door.  That wall with the window/skylight  is where our(temporary, borrowed) bed is now.

master from the wall opposite the door

cool skylight/windows.  They all have rolladens, which are like metal blinds that keep out the light in the summertime when it is only dark for a few hours.

our attic

ladder to the attic

cool windows/doors in the living room.  All the windows open both like this and out like a typical door. 

our entryway. you can see the half bath too.

our spiral staircase 

We also bought a car.  With the money from selling our cars (we based it on when my car sells and if it sells at a really really low rate) we were able to buy one really nice car.  It's not German, which Colin would have prefered, seeing as we're in Germany, but our 2007 Corolla was the same price as a 2001 BMW and the Corolla had less than 37,000 miles versus a lot more.  Anyway, we love it.  I'm still getting used to how tiny it is compared to my big red explorer, but atleast it fits in parking spots here.

We've also done some traveling while over here.  On the 15th of Oct we went to Heidleberg, which has a cool schloss, or castle, an old bridge, and some fun shops and biergartens(we didn't have any bier, obviously, but you can't help walking through them when they're in the center of a city street...)

The next Saturday we went the opposite direction to Saarbrucken, near the French border.  It had a famous church, and it's "schloss" (I put it in quotes since it isn't really a castle, It is just an old building that has been renovated and used for many purposes, but they still call it a schloss.)  Anyway, it was really cool because some college students had taken it upon themselves to create an invisible memorial to the "invisible people" the Jews by putting the names of Jewish cemeteries on the bottom of the stones in the walkway up to the schloss. They did it secretly one by one at night so no one knew for years.  Now there is a sign telling you about it, but the names are all still hidden.  It is also the largest registry of Jewish cemeteries.  Sadly it is kind of useless as a registry, since you can't see the names... Other than those things, we didn't find a whole lot of interest in Saarbrucken.

ludwig's kirche (church)

invisible memorial of Jewish cemeteries.

On Tuesday after our trip to Saarburcken we went to Volklingen, an old, decommissioned steel mill.  We were going to go on Saturday until we found out it was free on Tuesdays.  This was one of the coolest things we've gone to yet, and sadly we forgot our camera.  I stole a pic off their website for you.  It is a UNESCO world heritage site.  It is HUGE.  And since it has been decommissioned trees, weeds, flowers, and other plants are growing up through all the traintracks and things.  I wish I could do this place justice.  Maybe we'll go back another Tuesday and get pictures for you so you can see how awesome it was.

The next weekend we sigend up for a USO how to ride the trains tour that took us to Trier.  Trier was awesome, the train was so so.  Everyone talks about how cheap they are, but I honestly didn't see it.  We did the math and it would have been cheaper for us to drive.  Other than that (and me losing my phone) Trier was awesome.  We saw the Prota Nigra, some old churches, Roman baths, neat old buildings, and more.  We had a great time there and ate at the best restaurant we've been to yet.  It was a Kartoffel (or potato) restaurant, and everything came with a side of potatoes.  The potatoes here are the best.  Sooooo good.  They make them in all different shapes, fried, baked, boiled, and every way they're delicious.  Anyway, we had pork with Brat Kartoffel which is potatoes sliced thinly and fried.  That's my favorite way to eat them.

brat kartoffeln

After our tour, we went to a haloween party with some other officer's from Colin's CE group And that was fun.  We played some rock band and Colin even sang.  Then Colin whooped everyone at MarioKart, and we just chilled.

So, that's what you've missed in our life.  We should get internet in a few days, but until then we'll probably be pretty scarce.  Sorry for the long posts.  If I blogged more you wouldn't all get so overwhelmed with info and pics in one sitting.  I'll have to work on that :)