They are giving the Beach away!

We had a couple days at the end of the summer to spare on one more trip.  Sam couldn't go with us.  We waited until after his football camp,

Sam after a hard weekend of football camp where he won two awards

 but the day afterwards, they started 2 a day practices and those were the main try-outs.  I talked to the coach and he said, "technically try-outs aren't done until after the first week of school, but..."  Yah, so he stayed with some friends- Thank you Pickerings!!- while the rest of us ran down to Camp Darby, Italy!  After this year, there will no longer be an American beach- we are giving it back to the Italians.  I wanted the kids to see where we used to go every year for vacation.  We drove to Camp Darby, set up our camp and then headed over to see the Leaning tower.

It really is beautiful. 

We weren't sure of the parking and didn't want to get a ticket, so we parked way far away and walked in.

That seemed to be a theme for our Italy trip!  The next day was supposed to be a yucky day, so we decided to go see Cinque Terre- 5 beautiful towns on the Italian riviera.

So, apparently, did everyone else!  We set off late, so we skipped the town we were going to park at and then take the train up to the first city.  That was our downfall.  I thought it would be quicker to just go to the first town. Nope!!  We got turned around and told no parking- move on.  At least that is what I thought they were saying.  Italians don't speak English for the most part and I don't speak Italian.  We found a spot way up on top of the mountain to park and hiked all the way down.  We checked out the town

and got ready to do the walk to the next town and found out that the path was closed! 

There was no way to get there except by train, which we just missed.  We could have waited for the next train, but it was getting late and we still had a huge hike back up the mountain.  We made it over an hour later back to our car.  So yes we hiked Cirque de Terre, not just the way you are supposed to.  And yes we saw it, just not up close!  It was still gorgeous!  

The next day was beach day.

The red flags were up, so you couldn't swim, but you could go up to waist height without them saying a thing to you and since we just wanted to body surf and crash through the waves, we had a great time.  Apparently, if you had a surf board, you could be out there as well, because there were a ton of surfers doing their thing.

We were supposed to stay one more night, but the kids all got burned bad, even though we put on sunscreen a couple of times.  And the mosquitoes were killing us.  We tried citronella candles, bug spray, long clothes and dryer sheets all over us and they still kept bitting us.  Those are some seriously crazy bugs down there in Italy. 

 He's eating my S'more!

Emma at the swimming pool on base showing you that she can stand at 8 feet 2 inches!

We looked like we had a case of chicken pox after two days- all of us.  So we packed up and spent a night in Garmisch at the very nice Edleweise Inn.

 The Zugspitze in the background

The Hammersbach in the background- what Joseph climbed for scout camp.

We drove through the Dolomites on our way.  Such a pretty area.  

The next day we drove home via Linderhof palace- one of Ludwigs palaces (he of the Cinderella Castle persuasion.) 

So pretty, yet so tiny.  Everything is going to be tiny to us, now that we saw the palaces in Russia.  I think the Russians meant us to come away thinking that!

Rob kept asking me if I remembered this or that.  Things were a little different.  I don't remember the Tower begin so pretty.  I know the base had more facilities than it does now.  Now it's not even properly a camp.  It is overseen by a Major and they are part of Vincenza base.  The beach I do remember!  The girls all seemed to have gotten modest, though- no topless anywhere.  Just lots of bums eating swimsuit bottoms.  Still I am glad that my kids got to experience a little of what I did on vacation as a youth.  So sad Sam didn't get to enjoy it with us!

The Sad Computer Tale

Once a long time ago in a land far, far away a husband and a wife wanted a brand new shiny Mac, oh so badly.  They found one on sale (What?  Mac's never go on sale!)  But their dear friend wanted one just like theirs at the very same time and the store only had one, so they agreed to take the floor model (with another reduction in cost.)  Well the husband and wife were feeling so happy about their purchase and they loved their Mac!  Until one day, 2 years later, that very Mac decided to freeze up and stop working without any warning!  The husband and wife had not been in their new house, far across the ocean, for more than 6 months and they hadn't gotten everything just the way they wanted yet.  They took their baby Mac in to an Apple doctor, hoping agains hope that it could be fixed.  It was only 2 years old, after all!  Alas nothing could save the Mac's hard drive and it had to be replaced.  The Mac is better now, but it's memory is gone.  Six months of precious pictures gone!  All the music- gone!  All the documents- gone!  The husband and the wife were able to restore the music with much patience.  They could do without the documents, but the pictures were lost.  You see, one of the things they had neglected to do, after their move, was set up the external hard drive.  There was one hope- a data retrieval specialist.  Alas, the data retrieval was over 800 euros- too high a price to pay for 6 months of non-backed up pictures!  There may be yet another hope.  Some of the pictures are actually stored on their blog and FB pages and they have friends that were with them as they saw London and Belgium and the Black Forest and Rothenburg, Hohenzollern castle and Munich.  They had family with them at the funeral of the husband's Father and during their two week stay.  If the friends and family all sent copies of their photos to the husband and wife it would bring them some joy.

