PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES

!!WE ARE HOME!!!
Everyone said that the flight/traveling to get home would seem the longest, and boy were they right! Last November we received a VERY nice ‘surprise check’ from our mortgage bank, informing us that the Sep. 07 – Oct. 08 year they had been overcharging us with silly fees and whatnot. So they ended up paying us back for all the money they over charged us with, AND it ended up lowering our mortgage monthly payment by almost 3 hundred bucks! YAHOO!! With the way the worlds money is going these days, every little bit counts! SO what would most responsible adults do when they come into such money? -Put that money back into their house? –Payoff vehicles? – Savings? !!!!!!!!!! NO !!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!! VACATION!!!!!! –so like the responsible adults that we are we went on a vacation! :) After 2 weeks of trying to decide where we wanted to go we ended up deciding on two places. Germany and Italy. Germany for the ski/snowboarding, and Italy for the sun and obvious beauty. I did all the planning myself. –Well that would just be a lie, it was ALL Gods work! From every bit of planning from the smallest detail to the biggest, it was all him leading me to the good deals, good ideas, and timing!! I don’t know how people can plan things like this and even bigger events without going to HIM first!? …
We end on Garmisch, Germany and Sorrento Italy. Two VERY VERY VEEEEEEERY different places in the world! Such opposite sites but equally beautiful! Garmisch was full of snow, especially up at the top of Zugspitze (Zoog-spits). Up at 2962 Meters it is the TOP of Germany! It is impossible to explain the beauty of the Alps! All I can say is that you LITTERALY SEE NOTHING but mountains AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE in almost all 360degrees! We were in Garmisch for 3 nights and 4 days! We both decided that this is some place we want to come back to some day. Day 1 was BEAUTIFUL, sunny and clear! We got into town around noon or so, and went walking around town and ate lunch. This is a skiing, winter sports, outdoors town so they have every sort of winter festivities imaginable available. From designated HUGE sledging (sledding) hills, Hiking trails, horse drawn sleigh rides (which was very sweet and romantic I must add) and all sorts of Olympic event/arenas. We had such high hopes with what we wanted to accomplish on day one but that’s about as far as we made with with 2 days of traveling on planes and trains behind us. At 4PM we both conked-out for the rest of the night in what we then tried to call a ‘nap’. Probably could enter it into the Guinness book of world records for the longest nap lasting a whopping 13 HOURS! God I think just prepared my body for this trip and knew that if I were to wake up like normal at home at the same time as david, our trip wouldn’t have been as pleasant! My husband-like the rest of the worlds husbands, start to get a little annoyed with the amount of time or should I say years that is sometimes taken by their wives to get ready in the morning! This at home is no big deal but when we only have so much time in each day to see the things and do the things we want, every minute is valuable. SO I was awake EVERY DAY of our trip and even this morning back home, NO LATER than 5:30 without an alarm and ready to go no later than 6:45ish. –So thank you LORD for the early bird you brought out in me! The second and third day were completely SNOWED OUT! It made skiing and snowboarding fun and like home! The resort we went to was HUGE! The sad part about the snow was that since it was low clouds and foggy we couldn’t go up to the view point at the top of the mountain and see the Alps. Looking at the weather we were seeing it just seemed IMPOSSBILE for it to be able to clear up in less than 24 hours so we could really experience the Alps. But we went on that 3rd day praying that if it was Gods will for us to see the top he would do what he thought would need to be done. So when I woke up at 5:30 like normal to get ready I was totally expecting to look out when it got light enough and see more clouds full of snow, but I woke up to the BEAUTIFUL sight of silhouetted mountains in front of sun rise on a CLEAR, CLOUDLESS DAY!!!! IT WAS SO AMAZING!!!!!! David was still asleep by the time I got out of the shower and looked through the window at 6ish and said “WHOA!!!!!!!!! DAVID LOOK! GOOD ANSWERED OUR PRAYERS! THERE IS NOT ONE CLOUD IN THE WHOLE SKY!” I get way to excited way to easy, so this was like HUGE to me! It was so cool to see God answer our prayers in such a way! NOTHING is too great for the creator of life. He is the only one who can move mountains, or in our case -a snow storm over night! The 4th day we went back up to the top of Zugspitze and took the tram all the way up to the tippiest top and saw the most beautiful sight of the mountains ever! The pictures I know will just not capture the real deal!
Day four we traveled down to Sorrento Italy overnight on a train. I definitely think one the best purchases I made on this trip was the sleeper car on the train down. 12 hours to get to Rome from Munich, Germany and I just think we would have just fallen apart if we had tried to get a restful night’s sleep sitting up in a normal seat with all our bags, worrying about who we were sitting by, if someone was going to steal a bag, or just be a creep and watch us OR worse while we were sleeping. So instead I paid a nice little ‘pretty penny’ to get a sleeper car. It was two little bunk beds with a sink and locking door, and we got a breakfast in the morning! It was nice having our little bit of first class experience!
Im going to have to cut off my vacation story short here. It’s obviously going to take a few ‘spot’ entries to get all our trip in here, and I still know ill forget things. But it was AMAZING!! We LOVED every bit of our trip, but by day 11 we were READY to come back to an English speaking, friendly, big-car driving, line-respecting, smiling, yes please-no thank you, polite AMERICA! (DON’T even get me started on the line-respecting thing!) David and I took a list of all the things we noticed (good and bad) about Europe that is different from America, so at the end of each next couple of blogs I wanna share then. It kind of reminds me of “THE RED BOOK” idea from our ladies bible study (Alicia knows what I am talking about) so anyways here are a few.

THINGS WE NOTICED ABOUT EUROPE , or what I want to start calling the (T*W*N*A*E)

1. To turn on your T.V. you have to push power, THEN channel to get the screen on.
2. EVERYONE, and I mean EVERYONE wears scarfs. Men, women, young and old- EVERYONE!
3. Soda Pop is sweeter and less carbonated.
4. THIS ONE IS FOR ALICIA & DAN :) “Gas or no gas?” is the normal question when you are ordering water at a restaurant.
5. There are no FREE refills at restaurants on your drinks.
6. ALL the pizza in Italy was flat/thin crust! Not just good crust, but THE BEST CRUST-but flat! We thought it would be thick and fluffy! Wouldn’t you??