Ohhh la la

Well looky here..it's 2010! I guess 2009 started to become out of style and it was time to switch  some big gears. Seriously, how fast did 2009 fly by?

It's currently..hmm..1:17am here in Belgium. Being my ever so blondy self, I crashed out at the wee hours of 6pm (Yes, I know. I'm a rock star) and I managed to wake up ten minutes after midnight. Atleast Eric stumbled into the bedroom and gave me a sloppy New Years kiss. No, he wasn't drunk.. the room is just pitch black and we normally stub our toes on the bed banisters no matter how hard we try NOT to, lol. That or we trip over our Turkish runner...

My neighbor has been playing "Hey Macarena" for the last almost hour and twenty minutes. I'm going to have to assume they passed out from heavy drinking or let's atleast hope that's the case. That has to be the reason...who the hell can listen to that song that much!? Fireworks are still being shot off in my neck of the woods...atleast I can look out my kitchen window and I can see some of the different towns firing off for their light shows :)

All in all, 2009 was a pretty good year!

I have a few "resolutions" for 2010:

- Average walking 12 miles a week. I know, it sounds like alot..but when you think about it.. that's about 2.3ish miles a day (for 5 days, not 7). Aw hell, let's make it 14 miles a week...that way, I'll just do 2 miles a day for 7 days a week....and lemme clarify: This is for while I'm in the gym..this doesn't include while I'm out and about with my usual routines and errands!

- Less time on Facebook. Why are you laughing? Facebook has become rather addictive, especially since they introduced "Farmville" and "Bouncing Balls". WAY too much of my life has been wasted on that site, although it's helped me stay in touch with friends from back in the states...still...it's sucked MANY hours from my life that I'll never get back. Sadly, I can say that I think it was one of the culprits for making my ass a little wider over this past year *sigh*

- Travel more. Yes, I know I travel as is, but not nearly as much as I want to. Mainly, since Eric works alot, it's hard to get him to actually out of the house (aside from the drive to Schinnen).  So, I'm hoping we'll get out and see more countries since we'll be here for another two years. Sure, it's two years and I know it "sounds" like a long time.....but this first year flew by! Before we know it, we'll be getting orders to move again.. and who's to say our next place won't be stateside? I rather hammer out all my overseas traveling while I'm within a reasonable flight time verses moving all the way back to the states then saying "Man, I really wish we went to Spain..Greece...Ireland...etc".

That's all I can think of in terms of my "resolutions". I hope everyone had / has a happy and fantastic New Years, don't get too drunk cause starting out a brand new year with a hangover isn't exactly thrilling!

Love,
E

*Funny thing is, I'm posting this on January 1st 2010 in MY time, but Blogger begs to differ and says it's Dec. 31st. BOO!*

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Ahhh

Dear Money,

    I love you more than words can describe. We've had the best of times, then we've had the worst of times. There's times where you're there for me. Then, there's times where you've abandoned me without any consideration.....after all that's happened, we're still there for one another.

     I'm sad to say, that, we shall be parting ways once again. Yes, it's true. I've found things that I cannot live without, which means, I'll shall be parting with you. Please don't cry.. you know how I hate it when you do that. It not only breaks my heart, but it makes you look rather pitiful. How can I do this to you? It's easy.... and no.. it's not human trafficing, it's hats:

Bought this one:

And this one.. LOVE the pom pom!

This is the next one I wanna get:

Love this, but it's on my wishlist

As well as this one:

I'm SO torn as to which of these particular gnomb hats I should get! Sure, I could buy 'em all, but they're $60 a pop. If I got every single one I wanted, that'd be $300...I REALLY can't validate that type of spending on hats! I'm leaning heavily on the red (looks like little red riding hood) or the charchol gray one...but I dunno! They're all so cute!

