Pumpkin Time

Emily has been waiting all week to carve a pumpkin with her Daddy. RT decided tonight would be the best time. She was so funny. She was really happy when he cut the lid off and started pulling the pulp out.

This was her first handful. She was so excited about pulling it out as you can see from the expression on her face.
Digging in...

It was about this time that she realized that the pulp was gooey and she didn't really care for how it felt on her hands.

RT working to make sure that the picture turned out the way Emily wanted it. He is such a good Daddy!
Lighting the candle for the inside of the pumpkin.

She said "Ok Daddy, now carve this one!"


She is so proud of her pumpkin!

Beauty Queen Emily

Pretty much every single day Emily likes to watch me put on my makeup. She will sit there and watch every little move I make and then ask me to do the same thing to her. I always pretend to put eyeshadow and eyeliner on her eyes. She knows what all the makeup is called and she particularly likes the mascara. I have NEVER actually put any real makeup on her face but she likes to think that I do. Well this morning I was in my bedroom and I had not heard anything from her in a few minutes so I walked into the bathroom. I looked at her and she looked up at me and said "I put mascara on mommy". She had unscrewed the cap to the mascara, gotten the makeup on her eyelashes (and her face as well) and then went so far as to screw the cap back on and put it back into my makeup bag. Here are a few pictures that I got before I cleaned her face.

Congratulations Jenn and Neil!

On Monday morning October 13th, Jennifer and Neil welcomed Mary Lauren Tingle to the world. The delivery went well and both Jenn and Mary are doing great. I am so sad that we could not be there to help welcome her. We cannot wait to meet her!!! Just a few more weeks Jenn and I can hold her! She is gorgeous and I am so happy for The Tingle family. We love you guys!!!

Emily bowling!

They just recently opened a new bowling center on post and we decided to take Emily to see how she would like it. It was hilarious. She had a hard time understanding that she couldn't bowl on everyone else's turn. We had to restrain her from running out on the lane while other people took their turn. She had a good time and I loved watching her get so excited everytime she got to "push" the ball down the lane.



I was shocked that they had shoes small enough for her to wear. I had to get a picture of them. Too cute!



Here are a few action shots of her. She had so much fun.





This was one of those times that she had to wait her turn. She sat with Bryan and watched as she waited.

Virus :(

Hey everyone. I just wanted to let you all know that the reason I have not posted anything lately is because I got a nasty virus on my computer last week. Actually it was 2 viruses. We have knocked my computer back to factory settings twice now and we are still having problems. We do not have anywhere here on post that I could bring the computer to have it fixed so we are doing the best we can to get it fixed ourselves. I had over 3000 pictures and I am not sure that we have been able to recover them. I do have lots of things to catch up on and lots of pictures to post but I will have to wait until we figure out the problem. RT and I are going to Paris tomorrow and I will certainly try to get a blog up about that! We are so excited. Ok hope to get things going on the blog soon again!

Update

Well I am happy to report that RT was able to save the BMW. He is much more resourceful sometimes than I tend to give him credit for! RT, Josh and Brent were able to drain the tank and make the necessary repairs to the car to get it to run again. Brent did have to siphon about 30 liters of gas and at one point he and RT started a small fire, but all in all the car is running :) I swear sometimes I just have to shake my head at the situations that RT gets himself into.

