Greetings from Stuttgart, Germany!

What time is it? Where am I? Is it time for dinner or breakfast or an in-between snack? Am I supposed to be asleep now?

Oh wait...I was just thinking out loud. :)

Yes, we are here. Alive and well, well almost I suppose. Our flight was disastrous! So many hangups getting out of Little Rock; bad weather in Atlanta diverting us to Birmingham, Alabama; miss our flight out of Atlanta by two hours; 10 minutes to make a decision to fly to Paris, France or spend 24 hours in the Atlanta airport to fly out again the next day. Let's just say Neeley and I elected to just go to Paris. I boo-hooed the whole way. Note to self-never fly when tired...or with a dog...or with a 7-year-old who has never flown before...or ever again for that matter. LOL Really, I'm just kidding but O.M.G.!

Today is the first day Neeley and I have been so exhausted. Today is Ronnie's first day to work while we have been here so Neeley and I are sitting in the post library reading and catching up on the computer. The weather is cool and breezy here. Only in the low 70's during the day and very chilly at night. Everyone is super friendly and helpful here, even the locals which has made it very pleasant so far. We are staying in a hotel since our housing won't be ready for about another week or so. We are slowly but surely learning our way around this place. Neeley and I hopped our first bus today to get from each post to do different things on each. You know that's brave for me. I'm terrified of this public transit system! But good news...I learned it's only a 1.5 hour flight to Paris or via train it's only 5 hours! :) Our car is here but I haven't taken my driving test yet so I can't drive until I do that which is fine with me for now!

We got to attend our first Hail & Farewell for Ronnie's unit last night and Neeley has already met the cutest little girl named Jordan and they have become the best of friends! She will also be in the third grade this next year which we are excited about. She will just be attending a different elementary since their housing will be in a different area. That part we don't especially like but it looks like they are going to get to have lots of time to play and have fun anyway. I am so thankful she makes friends so easily and has been able to find someone who is so much like her! :)

We are playing tourist as much as we can for now. My only frustration is not knowing the language. I have been spoken to in so many different languages already and I just kind of nod my head and wave and go about my business. :) We have also had a ton of business to take care of and still have tons to do. I have a million pictures already to share with you but will have to upload them at another time and get them posted. We are capped at 1 hours of internet time here in the library to be fair to everyone and I tend to be long-winded in my emails and blogs sometimes so that hour goes by quickly. And my lil diva girl is now requesting to check her email so I will sign off here for now and will keep filling you all in as we go about our journey here in Stuttgart.

Tschuss! (or Cheers!) :)

So Long, Arkadelphia

So long, Arkadelphia, hello Stuttgart! :) Still cannot believe we will be on that plane tomorrow! Wow! Where has the time gone? Oh I am so grateful to just be getting there. I'm not sure if I will get to give any updates tomorrow so this may be our last update from good ol' Arkansas. The next time you hear from us, we may be coming at ya live from Stuttgart!

Will keep you posted...so very bittersweet here today so better end here. Will definitely be a ROUGH night!

Manic Monday

Yes, it's another Manic Monday and hopefully our last for a while. Today, while Neeley is at a local VBS with one of her besties, I have been changing our address on a ton of things, paying bills, cancelling cell phones, etc., etc., etc. I think I'm about finished. Not saying that I don't still have 1,493 errands to run and things to do but have accomplished quite a bit so far today and for that I'm thankful. Because I have another ever-so-important date at the nail spa either today or tomorrow. That's my last gift to me for a while.

Gotta run as usual. We're outta here in 2 days! :)

Thank Goodness For Lazy Days

We are taking our last lazy day here in Arkansas. I refuse to do much today. :) The next two days will be spent packing up and running a few last errands before our big flight out of here on Wednesday. So today we are simply laying around watching tv, playing Nintendo DS, eating good food, reading, and just being lazy. And it feels wonderful! I know I won't get too many more of these for a while since we will be setting up our new living place so I am making myself enjoy it.

