Moving Day 2!

Unaccompanied Baggage came today. To be perfectly honest, we weren't really sure what to put in unaccompanied baggage, its supposed to be things that you would need immediately when you get there, they fly it there so it should beat you to your destination overseas. At most however (if everything goes as planned) our stuff will arrive in Germany NLT February 16, which is only 2 weeks after we arrive there. Which don't get me wrong 2 weeks is a mighty long time to go without household goods but considering that it takes 60 days to get to Germany, a meager 2 weeks seems like a cake walk!

Richmond's Tacky Lights tour

This past weekend Andrew & I, went out to eat in downtown Richmond at LaGrotta Italian Ristorante, as a belated Anniversary dinner (because the Army...surprise, surprise, messed up our plan to go there on our actual Anniversary). Afterward, we took a stroll on the Richmond Tacky Christmas Lights tour. I saw an article about the lights tour in a local newspaper, and because I am a sucker for all things Christmas (especially all things tacky AND Christmas) that I just had to go. There is a really awesome website, though somewhat difficult to navigate, that will create a tacky lights tour based on the local addresses of tacky-light display participants. The houses are somewhat spread apart, so in the end we drove around 60 miles searching for the tackiest of decorated houses!

This one probably made the tacky list b/c of the decorated child's kitchen
This house was hardly tacky, it was actually really awesome! The trees were wrapped so high, I can't imagine how
time consuming and costly this must be to create!They even decorated the backyard!

Only slightly tacky in my opinion.

Hot cocoa!

I was the navigator

The only really tacky thing was the 1950's plastic manger scene. Which I must admit are tacky, but I am still a sucker for them!

Anything blow-up and palm tree-esque, probably tacky!

tacky, tacky, tacky

Moving Day 1

Its moving week! And basically that means that I will be inherently bored while I sit back and watch the movers/packers invade my house.

All the stuff going in storage - not counting all of the stuff in our storage unit here that is going in a different storage unit. If you're confused that's ok, its even confusing to me!

=( my basket of elephants didn't make the cut...but, I saved a few just for good measure including the ACU bear.

Mopey dog critter! She is moping around the house...its pitiful really, she keeps looking at boxes and then at me as if to say, "please don't pack me in a box."

Joyeux Noel

'Tis the season to be jolly...and watch tons of Christmas movies of course! Being the sappy Christmas movie type that I am, I put all of the interesting Christmas movies I could find on Netflix at the top of my queue. Including:

A Christmas Story (4 Stars)

White Christmas (4.5 stars)
Christmas Do-Over (3 stars)
Joyeux Noel (Merry Christmas) - 5 stars!!!!

Last night we watched Joyeux Noel, a movie made in 2005 but based in 1914, the first year of WWI. Its the story of 3 different Army companies: a French, Scottish and German company, stuck in the trenches on Christmas Eve (of course, if you need a brush up on history the French & Scottish...and some other people who unimportant for the purposes of this story, while the Germans were allies with the Austria-Hungarian empire and the Ottoman empire). The movie is subtitled (except, when the Scottish speak....but, honestly, I wish they had captioned that too because they are very difficult to understand at times) but you really only need the captions for the first 30 minutes of the movie at which point it becomes relatively easy to follow even through the language barrier.

Anyway, this movie is an amazing true story about how the joy of the Christmas season brings together these staunch enemies if even for just a short period of time. It truly was an awesome movie that from here out will be a Fair family tradition. After all, it may very well be the perfect movie...it includes a war story for my husband and a beautiful Christmas story for me.

I can't believe we are moving.....AGAIN!

I feel like we just got here! We haven't even had time to visit every place we intended...and yet, the time has come to pack, pile, sort, plan and move! Moving to Germany makes things extra intense and requires an immense amount of planning, sorting and purging. For instance, we actually will have 3 separate moves. On Monday the 14th the movers will be coming to take anything that we want to go into storage (which is actually quite a bit of stuff), on the 15th household goods packers will be here as well as unaccompanied baggage. Unaccompanied baggage is any necessities that we will need immediately when we arrive in Germany (because it takes 60 days for our stuff to ship to Germany). The unaccompanied baggage is flown there and in there I will put winter clothes that we will need once we get there, sheets, towels and a few cooking supplies. Finally, on the 16th the household goods movers come to take our household goods away.

Now, if you have been counting thats 3 separate piles not to include the 4th pile, which is items we will need for the journey to Georgia/Texas/Georgia again. I have piles coming out of every corner of the house("No, Andrew don't put that there, that's the Goodwill pile....no, not there either, thats the 'to sale' pile"). As you can see it is requiring a great deal of coordination not to mention the logistics of cleaning and maintenancing my car to take to the port to be shipped...oh, and my final week of grad school! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Hair...check! Make up..check! Husband....no check :(

So here I sit with my hair and make up all done awaiting the arrival of my prince charming so we can celebrate our Anniversary. Its 1805 (that's 6:05), we had 1830 dinner plans...which we obviously are not going to make, thanks to that obtrusive other member of our marriage...the ARMY! I am not agitated yet, but come 1830 and still no husband and I just might be!

I am reminded of a quote...

"An Army wife knows what it feels like to be a mistress, because the Army is the wife and that ho gets all the attention!"

~Army Wives


I am just grateful my husband will be around to celebrate this Anniversary with me...be it late or on time...though on time, would have definitely been better!

Thanksgiving leftover re-mix

Everybody loves the thrill of the Thanksgiving feast; eating as much as you want and not feeling the least bit guilty about it. But, nobody loves to eat the same Thanksgiving meal 3 or 4 times to use up the leftovers. Seeing as how it was just Andrew and I for dinner, we had ALOT of leftovers to be used up...so I had to get creative. Of course, we did eat the traditional day after plate of leftovers and sandwiches, but nobody wants to read about that!

Stuffed mushrooms - mushrooms stuffed with leftover dressing and topped with homemade bread
crumbs and Parmesan cheese.

Turkey Pot Pie - turkey and vegetables, with cream of mushroom soup and turkey stock

Turkey Hash for breakfast - potatoes, onions, celery, bell pepper, &

fried potatoesTurkey tortilla soup - I made a turkey stock out of the leftover
turkey carcass and used it as the base for a turkey tortilla soup
(and I was too lazy to make crispy strips of tortillas to put in the soup, so we just used chips)

Thanksgiving!

Oh, how dearly I love the Thanksgiving holiday: the food, the family, the food! This year we didn't get to spend Thanksgiving with our families so I was heavily reliant upon the food! I made my very first Thanksgiving meal and it was fabulous!

Our turkey brine

Autumn helping Andrew pat the turkey dry

Buttering the turkey

The finished product - so juicy and yummy!

Homemade cranberry sauce!

Carving the turkey

Our very own Thanksgiving feast!(Mom: Look at that

tiny amount of dressing!)