The Freight Train Cometh!!!

The freight train of events is coming, and all one can do is keep pace with it.

I know it's been a long time since I've last posted, but a lot has been happening all at once, and I'm just trying to keep up with all of it.

First and perhaps biggest, we're expecting a baby in September!!!  It will be our first, and we're experiencing all that jazz of Mommy going through body changes, baby going through body changes, and me trying to avoid my own body changes :)  Seriously though, we are very excited and look forward to making our family bigger.  We hope to find out the gender next week.

Because of this news, we have requested and received a change in orders to return back to the States.  Life will be a heck of a lot easier in taking care of the little one and in progressing forward with other ventures.  We will be getting stationed in Missouri in July of this year, and while many people act like it is a bad idea, we are genuinely looking forward to being back in the Midwest, being back in the States, being near family, and test-driving living a little more out in the sticks than we have before.  I'm also looking forward to having a yard and potentially a workshop again.

J's parents visited us from the states a few weeks ago.  We visited so many places it's like it was a whirlwind.  We visited Worms, Kaiserslautern, Ramstein, Heidelberg, Salzburg, Strasbourg, Trier, and Bastogne.  I can honestly say that Bastogne took me the most by surprise.  We took a private tour through various key places relating to the Battle of the Bulge of WWII.  They have a HUGE monument and many modest size monuments there honoring the American Soldiers for that specific battle.  I honestly felt extremely humbled to be an American and experience all of it.  Bastogne is not a big bustling city, but more of a medium suburb-size town.  The citizens there invested a LOT of time, energy, and money into their many forms of thanks to the US.  It was particularly neat because J was familiar with many of the units and divisions mentioned on the main monument.  I have never encountered a moment in my life where gratitude was so sincerely yet grandly displayed.

Sadly, I have no pictures of Bastogne, but I DO have pictures from Salzburg!  Here are a few...

Here I am with C and R at the Castle in Strasbourg overlooking the city.  I'm also donning a Salzburg acquisition!

The winged skulls were a pretty popular motif in Salzburg religious sites.  Had to share.

If you're from Minnesota living in Europe and want to see a Minnesota High School marching band...apparently you go to Salzburg.  It was a charming coincidence of events.  :)

The churches in Salzburg are CRAZY!!!  Very ornate sculpture work, architecture, gardens, and paintings.

My wife is so awesome with pictures!  This looks almost photoshopped, but it's totally real!

Leave it to the convent to have the prettiest church in town!

This is Trier at the Black Gate.  R is a little distracted by the changing walking sign.  We pretty much bolted to cross after this picture. :)

More immediately to happen, is me taking the MCAT in Frankfurt.  I want to become a Doctor of Osteopathy, and the MCAT is the first step.  I'm eagerly anticipating this test next week, and while I doubt I'll get the score I want, I'm quite confident I can get a competitive score.  One huge wrinkle is our recent orders to Missouri.  After taking the test, I won't have the time to wrestle trying to get into school with keeping things in one piece at home with our first baby in our new house.  Med School will likely have to take a back seat for 2014.  The good news is that being Stateside will allow me to visit American medical schools, which is something that is very difficult to do while in Germany.

I know that I don't have as many pictures as I wanted to post here.  Send requests for any particular pictures you would like to see posted!