Finally!

Alright.  We’re back.  Finally we are done with the summer season.  We have enjoyed all of our guests that have come out and visited us, but it is nice now to be able to go to the bathroom with the door open and to be able to eat breakfast in my underwear.  But with our family coming out, it gave us the opportunity to see more of Europe. 

Lindsay’s mom came out to here for a couple weeks and they did quite a bit of traveling.  All of us went down to Garmisch (down my Munich, Germany) and stayed at a resort at the base of the Zugspitz. 

Pretty sweet view from our balcony, eh?

I can’t really complain about the place…high altitude, sweet view from our room and balcony, and the rivers were beautiful!  It really made me homesick for the Rockies and being up on a stream with a fly rod in hand.  Alas, that time will come soon enough.  Seeing these majestic lanscapes really awes me that we live in such a beautiful earth and should be grateful for what we have and what we’ve been given from our Creator.  He’s done a pretty darn good job at making a world for us to live in – be a good steward!  Especially don’t litter if you’re ice fishing…

 

The Dachau concentration camp was also nearby.  What a change of scenery from the Alps.  You could not, nor dare not, feel anything but pain and anguish within it’s walls.  Going through the museum part of the camp, one cannot believe what they went through.  You see pictures and read journals, but really, can you fathom what they went through?  It was horrible.  The gas chamber and the incinerators are still there and that really tops it off.  Where was humanity?  Where was the fear of a post life judgement?  The place was horrible, but Lindsay and I are both very glad we went there.  One, we gain an appreciation for those that suffered and endured and now share their story, and also gives us appreciation for what we have today and the freedoms that we take for granted each day.  We can worship freely, can look different and not get dragged off; really, we can be whoever we want to be.

To end on a better note: Brynn is CRAZY!  Yes, Lindsay and I are obviously her parents, but the little squirt is very much a busy body.  No complaints here…she helps out with cleaning up her toys, will clean the tile floor if she gets a hold of a wet wipe or towel, and goes to bed without whining.  We have a good girl and wouldn’t trade her for anything (but I’ll listen if you have an offer).  She just started pre pre-school and also dance class.  She loves it!

Trying out her tap shoes for the first time

Actually posing for once - I normally only capture the back of her head!

Brian Regan makes me go hee hee

our good friends the nielsens introduced us to this hilarious comedian brian regan and if you haven’t heard him before look him up on youtube! he is so funny and clean which is hard to find these days. my friend kristine let me borrow one of his cd’s recently and for the past week that’s all i listen to in the car with brynn. i bet i look pretty funny driving on the autobahn hysterically laughing out loud while a confused toddler is behind me praying that the people next to me will help her mommy change the selection to raffi.

here’s a funny clip that gets steve and i dying everytime:
(i tried to post it but its not working?!! why cant i figure this blog stuff out? its so much easier to post videos on myspace and facebook…)
so you’ll have to follow this link instead:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A194vDpXzyA

things are pretty good here. we take our car back into the dealership this thursday so hopefully they can fix the problem.

Brynn’s Two!

ugghhh…sorry i havent been better about blogging! everday i promise myself that i will sit down after we put brynn down for bed and get on here but i get distracted with things i need to do around here. so much for trying to get at least 2 posts in a week! i’ll try to bring you all up to speed since our last post.
we’ll, our 4th of july went well. we went to the raybon’s house in bickendorf (which is in a nearby village towards the autobahn) for a BBQ with lots of friends from the ward. it was fun and the weather wasnt crappy for once! i was really paranoid about brynn running into the street (they live at the bottom of a hill on a curve) as there are a lot of cars that never seem to slow down and we were outside in her driveway partyin’ it up. its hard to enjoy yourself when youre watching a toddler like a hawk! so steve and i switched off that duty so at least one of us could socialize at a time. brynn was hamming it up and showing off her skills to everyone around. when i say skills i mean farting on command and showing everyone her belly button. ehhh, what to you expect with parents like steve and i? hahahahaha poor child! at 10:30pm on base, they had a fireworks show but we didnt make it as brynn was getting crabby at 9:00pm so we opted to head home. it has been 3 years now since we saw a fireworks show!!! so sad! i wasnt big on fireworks but since living in germany, i miss it! i miss going to the indian reservations in washington state and getting cheapy bottle rockets and bricks of black cats so i could watch my brothers light them off. im too afraid to do it! i had an experience when i was younger where a bottle rocket flew into my chest and since then ive opted to watch from the sides.
we took our car into a mechanic in binsfeld monday night and heard back from them on thursday (yesterday) that the cooler needs to be replaced. i didnt know that there was such a part like that in a car? maybe its the translation from german to english? i dunno…but the part wont be in till next week so we went back and got our car as ive been going insane being stuck at home all week isolated! whats weird is now that weird high pitch noise i had heard the past 2 weeks is now gone! so who knows whats going on…i hate cars problems!

