Making up for lost time!

Alex was deployed August 2009 just 4 weeks after Naomianna (aka Lexi) was born. He came home for 2 weeks R and R in Feb. 2010 when she was 7 mos old. He came home for good just before her 1st birthday July 2010. We got a whole 6 mos toghether July-Dec 2010 before he left for 4 more months for some school on the east coast. From January 2011-April we were apart while he was at that school. When he got home we had ONE month, the month of May, together and then Lexi and I left for NH and he left for Germany. It was four and a half MORE months until we got to see him again Sept 20, 2011!

THEN, when Lexi and I got to Germany we only had 10 days with Alex before he left for a month long rotation. So before he left we were rushed getting Lexi and I inprocessed and learnging where everything was and how to get to the base, getting new ID cards, getting my german drivers license and all that good stuff. But we still tried to max out our family time!

First we checked out our neighborhood.

(looking back at the town from a walk out in the fields. see the hot air balloon? Our house is off to the very far right and in the back you can barely see some of the solar panels on our roof)

And we met 'Oma' a sweet old woman who gets her milk at the farm across the street from us

(LEFT: this is Lexi running up to Oma -after she got done picking plums from her orchard across the street from our house- one day after meeting her! RIGHT: our landlord/neighbor reaching over the fence to say hello to Lexi who was yelling 'HI, HI!')

(Lexi eating a plum given to us by 'Oma' after she picked them from the orchard. We have a plum tree in our yard too!)

Lexi took the time to smell the neighbor's flowers


we went for a walk to the fields, met some goats, played in the flowers and let the dogs run around





And of course I found where ALL the horses in our town, err village, are =)
We had such an excess of pears and apples growing in our yard I started bagging them up EVERY day and bringing them to the horses in our village =)

This is Elsie. She's a haflinger (a seemlingly popular breed around here!). Her owner is the private bus driver that takes the local kids to a private school. One of the kids he drives is our neighbor's daughter, who rides Elsie. Elsie is stabled with two goats, Salt and .... I forget the other ones name, no, it's not pepper.







This is Elsie asking for more pears we bring her =)

At the edge of town there are 2 pastures right next to each other. One holds 2 ponies and the other, larger pasture holds 2 quarter horse mares, a yearling and another pony. The yearling is Cisco and he was born just 3 months before this picture. The owner was so happy to show me the papers on his quarter horses from america as he explained in VERY poor english (any my german was worse!) that one was from idaho and one was from alabama. how funny!


We did get to squeeze in touring some nearby towns and cities. Some of it was just to show me around so I knew where I was going and some was just for fun exploring.

I'll include those in my next posts! It's just about time I got this one out w/ pics of our neighborhood!