I have so many fun artsy projects planned in my head to overhaul some of our furniture when I get there. Now, I'm sure I may have very different ideas by the time we touch down in Stuttgart, but for right now I have it all planned out. Can't wait to finally get there and get things done and be able to reveal our new living space.

Pics to come...I promise!

Life Can't Always Be A Carnival!

Boy, are we pooped. Thank you to everyone who made it over to our Birthday/Going Away Carnival. I did shed a few tears at the end. **tear** Neeley received so many very special memories. We cannot wait to get to Germany and start on our scrapbooking. Y'all continue to pray that I will have the patience to actually scrapbook with her. I've never really tried it before. I have no patience to have stuff everywhere nor do I have the space to put that stuff. And I'm sure our 2 bedroom apartment in Germany won't allow much of that either but we'll just make it happen. I think that was by far the best party she has ever had. All of those hours and dollars spent to make it happen are so worth the time, effort and money. Those memories are priceless and we will cherish them forever. We had a ton of fun looking back through old pictures from friends from back when the girls were just babies! I know they are only around 7 or 8 years old but now they are changing so much. No more sweet pudgy baby cheeks to smooch on! These are big kids now and they will let you know it too. Neeley said that was one of the best days she has ever had!

Now we've had our baths and it's time to retire for the night. And I think we may stay in hiding tomorrow just to recover. :) Oh, and before I am asked, I did get tons of pictures promised to me from family and friends. I am always TERRIBLE about taking pictures because I am always way too involved in the parties to ever get any good shots. I will share all that I get later. I did promise Neeley this may have been her last birthday party. Bad mama or what? That may have just been the tired feet doing the talking. :)

Y'all have a great rest of your weekend. Will share more as I can. We fly in 4 days! Aaaaahhhhh........

Frantic Friday

What a day already! T.G.I.F. is all I can say, except now we fly in 5 days. **GASP** Oh my!

We had an emotional goodbye with one of our little friends yesterday. Neeley's good friend C. can't make it to the big shabang tomorrow because her family is headed out of town to the beach (SO JEALOUS!) so she came over for a bit yesterday evening to say goodbye. The girls got to play for a bit while we moms talked about important stuff-like how 2nd grade girls are so sassy, and the cute shoes they wear and stuff like that-and then we all had to say goodbye. We held up on our end but C was clearly upset. We love you C and will miss you dearly. We will always cherish your friendship and promise to keep in touch and will get that Flat Stanley to you! :)

Good News! As of today, we now have a place to live in Germany. Yay! Ronnie had to inquire about our eligibility date or something like that (feel free to explain more, hon!) so we were moved up on the list to #6 because of an error and once that happened we were immediately placed in to a unit in the area for the senior enlisted which is a good thing. They generally keep those units in better shape-repairs are made quickly and they keep them pristine on the outside-and we should be able to move in in about a week or so. Very exciting! The building will look much like the one I posted in a previous post-an apartment building that isn't exactly glamorous but will serve it's purpose. And I won't have to mess with a yard! Even better! :)

So now I'm off to run about 3,495 errands. These should be about all that I have left to do here in town except for a little bit of clean up I will have to do next week before we fly. And I am thankful. Calgon is definitely calling my name once I arrive in Germany!

Y'all have a great day and come see us at the big Blowout Shabang tomorrow!

Mixed Emotions

Today I find myself homeless, without my own vehicle, and now jobless. So many mixed emotions. I'm still not 100% sure how I feel. Of course we are very excited but I am also overwhelmed, sad, tired, happy, glad, stressed, terribly tired, anxious, with very little time to do anything about any of that. Oh, and did I mention that I'm tired? :) I did get to have the bed all to myself last night though since Neeley had a lil sleepover at a friend's house. Yay for that! Now we're off to sign papers to rent the house, get our hair and toesies done, mail some of our stuff to us over in Germany (yes AGAIN!!), and take care of some other errands that I have not had a chance to do yet.

Better end here for now and go get the day started. I have had a morning here at the house all to myself. That scalding hot shower in silence was so worth it! And now that I've had a breakfast of cappucccino and Diet Dr Pepper I can get my day started.