brynn turned 2 on wednesday july 9th and we celebrated by having some friends over to help us eat the elmo cake and elmo cupcakes that i made! i spent all morning trying to get my frosting to turn red ( it was pink! i tried sooo many things but eventually gave up. a pink elmo would have to do) and then the other half of the day was spent frosting all the cupcakes and cake. it was long and my wrist kept cramping up…but it was all worth it. brynn was thrilled when i lifted her up to the counter to see it for the first time. to say the least, she was pretty excited to have an elmo cake. we also got her a big balloon bouquet complete with 2 elmo balloons and 12 solid ones. can you believe that the craft store on base charged us $10 EACH elmo balloon to blow them up?! YEAH! RIDICULOUS! i guess when you dont have competition, you can charge crazy amounts like that. stupid, as i brought the balloons in! i wasnt buying their balloons, just needed some helium! ugh….oh well.
we also received a package from steves parents FULL of elmo paraphernalia on her birthday! i was happy to get all of the fun stuff that louise found at tj maxx (again, im so jealous that you guys can shop their whenever you want! UGH not fair!). brynn loves the elmo puppet book (elmo is into everything these days…) and the elmo potty book! she carries them to and from her room to the living room along with her elmo stuffed animal that she received from steve and i.

brynn had a great time and we were happy that everyone was able to come over and help us celebrate. sadly, i had to throw the leftover elmo cake away this morning as i have no self control and have been eating cake the last 3 days!!! ugh…so much for trying to lose a pound this week.

oh, some exciting news! while i was at the gym today working out with jessica (i started with a personal trainer a few weeks ago to help me tone up and get rid of my baggy stomach) i heard that billy blanks (creator of taebo) is coming to spangdahlem to teach an aerobics class! thats so rad! i hear he will also be available to take pictures and sign autographs so i hope i can get a picture with him. i have a few of his dvd’s and they KILL ME! so i should probably review them as i dont want to be the one falling behind while he’s teaching. i was pretty excited about this! im trying to convince steve to go with me but he isnt into aerobic’s classes…too bad! this is going to be awesome! he comes on saturday, the 26th of this month so it will be good as my birthday is the day before so i’ll need some butt kickin’ to get rid of the extra calories from cake!

tomorrow is our 5 year anniversary! so crazy how time flys! i was looking at pictures of steve and i outside the temple and it seems like it wasnt that long ago.

Car Problems

so last week i noticed that my car was making these really high pitched noises when i drove at slower speeds…and since then it has been getting worse! UGH! i hate when our cars are having issues as steve and i are completely clueless about what it could be. its scary as we could totally be ripped off by a mechanic and not know. well, i left my car on base last night after working out and drove home with steve so im stranded here. it wouldnt be so bad except that today is FRIGGIN hot (especially for germany) and im wishing i could go to a pool with brynn and cool off. yes, i said i wish was i at a pool! and those who know me know that i hate being at pools! but im desperate and want to cool off…good thing steve is off tomorrow and friday as i’ll have that option.

this past week was insane! steve and i volunteered to watch the schmidbauer kids (4 of them ages 16,15,10 and 8) as their parents were in paris on a little getaway. well, i also had told a friend of mine from indiana that he could come and visit us too thinking it would be the week after our babysitting gig. well, NO! it was all the same week so we were all over the place making sure everyone else was taken care of and happy. its a good thing we have a WII as that entertainted the three boys the whole week! although i feel guilty as we didnt do a whole lot with them…it was hard as i was needed in two places at the same time. steve did take the boys away for a few hours to see KISS at the brickhouse on base (as mentioned below) and during that time i took the girl (kelly) to cascades pool with brynn and i. that place was rad! i had never been there before as i HATE pools and having anything to do with a bathing suit. i worried that brynn wouldn’t be loving it but she had a blast! this place is full of different pools, hot tubs, and children’s area’s so it was impossible to get bored. the children’s area was pretty fun as they had a slide and lots of different water spouts that brynn kept trying to plug up with her chubby fingers! i wish i had brought my camera but i didn’t…(so i grabbed a picture from their website)

steve spent the night at the house with the kids every night so we didn’t see him too much here. it really affected brynn as he normally puts her to bed every night (nice huh? he loves doing it) so she was crying for him at night until she fell asleep.

so as for the car, we are taking it into a shop in binsfeld in hopes that they may be able to help us. steve has heard good things about this shop so i hope they don’t rip us off. im praying that its nothing too expensive!