The moral of this story is:  always print and back up your pictures!

Throw-back Thursday

Brought to you on a Tuesday with pictures taken on a Friday!

We went to get Emma from Volleyball camp at Vilseck- my alma Mater and also the place I met my wonderful husband.  So while we were there, we had to play around a little and take some fun pictures.  These are the results.

In the lunch room

My pretend husband for Sociology class and my real one.  I made him put his hand like that to copy my fake husband.  Look, even my hair looks the same!

I couldn't remember the name of our little town and so we drove in the general direction for sometime.  I couldn't recognize the names of hardly any of the towns.  We almost gave up and turned around when I saw it off to the left.  Ehenfeld!!  That's it, Rob, I shouted.  Ehendfeld was our little German town.

  We lived behind the church and would see all the little girls in their confirmations gowns parade down to the steps of the church door.  They have since painted it yellow- it was white.

 We had two other Americans, my senior year, that lived there.  One of them, Justin, dated one of my friends and wore a Batman shirt and called himself Batman.  I would go study at his house sometimes.  His Dad introduced me to one of his friends as Justin's little study friend.  The other guy, Paul, tried to steal a kiss from me. 

 We lived up a steep hill.  I wanted to take the new car (we never owned a new car before!!) to Prom my senior year.  It was a stick shift and Dad almost didn't let me take it, because I couldn't get it up the steep hill.  I finally gunned it and made it up that hill!

I crashed into the house while taking my friend somewhere.  I was turning the car around in the driveway and changing the channels on the radio at the same time.  I only took a small chunk of the house out!

I also bought this tree when I totaled the car coming around a curve too fast on a rainy day. (I also got in an accident with a friend where she flipped the car over several times before going off the highway into a tree.  I just realized I was in a lot of accidents there!)

I once slammed into our own car to get it out of the way with our van in that driveway.  Dad had driven the car that I usually did and had put the emergency brake on.  I never did that and so didn't know why it wasn't working.  I was really late for a track meet!  I ran into the house, got the keys to the van and bumped the car out of the way as I hurried to the second pick up spot for the track meet.  The coach just about died when he saw me.  He said, "never have I held the bus for anyone, but today I held it, hoping you would make it."  I got Most Valuable Runner that year.

After graduation, I went to college in the states for 2 years.  I came home for the summers and had some fun with the guys, but the second year I came home my sister Cindy introduced me to a guy who was just way too old for me.  He was 25 and an officer.

  Oh my, but he was cute!!

1992

2013

  In August, just before I flew back to the states to continue my third year at college, that cute guy proposed to me, as he was leaving for an exercise.

  My brother had just come home from college for a quick visit and announced to my parents that he had gotten engaged.  That night they found out that I had as well.

Ehenfeld, Vilseck, Grafenwohr.  They are small, quiet German towns-  Not anything like big, busy Stuttgart where we live now, 20 some odd years later. 

The results of 20 years

 But to me, that will always be Germany!

