Beautiful table!
Jack carving the bird
Wow. And people wonder why we don't shop at the grocery store in our smalltown. Why we don't travel constantly or shop the Christmas markets coming soon. The thing is, everything looks about the same pricewise, and your mind sees one euro and says to itself Oh, one dollar. Not so.
Price tag says 10 euro? That's $15.38. You get 100 Euro out of the bank and it shows on your debit receipt $154. (plus any fee you might incur!)
When we got here it was 85 euro cents to the dollar. So our buying power has decreased by 20% since August 2006. Which also means all our bills (rent, phone, elec and gas) have increased 20% as we pay them in euro and we are paid in dollars.
This is not to say "send money now!" We are doing fine. I have a new job that pays significantly more than the last one and I think our COLA (cost of living allowance) may have gone up a tiny bit. I just wanted to try to explain the economics of the situation. The good news is that as long as we are shopping on post we don't pay tax! :)
October 14 I posted that I was going to start eating more healthy, exercising and losing some weight. Well, I don't have numbers, but I know that some of my clothes are fitting better...or fitting! and a couple of people have told me that I look like I'm losing weight. I'm not visiting the gym as I had said, but we are going to try to remedy that situation soon!
The especially good thing is that I feel better. I take my lunch each day to work, eat whole grains, fruit, veggies, etc. I still love the salt and the red meat, but I'm okay with that!
So, there's my update!
Last "winter", it didn't snow until the second day of Spring. Yesterday, Nov 14, it snowed!!! Really and truly! It didn't stick on the ground, but then I guess it did it again last night because there was a thin layer on the truck and yard. COOL! I would post a picture, but its still on the camera and I'm too lazy to get it off right this minute! :)
aside, it was fun to meet new people and do something different in a different place. 
Quan, our not-so-brilliant waitress at dinner was having some trouble. Wrong appetizer, almost an hour after we ordered it, and then there was Jim's steak...It was over done for the first thing, but he sure wasn't going to send it back and have to wait another hour, so he said it was fine. Minutes later, here she comes again with another one. She seemed to want him to trade it out. He explained that it was fine and she finally got the message across that she wanted him to keep them both by saying, "no, because you meat, too small!!!" We all had a good laugh and then took many pictures of one another with her in the background trying to get a picture of her!
Just after our visit from Wade, Nik and Jim were a couple hours north of us! Jim had a trade show in Dusseldorf, and they were staying in the neighboring town of Bonn. So, Saturday morning we drove up and met them to spend the day! We went to the wine country, tasted some great wine (and a couple grapes for Nik and I!), had a great lunch, walked around a small town, went to a wine festival, had dinner back in Bonn and then parted ways. It was wonderful to see them and we had a great time! Here are a few pics:
For more photos, click here: http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?Uc=11pcpqol.70h23j0h&Uy=mnyxmw&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&mode=fromshare&conn_speed=1
Looks like I got told in my comments that it was time to update! You are quite correct Aunt Paulette, I'm on it!