i bought the 3rd season of “arrested development” so steve and i have been watching a few episodes a night. it is the funniest show i have ever seen! i have no idea why the show was cancelled…last night we watched an episode where tobias makes business cards with his “new” job title; analrapist (he considers himself a therapist and an analyst so decided to put them together to make it sound catchy). its flippin‘ hilarious!!! if you watch it, then you’ll know what im talking about.

today brynn found a pen and decided to draw all over her legs. i panicked as i was sure she had drawn all over the furniture but luckily her legs were the only things marked up. this picture hardly shows the damage as it was taken a few hours after she “colored” herself. she was pretty proud of her artwork.

our cat mango HATES to be bothered while relaxin‘ in her window but brynn LOVES to brush her and bring her toys. its pretty funny as mango hisses the whole time but brynn laughs and squeals with each unfriendly outburst! this picture was taken last week on one of our daily visits to mango to fix her unruly hair.

hope everyone is doing well and making fun plans for the 4th! we wish we were in the states so we could buy fireworks and let them off! obviously we can’t buy those out here…

Guitar of Destiny

KISS, Gods of Rock (yes, I know there is only one true God; I use this term to define that they’re supreme in the Rock arena of things…), played in Luxemburg. No, I didn’t get to go or even try to go – lots going on around here. BUT, they decided to stop by Spangdahlem AB on their way down to their concert to say hi to the troops. Yes, I had to be there for this!! As there was some military aircraft on the runway, they arrived to their location on base an hour late, but arrive they did! None of their traditional makeup, but that 70′s-80′s rocker hair style was still very much in fashion for them – you gotta love it. I brought my Wii GuitarHero III guitar and had that signed by all four of them – I now can do amazing riffs and intense scales that can blow your mind with the guitar. Their signatures have bestowed a Rock Power upon the guitar. Thanks KISS for your time in coming over! You guys shall rock forever more.

My telephoto lens came in for my new DSLR camera – love it even more! I plan on taking some pics of the wildlife out here – particularly the rehwild (roe deer). Then I can blast them after. Ha ha…just kidding, kind of. Brynn and I went on a walk today and it was just gorgeous out there. Sometimes I forget about how nice things really are. I get wrapped up with thinking about work, about upcoming suspenses, about personnel reports, all important things but they can take you away from the most important things – your family. It was good to get out there and spend some time with Brynn and laugh and sing with her and make her say funny things. She is my offspring – she can fart on command and I’m so proud of that. She loves it too. Daddy’s little princess!

Oh, The Lord of the Rings trilogy are good movies by the way. I don’t know what Lindsay has against Frodo’s posse. I know deep down she thinks those elfs are hot and wishes I had long hair and femmy faces.

Highlights of Paris

Alright Peterson family, you’ll be able to see/feel where I’m coming from with this. This is a picture of Dad sitting right behind me (the driver) on our way into Paris. What do you naturally think when you see this? I for one would say, “What a nice man – he’s probably entertaining his grandchild or something.” Let me elaborate. We’d been driving (I was driving the whole time) for about 4.5 hours and were in bumper to bumper traffic leading into Paris. I think Dad was getting a bit stir-crazy as he was sitting next to Brynn and all she wanted to do was play “hide”; that’s where you get under her blanket and whisper “hide! hide!” over and over and over again. She likes it. So, after an hour or two with that, Dad opened his radius of entertainment. In the lane next to us, there was a car with another toddler. Using the closest stuffed animal as a prop, he rolled down the window a bit and made the elephant start dancing. Nice, nice. We pulled forward and we’re next to another car. Again, one would think that the elephant would reclude back into the safety of the car. Quite contraire!! Mr Elephant started dancing for whoever we were next to. Truck drivers, business men, teenagers, the works. Luckily our car has German plates on it, so the French won’t think that the Americans are a bunch of wierdos. German/French relations are already in the crapper. Brynn had no clue what was going on – but Mom was laughing so hard that she was crying. Linds and I on the other hand were embarrassed – especially me being on the same side of traffic has him. This proves the point – no matter how old you are, parents are there to always make you blush and get embarrassed, but in a loving way of course. It’s true, I’ve already started my destiny of Head Embarrasser in this household with Brynn. Dad & Mom – we love you and thanks for the laughter!!

Here’s some more pics of the lovely Parisian art. After the Louvre, we were out in a park eating lunch and Brynn had a blast chasing pidgeons. Common activity all across Paris. Brynn saw this nice statue and wanted to pose the same as her (with a little parental coaxing).

Longest Day of the Year!

