Coleman here- sorry we have been totally neglecting our blog. We've got a lot of catching up to do. Since Christmas travels with Meredith I've been to Turkey (again), Kristen has been to Poland, we've been to Las Vegas, Paris, Nuremberg, and the Bavarian Alps. It has been an eventful spring and Summer. Following Kristen's recent recovery and my early return from the states we are planning a trip to Burgundy and Alsace to do some wine-tourism. So, don't give up on us yet. Keep checking here for rapid fire updates and lots of pictures from the past several months.

Catching Up

It has been a really long time since we made our last edition to the web page. Since our last post we have had a great vacation with Meredith, moved into a new house and Coleman has done a lot of travelling for his job. Things have finally settled down enough now that I can begin to work on the blog again. Be sure to look for pictures of our new house on the web site soon. In the meantime enjoy the pictures from our vacation - we travelled to Rothenburg, and Paris with Meredith as well as our local stomping grounds, Trier.

Bernkastel Christmas Market

With the beginning of the Christmas season Christmas Markets are springing up all over Europe. This market opened in the town of Bernkastel, about 30 minutes from our house, on the Mosel River. The old town was covered in decorations, including the massive Christmas tree in the main town square and one half-timbered building turned into one big Advent calendar. Spiced hot wine (Gluhwein) is for sale in mugs as well as all manner of Christmas ornaments and crafts. Traditional Christmas carols were being played throughout the town- in German of course.

A man, his love. . . and his wife

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving we got to go out and take some family pictures with the Vipers. The jets are parked in bomb-proof shelters called HAS's (Hardened Aircraft Shelters)- proof that this base was once on the front line of the cold war. The weather has turned colder but getting to take a few photos out by the jet is too good to pass up. In addition to the family pictures all the wives in the squadron brought appetizers and desserts (as well as all the kids) and we had a little pre-Thanksgiving Day celebration.

Friends

Here we are grape picking with Margaret. Margaret is a good friend of ours that also lives in the same town that we do. She has a cute lab named Gretta and our Baylor really likes to play with her. We promised Margaret that if she would take us to to cut down a Christmas tree with her squadron we would take her grape picking with ours.

In the Grape Fields

Grape Picking

Look for more grape picking pictures soon.

Amsterdam

A couple of weeks ago Coleman and I went to Amsterdam for a long weekend. We stayed at a little B&B outside of town and took the Subway into town each morning. It took us about a day to figure out transportation and then it was smooth sailing - except for the rain. It rained almost the whole time that we were there. We had planned a bike tour of Amsterdam for Sunday morning and that day it was pouring. Our bike tour took about 4 hours, and there we were dressed in jeans and completely soaked. We really enjoyed Amsterdam despite the fact that we were soggy all weekend, and we are definitely going to go back soon. The museums and the architecture are really amazing. On our trip we also developed a mutual love of fine art and exceptional beer - Holland definitely has our seal of approval. (By the way, you haven't had a good beer until you have had a Heineken in Amsterdam.)

I heard it through the grapevine...

This Columbus Day weekend our squadron went out to Weingut Sebastiani's vineyards to do some grape picking for the squadron wine. Every year Sebastiani has given the "Stingers" a chance to pick the very grapes that get turned into next year's Reisling with our own squadron label on the front. We had a blast picking the grapes!! I have never been stickier in my life but it was so much fun. I never knew how much work went into picking the grapes. In two hours our squadron had picked an area that would have taken the workers 8 hours to complete.

Trial Run

Coleman and I have so many great pictures and stories that we wanted a way to share them all with our friends and family. I think that this would be a great way to do it. We will try to post new pictures and stories once a week ( once we have figured out how) to keep everyone updated on how we are and what we are up to. Let us know what you think about the page.