Breaking News | We Know Our Next Base!

Okay so in all the excitement of my parents coming to visit I decided to wait to tell YOU where our next base is going to be so that I could tell them in person.  

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But we've known for awhile now...


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WE'RE STAYING IN GERMANY!!!!!!!  I know, crazy, right?  That's probably not what anyone was expecting haha.  Or maybe you were, I don't know.  That's definitely not what WE were expecting.  Remember all that talk about how excited I was to be back in that States and how much I was itching to get closer to family and how many things about Germany drive me crazy?

Well.  When push came to shove we just couldn't bear the thought of leaving this amazing village... this amazing house... and this amazing community.  Our Air Force family here is too good to be true.  Too good to voluntarily leave.  So what did we do?  We volunteered to stay!  

The more we talked about it and thought about it the more we realized we weren't quite ready to head back to the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.  We'll be back someday.  And once we're there, we'll probably never leave again!  So why not stay here a little while longer?  More travel and more German culture to love, more friends to grow with and love.

The other tidbit of family news is that Jesse re-enlisted for four more years in the good old AF (which is how it was possible for us to choose to stay here longer.)  So for the first time in our marriage, we are NOT moving any time soon!  How crazy is that?

We're planning on really jumping into Germany (again)... I went through that "oh well I guess I don't have time to learn German before we leave so I'll just give up" phase, but NO MORE!

We decided to send the girls to German kindergarten, which is like pre-k in the States... so really it's just organized play time, but an awesome chance for the girls to learn German (for free!) and while they're at school in the mornings this Momma's going to learn German, too.  Classes, cds, and more Rosetta Stone!

I'm pretty excited for Lily and Sam.  Their first memories will be of Germany.  By the time we leave here, they'll be 6 and 7... and probably fluent in German!  They will have culture shock when we get back to the States finally because they won't understand that there are no hard boiled "Easter Eggs" for sale at the grocery store.  Or that we can't walk everywhere.  OR that the good bakeries aren't cheap!

So that's our big news:  Germany until 2017!  Kind of crazy to think about.  And I'm probably going to be punching myself in the face in about 4 months when it's cold and dark for most of the day and I'm like "tell me why we CHOSE this?" and when I'm homesick and extended family is still a loooong plane flight away.

But all in all, I'm excited.  Very excited.  Looks like "There and Back Again" isn't going to be back again just yet!  Bring on the pretzels!