(the picture above in the middle is our place where we’re currently living)

literally…i guess june 21st is the sommer solstice so that explains why it is 9:30 at night as i type this and outside it looks like its noon! geez…putting brynn to bed was NOT FUN as her room was fully lit and she was fighting me to get in her crib. wish i had those roladins like every other person in germany has! is our apartment the only place in this area without them? yeah, the 3 layers of ghetto sheets over her windows arent doing their job at keeping it dark in her room…

so yeah, other than that, things are puuurdy good here. steve and i headed down to landstuhl/ramstein area today to looks at bikes (he really wants to get a trek bike so he can pull brynn behind him in one of those trailers) and checkout the sale that european country living was having. DUDE! i love that store! i wish i could get everything they carry! we did however put money down on a table and bench (we couldnt decide on what chairs would look best…so rather then getting something we didnt like, we decided to hold off and check back in the next few months to see if they get any different styles in) as with the sale and a VAT form we saved about 40%. we are super excited about this table! cant wait to see how it looks in our place. im not into the antiques that a lot of people get while here, so im happy to have found a store thats more of my style; simple and clean.

http://www.europeancountryliving.de/

we had an american family move in this past week to the apartment behind us and they are super rad. they have 3 girls (ages 4, 7, and 13? cant remember…) and are really laid back and nice. we are really excited to have american neighbors this close as sometimes it helps with the isolation that some people feel if not living on base. luckily, i have not had that problem too much since getting tv back in the summer of 2006 as oprah and tyra banks have become my best friends! hahahaha! yeah, im addicted…its nice to feel connected to the states and hear/see whats going on back home.

so yeah, brynn was THRILLED to see that there are kids living by us now (because everyone knows that europeans dont have kids…dogs are more important). she was running full speed up and down the sidewalk between our two apartments screaming (happy joyful screams!) and flailing her arms as the other 3 girls starred at her…hahahaha, yeah shes nuts. i bet that family is like, “dude, this will be interesting to live next to these people!” WELCOME TO GERMANY BABY!!!

HELP! does anyone know how to post pictures on here without having them show up at the top of a post? im trying to space them out so i can explain each picture…

London Recap

lindsay here…as you can tell, im lazy and dont worry too much with the grammar thing! ehh, get used to it! writing/typing guud is overrated!

well, like steve said below, i left him for the weekend and went to london with some friends. it was so needed! i seriously needed to get away and have fun without stressing about brynn and rechecking to make sure i have everything for her. it was nice to travel without a stroller&carseat&diaper bag! amazing how much lighter the load is without all that stuff! i did feel guilty however being gone half of father’s day, but steve was cool about it. im grateful that he is so laid back and ok with me getting away every now and then. if it wasnt for that, i would for sure have ran away by now! he’s great…i love him to death!
so yeah, london was wonderful! we left at 3 AM saturday morning, as we had to drive about an hour away to get to the frankfurt/hahn airport, so you can imagine how delerius and giddy we all were on no sleep! we did get a lot of dirty looks from the germans while in line at the airport waiting to board…it was pretty funny! leave it to us to represent them loud obnoxious americans!

traveling with emily, margaret, and gavrila was great. we all have the same sense of humor and kept cracking each other up with quotes from movies and random inside jokes. we will definately miss gavrila as she heads back to the states here in a few days to be with family as her husband is currently deployed. she always puts a smile on my face and makes everyone around her laugh. plus, she is super hot! look at them baby blues!!!

we had a pretty big shock as we were crossing a busy street on our way to see big ben and the houses of parliament…in the distance we could see a huge parade coming our way being escorted by a bunch of london police on bikes. we thought, “sweet! a parade!!! maybe they will throw us some candy!” uhhh…NOT! it was a group of naked/semi nude bikers and rollerbladers!!! TALK ABOUT UNEXPECTED!!! we were dying from laughing as it totally caught us off guard! i guess they were protesting againist oil dependency and celebrating “body freedom”. it was unreal…i will never forget london thats for sure!

i will post more pictures from the trip once i figure out how to blog! im excited about joining the ranks (as heidi calls it)! this will motivate me to journal about life for us.

First of who knows??

This is the Steve portion of this family – the rockin family Patriarch! ha ha -

Well, Father’s Day was good. I was able to be a father – a single father!! Lindsay decided that her and three friends were going to go up to London for Saturday and Sunday to be crazy. That idea was crazy, in my eyes. Ahhh…it was all good. Brynn and I hung out and I actually bought a new camera. I ended up getting the Canon Rebel XTi and I love it. I’ve always wanted to get into SLR realm of photography and this digital is great start up camera. Maybe I’ll get some pics up later.

Today (Monday) we have a day off, so we might go down to Luxemburg or find some park for Brynn as she loves slides. If it was a Elmo slide, I think she’d be in love…

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