The New Normal

I meant to do a post on the 10th anniversary of 9-11-01, but I didn't.  I mean to do a lot of things that I don't.  Sometimes I wish I was more type A with a check list that I had to get done each day.  I meant to practice my photography after paying for a photography class, but I still haven't.  In fact, I have returned to shooting in automatic.  I know, I know, but soccer shots are hard to get, anyway, without worrying about my aperture setting!  I finally decided that I just had to sit down, though and take a minute and write this post.
At the beginning of school Samuel had to write an introduction piece about himself and one of the things he could write about was an important event in their lives.  I thought about it for a minute and then realized something that none of them realize!  September 11, 2001 changed all of our lives more than any event in my childrens' lifetime.  They can't remember how it was when you didn't have to take your shoes off to get on an airplane, or not being able to go right up to the gate to welcome your party right off the airplane.  They don't remember how you used to just go to a museum without having everything go through a metal detector, or before Homeland Security.   They really don't even remember what it was like before we were at war- all those years of peace (all be it tense peace with the Soviet Union.)  Soviet Union- what's that?  Right- they don't know about that either!
September 11, 2001 my husband was still a full-time Seminary teacher.  He was in class when it happened.  I was in my kitchen and had turned on the news.  When the first building collapsed, Tom Browkaw was saying "I'm not sure what just happened" and I was yelling back, "the tower just completely collapsed Tom Browkaw!"  At the time we lived in Colorado, far away from the events of the day.  It was like a very intense movie I was watching.  I called my husband who said that someone had come in and told them about the attacks and that they were watching it now.
When I went to work the next day, the nurses were talking about going to help.  One had already contacted some of the hospitals to see what they needed and was arranging her flight.  I wanted to go, but I had little ones.  By the next day, it was obvious that there would be no need for extra nurses and doctors, though, so nobody went. 

Robert had already turned in his packet to rejoin the Army, but it was all so close that it's inseparably linked.  The other thing the kids really can't remember is when their Dad didn't wear a uniform, when we weren't planning our life around moves, when they weren't saying, every time they saw a picture of a house on the computer, "is that our next house?"
Things in our own lives are very different then when those planes hit.  Most of the time I just go on with regular life not thinking about it.  It has become the new normal.  We have deployed soldiers spouses over for dinner, we get excited for our "next" home, I send my husband off for work in a uniform every morning, we don't even think twice about not going to the gate to pick Grandma up.  I don't even really remember 10 years ago when my husband went to work in a suit and tie and when I wasn't thinking about the "next place".  It's amazing how much things can change in just a short time and then become so "normal" to us.  At the very least, I realized I had to stop and comment on this new normal.
I was really glad on Sunday when we sang, "My Country 'tis of Thee."  It gave me a minute to pause and reflect and realize how many people's lives have change forever because of that day- many many of which lost their lives.  I have to give a shout out to my hero's, especially,  just doing their jobs- EMS workers (had to put them first, because they are usually forgotten or just lumped in with the firefighters!), Firefighter, police, and soldiers.  Thank you for all you do!

Trek Family Reunion and Ode to a Jeep

We had a quick family reunion with the kids before Michelle went off to college. It was fun to see them again. Only the girls made it and we had to kick them out pretty quick. I had to drive to Pennsylvania that night to go to the CK scrapbooking convention at Valley Forge. I had a good time, even if it was all on my own. That whole week, I had only about 6 hours of sleep every night, so I was a little nervous driving to Pennsylvania so late. Luckily, I had Michelle with me to Maryland and then I had the Blue collar comedy show the rest of the way. We go a new van and got XM radio free for 3 months. Yep- after all these years, we decided to get a van. I never realized how clunky the jeep drove until I drove the van! Man that is one smooth ride!

We didn't want to trade in the jeep. It has worked well for us for over 11 years- never a single problem, but there was the whole cash for klunkers going on. Besides that, we thought, how are we going to store three cars in Virginia! And then how are we going to get three cars out to Ohio. There would still be 2 1/2 years after that before Emma would be able to drive, so we gave it up. It made me want to cry, until the night before we were going to give it up and I got into it to go to work. Oh my, it stunk so bad!! It smelt like a dirty diaper had been shoved under one of the seats and left to rot for at least a week! It was telling me to let it go- I'm sure! The poor lady at the dealership had to hold her breath to go do her assessment of it. Rather embarrasing! I promise- there were no dirty diapers! I think some milk got spilled from shopping earlier in the day. Anyway, our poor Jeep is gone and in it's place we have a spiffy new van. Thanks for all the memories old friend! Can you believe this is Sam? Pregnant with Joey in St. Louis Sam loved to wash with Daddy! Marathon training runs It was our candy station at the Trunk or Treat for many years The mighty Strikermasters make their strikes (that means they got mom and got a slit of window down before mom turned off the car! They played this game all the time!)
Good times!