A little homesick

Well this story is kind of funny, or at least I think it will be in a few years. Lately RT and I have been talking about our move back to the states in December. There is a really long list of things that we are looking forward to. Don't get me wrong, there are many things about Italy that I really love, but I miss being in GA. I miss Chick-fil-a, Cracker Barrel, Target, Gas stations that stay open past 5 pm and on Sunday, buying milk in a gallon jug, being able to put $20.00 worth of gas in my car without having to use Nato coupons, Fast food, being able to understand signs because they are written in English.... I mean honestly I could go on for forever. You get the point. The closer we get to PCSing out of here, the more excited we become. It also helps a great deal that Adam and Holly are moving to Benning with us which I am super stoked about. Lately, I have been feeling a little homesick. Some things in Italy are just harder than in the states. Take what happened today for instance. RT went to the Venice airport to pick up our friend Josh who had just flown in from Colorado. A few hours after he left, I get a phone call from him. As you all know, RT never really panics about things and he is usually pretty nonchalant about things. Well this was no different. He very calmly asked me what I was doing and if I could perhaps help him. I was like "sure, what is up?" He explained that he was stranded on the side of the Autostrada (the highway here in Italy where all the Italians really show how crazy they can drive) and that he needed a tow truck to come get his BMW. Hmmmm I thought. Apparently RT and Josh had stopped to get gas on the way home from the airport and RT had gone to use the restroom. Josh offered to pump the gas and accidentally pumped diesel into an "unleaded only" vehicle. They did not know it until they had traveled about a kilometer and it just shut off on them. In Josh's defense, the pumps over here can be very confusing sometimes because they call diesel "gasoline". So, I had to call the MP station and get an interpreter on the line to call a tow truck. This took forever and I got hung up on a few times and I was fuming by the time the whole thing was set up. So, I tell RT to hang out and they are on the way. We were not sure if the tow truck would have room for RT and Josh so off I went in the little Volvo to pick them up. Keep in mind I had NO idea where I was going. I get about 10 minutes from where they are and RT calls to tell me they have left with the tow truck guy who speaks no English and clearly has a grudge against Americans that run out of gas on the Autostrada. I get off the highway and proceed to get ridiculously lost! This is a common thing for me here in Italy. I am always getting lost on the crazy roads here. Luckily I did not have Emily with me this time. It took me about an hour to find my way back although I am pretty sure that I was only 20 minutes from my house when I left. OK, so now back to the whole point of this blog. As I was driving around aimlessly, I saw a Blockbuster! Now I am used to seeing McDonalds here and an occasional Shell Gas station but never something so American as a Blockbuster! I was excited about it. This made me realize how much I miss the simple things from being back home. Something so small as a Blockbuster made me feel so homesick. The closer we get to December, the more excited I get about it! I will let you guys know what happens to the BMW whenever we figure it out tomorrow and RT gets an estimate of what the damages are. Like I said in the beginning, I hope the story of this car will be funny in the next few years because as much as RT already thinks it is, I wasn't laughing about it this afternoon!

Our trip to Germany... Part 3!

The last day that we were in Germany, we scheduled a trip to Munich City. We were both really excited about this trip. We took the tour bus on the hour and half trip north. Once we got there, we had a tour guide that took us around parts of the city and showed us the main attractions. One of the things we were most excited about was going to The Hofbrau House. It is a famous brewery and is known for it's delicious beer. We also found a Hard Rock Cafe there and made a quick stop to get some t-shirts. Emily got her first Hard Rock T-shirt from Munich which I thought was really neat. We found a really cool store in the center of town that had some of the BEST chocolate that we have ever eaten. We also got to go into a museum that displayed the royal family jewels. This was amazing! We have some really cool pictures of the family's personal belongings. We started our tour at the Opera house. We then went down a street where the guide showed us the area that Hitler came in and took over first when he decided that we wanted to take over Munich City. The history of Germany is mind blowing. Listening to the guide talk about the horrors that the citizens faced during this time was gut wrenching.
This is RT and I in the square outside of The Opera House.


There are four golden lion heads on the road leaving the Opera House Square and the myth is that if you rub the inside of the lions nose, then you will have good luck. This is the two of us rubbing the lion and hoping the myth is true!

Here are a few random pictures of the city as we walked around.

There is a huge bell tower in one of the squares that has an elaborate scene that moves when the clock strikes a certain hour. We caught it at about 11 in the morning. There are characters that joust and then jesters that dance in circles. It was really cool to watch. It lasts for about 15 minutes. Here are a few pictures from that.





This is a statue of Juliet from Romeo and Juliet.

These are pictures of a real Beer Garden! It was so interesting to see so many people in one area just drinking beer. It is like water to them here. There was a huge market that surrounded the beer garden and you could find so many different things in this market. We stopped and RT bought Emily some baby bananas. We also went to a honey house and bought some candy from it.

These are all from the Haufbrau house where we had lunch and a beer. There is a live band that plays while you eat and they wear the traditional clothing. There was a woman that would walk around and sell HUGE pretzels and cookies. RT bought a pretzel from her which we got a picture of. When we first arrived there, Emily was sleeping. She quickly woke up when we sat down and the band started playing for us outside. The food was good and the beer was much stronger than what we are used to but it tasted really good.

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This is the sign outside of the Hard Rock Cafe.

The last stop we made before we headed back to the resort was to look at some of the Royal Family jewels. There were several but I will only post a few pictures. They were so beautiful to see in person.