Well, I'm just not good at keeping resolutions - in November, I wrote that I wanted to post every second day. And since I wrote that, it has been exactly 8 months since I posted.

A lot has happened in those 8 months! And since I'm sitting here on the couch with Bronchitis, totally bored out of my mind, let's do a brief recap...

At the end of November, Marc and I got married. At least, we had our civil ceremony. I heard from a lot of people that this is a really impersonal ceremony, but ours was actually a lot of fun. The official had quotes from Woody Allen and was quite funny. We just got the video from the ceremony this past weekend and I'm looking forward to watching it!

[Pause due to bronchitis-related coughing fit.]

In December, I flew to the States for a week of work and then two weeks of vacation. Marc came after Christmas (yes, we spent our first Christmas apart) with his parents. We had a really nice post-wedding party in the States (thanks again, Mom!), at which Marc met many of my family and friends. It was a lot of fun!
And then we dragged my in-laws through the cold to show them the Detroit area. Actually, it was lot of fun, even with the cold. You don't realize that Detroit can be kind of interesting until you see it through someone else's eyes. One of the highlights was definitely the Red Wing's hockey game - my mother-in-law asked me if she "had" to go, to which I simply responded, "yes" and then she loved it! Maybe not so much the game, but definitely the suite and the whole hoopla that surrounds the game! After a few days, they had had enough and left for warmer parts - Florida! We celebrated my birthday, New Year's and Marc's birthday before heading back to Germany.
Somehow, we both managed to get sick just before/during the flight. I had a cold and slept the whole time and Marc spent most of the flight in the restroom with the stomach flu. I didn't know he was sick until I woke up when we landed in Paris for our layover. The airport was so full that we ended up just laying on the floor. We got some pretty strange looks, but were both too sick to care. Marc got over the flu and ended up with my cold, which he had for almost two months!

In February, we were off to Montafon, Austria, to do (read "try to do") Marc's favorite winter sport, skiing. If you know me at all, you know that my coordination is...well, you know that I'm not coordinated. And that I have a fear of heights. So my husband, being the good man that he is, agreed to shell out the extra bucks for a ski instructor, because, hey, if I'm going to have to try and accomplish the impossible, somebody else should show me how. No, really, he loves skiing and hoped that with a professional to help me get started, that I would love it, too.I'm sad to report that I didn't love. But it's not just that I didn't love it, I HATED it. I was on the kid's slope (I don't even think it can be called a bunny hill, it was probably too small for that) and I was terrified. Here, kids are whooshing past me on skis and my knees are knocking, I'm so afraid. My instructor was nice, he was funny, but I couldn't get it. So I spent the rest of our ski vacation in the apartment we had rented, reading, watching TV, going for walks and just NOT skiing.

March and April were spent planning our church wedding. May, too. In May, we tried not to be too worried about all the small details we hadn't taken care of yet or thought about or...We did get it all done! A week before the big day, we had a polterabend. This was a very fun party, with lots of coworkers and friends. My cousin and his girlfriend had gotten in a week before to backpack around Europe. Unfortunately, their plans were (slightly) influenced by striking train drivers in France and the Netherlands, so they joined us for the party as well. A lot of porcelain was thrown (and thanks to my brother-in-law, the bags of shards were reemptied, to be cleaned up again) and a good time was had by all.
Then came the big day. It went pretty much as planned, with only little things being different that I had expected. We were really concerned about the weather, because it had been very cold and very rainy here. But it was a beautiful day and only rained for about 1.5 hours at 4 p.m. So we couldn't have coffee and cake outside, but hey, at least the rest of the day was beautiful!
Our church...(since the FeG doesn't have a building, we got married in the church that Marc attended as a child - and where he was baptized.)














And the reception was on a farm...



If you haven't seen the wedding site, let me know and I'll send you the link. And, my parents and my littlest brother (yes, you're bigger than me, I know!) were here! So it was a great day!

In June, with the wedding over, we asked ourselves, what will we do to occupy our free time, which had been consumed for the last three months with wedding preparations? The answer wasn't hard to find...soccer! The European Championships! Germany is a very tournament-oriented team, so although they weren't favored to win, we were highly confident that they would do well. We watched almost every game. I missed two and a half and I think that Marc only missed one. That's a lot of games, people. But it was a lot of fun. Generally, we watched the games here at home, carrying our TV out onto the patio, so that we could watch outside. But for the last few games, we went to public viewings, because the atmosphere is just so much better. (The picture is of the German fans swarming the streets after Germany won the quarter final.)

We watched some of the games in Prague, as we spent a weekend there. Prague is absolutely beautiful. It was bombed during the war (by the Americans in 1945 - the city had been under Nazi occupation since 1939), but it was not destroyed in the same way as Stuttgart or many other cities, so that it still has many old historical buildings and sites. But, Prague is a city overrun by tourists. During our trip, we didn't learn anything about the Czech people and heard more English, Italian and other languages than we did Czech. We learned a lot of history, but wished that we had learned more about today's Czechs or met some of them...
Then, it was back home, back to work and Germany in the European Championship finals, against Spain, who hadn't won in something like 24 years! We rooted for Germany, but they didn't make it. With a disappointing effort, they lost 0-1 to Spain.

And that's about that. Nothing exciting in the last week, because I've spent it on the couch, watching more TV than I care to mention.

[Another pause for coughing.]

So, I'm going to eat my chicken noodle soup, take my medicine, drink my tea and work on getting better. Have a good weekend!

[p.s. We'll see when I'll post again...I'll try to be better, but you've heard that one before.]
[p.p.s. I have a new email address, because I haven't been getting emails sent to hotmail. If you don't have it yet, it's . If you've sent me an email and haven't gotten an answer, please send it again to the new address!]