So, money.... I hope you can understand my justification for giving you a new home with someone else. I'm POSITIVE you'll be happier in their bank account rather than mine. You'll have more dollar bills to relate to, other little monies that have ventured and seen different parts of the world. I know you love me, I know..but this is the best for both of us. Trust me. We'll meet again someday.

Love,
Erika

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Oh My Gah!

This just made my Christmas a bazillion times better!

I know you're probably thinking "Uh, Erika. It's Starbucks." ....yes yes.. it's Starbucks. Sadly, the nearest Starbucks to us is an hour in one direction, or an hour and a half in another. So, it's usually a nice treat to have when we happen to be in either of those directions, lol.

When Eric and I were at Brussels International Airport the other day dropping off a friend of ours, we happened to take advantage of the fact that they actually have a Starbucks there. In the midst of waiting in line, I noticed they had a small bottle of Caramel syrup for sale. I ended up buying it since I usually make knock off mochas at home with the Senseo machine and nesquick. Man oh man.. am I ever happy I did that! LOVE that caramel syrup!

I went on starbucks.com today and started pluggin' around the site...low and behold, they sell the syrups. Not only do they sell the syrup, but they sell them in the 1 litre bottle with the pumps! AH!!! EVEN BETTER??? They ship to APO's!!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! :D :D :D :D

I officially have a bottle of Hazelnut, Vanilla, Caramel and Peppermint on it's way here! I'm gonna be a wanna-be Starbucks makin' machine!

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It's the simple things....

I love my life :)

By the way, this was taken at 9:45 in the morning...

Macie wanting to play with Eric out in the yard. That dog LOVES the snow! She keeps begging to go outside and play in it!

My little "tank-a-saurous-rex" ..Cole had a good time plowing through the little "hills" of snow we had in various parts of the yard.

Eric madly inlove with our shipment of firewood. Not bad for 60 €, hunh??

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Thaaaaaaaank Youuuuuuuu

Photo by Basic Beauty Photography aka Shannon Bjorgaard

It's finally starting to snow in Belgie! I'm so excited!!! When we were on our way to Bruge yesterday, the countryside had blankets of snow in various area's and I was showing a slight hint of jealousy.

Well....it's finally our turn!!!

Down the street

Other direction on our street

I gotta admit something rather mean.... our neighbor across the street has a Ford Lightening with low profile tires. So, when it comes to those types of tires in snow.. they're rather useless. Well, Eric and I had the rolling rolanda's up on the windows so we could watch the snow fall when we happened to see our neighbor attempt to pull up to his house. He managed to make it half way up, then he stopped. By stopping, his truck started to slide back (we have a good 6-7 inches of snow out there right now). He slid down 3 times, almost fish tailed into his house, backed up into our driveway and floored it only to slide yet again... then he tried to back in and that didn't work, lol. He gave up for a lil bit and just parked infront of his house with the hazard lights on, only to come back with a snow shovel and exxert some energy into getting the snow off his driveway. Once he wore himself out doing that, he attempted some more to get the truck into it's rightful spot...sadly, no success. All the while, here's Eric and I monologging all the events like we're sport broadcasters...lol.. so evil.

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In Bruge

I gotta say, this is a fantastic movie and when we initially planned our trip to Bruge, I kept this movie in the back of my mind cause of all the scenes and such with the old buildings... if you haven't seen this, I HIGHLY reccommend it! Just ignore the parts where they say , "Bruge is a fucking shithole. A shithole".

Anyway..

Yesterday was the day that we ventured off to good ol Bruge. We actually went on a bus that was chartered through our base....so it was nice not having to do the three hour drive in MY car, lol

Despite our bus driver being 30ish minutes late, we still made really good time! He managed to get a parking a spot within a reasonable walking distance from the Ice Sculpture event. Keep in mind, the climate averaged 17*, so thank GOD we layered up with thermal gear before we left..even with that stuff on, we were quite on the chilly side.