Y'all enjoy!

Wednesday Fun

...Or maybe not so much fun... :)

Today is my last day of work and Neeley's last day of school. Her principal started crying this morning when she was helping her out of the vehicle. I had to shed my first move-related tears. Very bittersweet!

I also learned today that my plans of being proactive with the party on Saturday and getting in there on Friday to get it all ready are no longer due to a wedding in the same place Friday night. So now I get to get up at 6 am on Saturday to do all the decorating and getting ready. So.Not.Fun! :( So if I have even bigger bags under my eyes and a large Andy's coffee in my hand during the party please don't think anything of it.

And before I forget, our other email addresses won't work after today so please use this one for our family email: ashley.bowden@yahoo.com. We LOVE receiving email! :)

And that's our day. Working and a little later we will play. Neeley has an "American Idol" bday party to go to tonight. So fun! They are supposed to dress up and they will sit and have dinner and then the entertainment begins.

Will share more on this later!

Stuff And Such

Happy Tuesday!

And maybe, just maybe, a Tired Tuesday! We're still not sleeping well at all. Today I'm feeling weepy from it but so far have managed to control myself. :) Cannot wait to get in our own place again with my new bedding. And I have so many crafty plans for our new place that I can't even stand it. If only we had a place...no, we don't have a clue where we will live yet. I'll leave that for another post entirely...

Y'all be sure and bring your kiddos out to SBC-Arkadelphia this Saturday from 1 to 4 for our Birthday/Going Away Carnival. It's gonna be tons of fun! And we do hope you'll come! We're excited about it but we have a ton of other things going on this week even before that big day. Extra caffeine, anyone? :)

Before I forget, I have received several inquiries for our address for coupons, keeping in touch, sending us our lottery winnings (KIDDING!) so here ya go. It's not our physical address so I'm not worried about just putting it out there like this. :) We hope to hear from you all!

CMR 423 Box 1407
APO AE 09107
Germany

And if you have some time on June 10th and can get out and about, we would love to see you at the airport. We will be on Delta flight #5458 departing Little Rock at 1:50 pm that day. So y'all come see us!

We're off for now to get the rest of the day going. Neeley's end of the year reward party is this afternoon and I have been told that I better be there for some big surprise. I have no idea what that is but I will share more later.

Have a Terrific Tuesday!

More On Riot At The Water Park

Ok, here's more on the riot at the water park for your entertainment... :)

We were there for about 4 1/2 hours and then things started getting pretty heated between a group of people. They looked to be junior high and high school age. They were hollering back and forth for quite a while and then the profanity came out. The lifeguard had been getting on to them for about 2 hours and then he called the Assistant Manager over just to help monitor the situation. Well, it all apparently got too heated and about 7:15 pm these two girls were bashing each other's heads in to the concrete. They broke the chair next to mine. I jumped up and ran as fast as I could away from it all. There were a few other mothers and myself frantically looking for our children to jet out of there as fast as we could. I turn around to get my stuff and I see an earring ripped out of a girl's ear, one girl's weave being ripped out of her hair taking part of her scalp with it, a couple of guys acting very inappropriately. What a mess! I manage to get all of my stuff together and turn back around to look again for Neeley and this very nice couple was standing there and they went and got all of our kiddos for us so we could hightail it out of there. While they were getting our kids, I happened to look again and they had one girl by the swimsuit which then ripped and exposed everything and then some so they threw her in the pool to calm her down and get her to where she wouldn't be exposed to the whole world and they whisked the other girl off because they police and ambulance was there by that time. In the meantime, the entire rest of the groups had started fighting. I find Neeley and the next thing we hear over the loud speaker was "we ask for your safety, caucasians please exit the park immediately. we will then ask for everyone else to leave once we have the incident reports filled out. thank you for your cooperation and understanding."

Needless to say, I didn't stay around to see the rest. I felt like I was having a heart attack by the time I got in to the vehicle. I was about to tear up several times but I just wanted to find Neeley and get out. We started to go back again yesterday but Neeley said she never ever wants to go back there.

And we won't....

The End!