That last two weeks

The last two weeks have been, for the most part, uneventful.  Maybe that's why I have been unmotivated to post much.  Our days have been filled with running errands, trying to get S & P back on a nap schedule, trips to the BX (just to have something to do) and crawling around the hotel room.  The girls have developed a love for pulling things out of suit cases, out of bags or really just about out of anything.  It makes a huge mess, but it keeps them happy and I don't mind picking up the mess.  As some of you may have seen on facebook, we had to move to another room due to an imaginary cockroach problem.  This room has been just as nice, the only problem is there is no tub to bathe the girls in.  So we have been having "shower baths".  The shower/hose thing detaches from the wall and I can hose them down, which comes in handy after they have pasta with marinara sauce for dinner.  (Below are pre-dinner pictures, I thought I'd same some laundry by having dinner in diapers) 

                                  

I took the girls for a drive the other day while we waited for M to finish getting our utilities fixed-up, and we ran across some buffalo!  (They smell worse than cows, in my opinion)

On one of our many afternoon trips to the BX we stopped by the garden section to look at the next possible house plant I could kill.  (I have the opposite of whatever a green thumb would be.  My track record of keeping plants alive is not good.  I blame it on the places we have lived, YOU try keeping an herb garden alive in west Texas.)

We have gone for a few walks around Landstuhl (a village just a few miles away from the base).  There lots of little restaurants and shops through the village, but mostly we walk because we are getting really fat...because we're eating like pigs...because the German and Italian food is amazing. 

Annnnnd a little video while waiting for Daddy to get us a movie

So there you have it.  That's what we've been up to!  Just waiting to get our life settled but enjoying it in the meantime! 

A German 4th of July

We went on base for a little bit tonight to enjoy the festivities. Wish we could have stayed for the fire works but it gets dark at 10 pm and babies would not survive that! But it was nice to have a hamburger and walk around for the evening.

Holy Cannoli, I ate the whole thing

   

The village we are staying close to has mainly Italian restaurants, so the other night we went to Ristorante Taormina.  We sat outside in the terrace on a gorgeous evening with the cool German breeze blowing, beautiful flowers blooming on the trellises above us....and our two children screaming and throwing food across the table.  We took a few minutes here and there to smile at each other and soak up the evening in between trying to control our exhausted baby monsters.  M got a heaping bowl of risotto with garden fresh vegetables and I went with a less healthy option and got ricotta and spinach ravioli in a butter cream sauce, both were amazing.  Of course I couldn't leave without getting some kind of dessert.  In the spirit of Italian food, I got the Cannoli and it was massive...and delicious...and I at the whole thing...which was kind of gross.  The girls started to have a meltdown towards the end of dinner that resulted in P finally being able to knock over the water glasses and bottle she had been trying for all evening.  Soaking wet, I stood up to hold a (soaking wet and crying) S and tried to entertain her while we waited for the check.  We got back to the hotel and but baby monsters to bed first thing and had a little time to ourselves before calling it a night.

The next day started our house hunting adventures, our crazy, stress filled house hunting adventures.  We have a GPS the car rental place let us borrow, which is nice until it starts taking us 45 minutes out of the way every single time.  That adds up to about 2 hours of unnecessary drive time each day.  This is a less than ideal situation since we have already put our sweet girls through so much the last two months and they are at the end of their "we are homeless, living off of graham crackers and string cheese, you crazy people have made us move all over the country and now to Germany" ropes.  Needless to say, they are fine in their car seats for all of 45 seconds before they scream at the top of their lungs the rest of the day.  

I digress, house hunting in a foreign country is stressful when your GPS hardly works, when landlords who say they speak english, in fact do not, when you are all exhausted and you have two angry babies.  BUT, we have been able to see so much of the country side and many (too many to count) villages.  I wish we could slow down and enjoy the beauty God has placed us in the middle of, we have been letting the pressures of being a homeless family get to us.  I was thinking this morning, what an incredible stretching process this whole thing has been for us.  It has been unbelievably painful at times, and still is (I'm referencing the mental breakdown I had yesterday in the bathroom of the Commissary), but that never ending lesson of trusting God, that lesson that I seem to have to learn over and over every  single time, is ever present in the back of my mind.

 "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made know to God." 

 Philippians 4:6