This years theme was "Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs". I gotta say, I was VERY impressed with all the ice carvings! Here's some pic's:

Here's an overhead shot of the whole exibit that was in a borchure they gave us. You can kinda figure out which parts I was in when I was taking pictures, lol

This made me snicker considering this was in a brochure meant for kids:

I love how there's one random red head...then the last gal on the right is wearing a classy shell skirt, lol. Ahhh Europe, how I love thee..

This was the entry way into the exibit

I was totally inlove with this! Whoever was incharge of sculpting this did an amazing job! The bones came out of both sides of the ice blocks (the ice exibit was like a maze).

A conga line of three baby dino's

Sid the Sloth and three dino eggs

Eric was being a meanie pants and said this was an ice sculpture of my dachshund, Cole. I admit, Cole has gotten a lil on the chunky side, but come on!

t-rex

Peaches, the baby Mammoth

Between all of the other stampeding tourists, we managed to get a picture of all of us infront of Manny, Ellie and Peaches. See the guy on the right side of the pic? Yeah, he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings and kept walking infront of us every time we were about to have our pic taken. TOURISTS!

*RAWR*

Badass ice slide

She-Scrat

Ice bar

Now.... I knew before we left for the trip that it was gonn be chilly, but man....I was starting to lose feelings in my fingers ( I had cold weather gloves on, mind you ). There were parts of the day where I was ok with the cold, then there were parts where it was flat out freezing me to the core. By the time we got out of the ice exibit, the 17* weather outside felt WARM! lol

We were walking down one of the main streets in Bruge to find their Christmas market...then we stepped off a corner and saw this:

It's monsterous! I felt like I was practically breaking my neck to stare up at the bell tower!

Front part of the church

Comin' up on the market

The sky cleared up for just a few minutes.. was kinda random and weird, lol

After trollin' around downtown Bruge, we finally found a place that wasn't packed to the gills so we could get a bite to eat.  I wish I could've taken pictures while we were inside, but I felt a lil out of place in there as it was, lol. The waitors were dressed in tuxes, VERY professional (as in terms of a 5 star restraunt) and very quick with taking care of any of your requests. Not only that, but the staff spoke atleast 3 different languages...English, French and Italian. The Matradee spoke ATLEAST 5 different languages. When you walked in, he greeted you and asked what your language preference is, then would seat you. When you were finished with your meal, he'd help you with your coat and talk to you in the language you told him you were comfortable with. From what I saw, he spoke English, Netherlander, Flemish, German, Italian, Spanish and French. Our particular waitor was such a sweetheart, I wanted to take him home, lol. He was French, but spoke pretty decent English...there were parts where he had a hard time translating, but he TRIED so hard! SUCH a nice guy!

Err.....our bill....

Once we were able to regain consciousness, we continued venturing around the centrum..

All in all, Bruge was VERY pretty to see. Although, VERY cold. Our whole reason for going to Bruge was to check out their Christmas market cause I heard how awesome it was, but, it was kind of a let down to me. In fact, I think Aachens Christmas market kicks a whole lotta ass compared to the other ones I've been to. I didn't even end up with my typical souvenier shot glass considering I couldnt find a store that had any. Most of the stores they had there were either over priced clothing stores, chocolatier places, or cafes. We chilled out in a cafe for about an hour considering we REALLY needed to defrost...tis' the Euro life, right? Overall, I was kinda disappointed with the shopping (for Christmas stuff) since the majority of the vendors that WERE there were either selling food, or hats / gloves.

SO, if we were to go back to Bruge, I'll most likely do it in the Spring..in the middle of the week when there isn't a hord of tourists. I can't tell you how many times I was bumped into the street due to people funneling down the sidewalk, which were already narrow as is. It was kind of a madhouse and it wasn't exactly plesant dealing with rude europeans shoving and jamming their way infront of me, behind me, and essentually giving me a physical when I wasnt entirely in the market for one.

Bruge is a lovely place, don't get me wrong, but I highly suggest that you don't go there during a weekend. Especially on a Christmas Market weekend.

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