Happy New Year!

Well hello everyone! It is now officially 2006 (yes, I know it has been for like, almost 2 days now) and life here in Germany is continuing as we know it. Abbie had a great Christmas, and seemed a little peeved when she didn't get to open any gifts on the 26th! She has had a blast playing with all of her new toys that have come into our lives (and living room) since my ILs came to visit mid-December. This was their "last time to see Andrew before he goes to Iraq" trip, so it was kind of bittersweet. Abbie loved having her "Grandparent puppets" here to indluge her every whim and desire, so she was a little upset when they left and she was back to being ignored (like this child is ignored, you people have seen the pictures!) and pitiful.

Christmas totally wasn't the same without being back in the US. I really missed Waffle House with the "Cincy gang"-- I even missed the rushing all over the midwest to get to all our events for both sides of the family. It was Christmas, but it wasn't "Christmas", ya know? I'm sure as we have more Christmas' at our own house with our kids we will start to feel like it's actually right, but this year just didn't seem "right". We had a huge potluck with our neighbors/aka our second family on Christmas day, and while it was great, it was no Waffle House. I will be in the US for Christmas next year, but it still won't be right because Andrew won't be there.

We were really boring for New Year's... like, REALLY boring. We stayed in and watched a movie, then watched the TV Guide channel for our countdown since there is a seconds counter on the clock there. Andrew then dropped Abbie's plastic playground ball with the kissing bees on it to make it "official". We aren't cool enough to get any actual countdowns on tv here I guess. The Germans really take their fireworks seriously though-- we went outside to watch around 1210, and it was completely panoramic-- every direction we looked in was filled with color for a half hour or so. These weren't just the little bitty firecrackers either-- they were the spidery, the flashy, the poppy, and the multicolored big ones. Someone dropped serious euro on their (and our) entertainment for the evening!

We still haven't gotten word on when we can move into a 3 bedroom apartment yet-- rumor has it that the current people in the one we're trying to get have found a place at their next duty station, it just isn't ready yet. Hopefully we'll get to move sooner rather than later. If it isn't in the next 2 weeks, I will be moving all by my lonesome (well, with Abbie's help)-- and hopefully with the help of the Rear-D (the guys that don't deploy) in exchange for free beer and pizza. We are probably shipping the pups back to the US next week sometime, so anyone in Cincy that feels like playing with a couple of high strung labs, just give my dad a call! Abbie and I are probably going to be flying over at the end of the month-- hopefully by the 28th so that my dad doesn't have to entrust Ben with the care of our dogs while he's out of town.

The first of our neighbors to deploy is supposed to go this week, so it's kind of the beginning. Thankfully, we know Andrew won't go before the end of next week, but that's about all we can count on right now. I am so dreading the goodbye-- picture a bunch of women with really sleepy kids (since this seems to take place at 5am every time thanks to some unwritten Army rule that everything starts before the sun is up) trying to hold onto their husbands so tight that they can't get on the bus that will eventually take them to the desert (well, the airport and the plane that will take them there). Then all these women with their sleepy kids (some that don't even know what's going on, just that they're cold and want to go back to bed) stand and wait the 5 minutes or 5 hours it takes those busses to pull away-- once they're on the bus, they can't get off the bus, no matter how delayed they get. Then watching the bus take your husband to a place where his safety cannot be guarunteed-- where contact is limited-- and where he will miss a year of his children growing up (or being born). He will come back to a whole different family as a person forever changed by war. Just keep Andrew and the rest of his fellow soldiers in your thoughts or prayers as they embark on this terrifying year-- and hope the families can stay strong while they're gone.