My Once Upon a Time...

5485 Miles or 8827 kilometers is the distance I have to travel to go home, to see my family and everyone I left behind, over five years ago. While I usually don't dwell about this little fact, I was faced with its reality this week. Yes, it can be tough being so far away from home, but I never imagined how hard it could really be. And while there has always been this little thought in the back of my mind, the "what if", the "what would you do", I never allowed myself to think about it too much, even though I should have, because I knew this day would come. Eventually. And when I woke up on Monday, I didn't think that this was going to be the day I would be getting "the call".  You know something is wrong when your mom is calling you at work. Especially when she has never ever called you at work and you can't even remember giving her the number. Your mind is spinning, confused about hearing German on the phone, hearing the voice ...

I always had this dream of the perfect american neighborhood. A neighborhood, where everyone knows each other, you meet for BBQ's and coffee (not that I drink coffee, but in my vision of the perfect neighborhood I do), kids ride their bikes on the street, husbands wash their cars in the driveway and you can ask anyone for a cup of sugar. Kind of like "Wisteria Lane" in Desperate Housewives. Without the drama. Let me just set you straight right here...I do not live in one of those neighborhoods! I wonder if they even exist, and if you know of one, please share, so I can keep dreaming about it! In fact, my neighborhood is quite the opposite. There are approximately 30 houses and we know three neighbors by name. Who am I kidding, besides those three, I wouldn't even recognize any of my neighbors in the supermarket. We have an HOA, which I hate more than I could describe. When we moved here, I didn't know what an HOA was and believe me, I probably would...

Remember this ? I posted this picture almost two years ago when our dogs decided to use our couch as a chew toy. It was also the day I almost gave them up for adoption. Just kidding. Kind of. Seriously, I cried when I saw this and had no intentions to let these rat bastards  sweet dogs destroy more furniture. Erinnert ihr euch an dies hier?  Ich habe dieses Foto vor fast zwei Jahren hier rein gestellt, als unsere Hunde beschlossen, unsere Couch als Kauspielzeug zu benutzen.  Es war der gleiche Tag, als ich sie fast zur Adoption freigegeben habe.  Scherz. Oder auch nicht .  Mal ganz im Ernst, ich hab geheult, als ich das gesehen habe und hatte nicht die Absicht, die Idioten süßen Hunde noch mehr Möbel zerstoeren zu lassen. So this is the solution we came up with! Classy huh? We seriously lived like this for months, maybe even a year. I don't remember, I clearly blocked this lovely part from my memory. Und hier ist die Lösung unseres Problems...

We've always donated our old clothes and other things that cluttered up the house to Goodwill. If you don't live in the US, you might not know what Goodwill is, so let me explain real quick. It's a non- profit organization where people can donate items and they re-sell them to create job opportunities for people in the community. Anyway, even though we've donated to them for years, we never thought of going there to shop, until recently. A friend of mine told me that she donated her couch to them and since Katie and I were in the market for a new couch and I LOVED her couch, I wanted to go there to buy it back from them. Unfortunately they had sold it within an hour after they received it, that's how nice her couch was and what a sad day for me! ;) While we were in the store, we decided to look around and found some awesome items for really cheap. Every other Saturday they have everything in the store for 50% off, which makes everything a freaking steal and Kat...