feeling a little "adult-ish"

Well my birthday was a huge success!! The day before my birthday our new furniture was delivered! We purchased a brand new kitchen/dining set on the economy (two German stores called Opti and Pilipp).  I mean...if buying our first kitchen table and chairs AND two other matching pieces doesn't make us real adults I don't know what does. haha.  Here is the furniture when it was first delivered (another funny encounter with the language barrier lol):

Right after being delivered

Up close pic of the table

AWESOME table runner (housewarming gift) from my mom!! 

The whole set is definitely different than what we thought we were going to get! We were searching for weeks and had a pretty solid idea of what we wanted then got to the store, saw this, loved it, and bought it!! Chase liked it cuz it was SOO heavy - pretty hardcore if I do say so myself.  We went to pay for all of it and the store worker informed us that they don't take American credit cards so we'd have to pay in Euros...well let's just say it took a couple days to take out all the money from the ATM (cuz of daily withdrawal limits) and this was how we paid for our furniture:

HAHA All the awkward stares were totally worth it! We're so happy with our first grown-up purchase! We've already started filling the cabinets and drawers and putting decorations on the two big pieces - I'll put up more pictures when we're all set up. 

Then, the morning of my birthday I went on post to run a few errands and decided to stop by the high school to check on my application (I applied to be a substitute teacher since there were absolutely NO teaching positions open). GOOD NEWS....I GOT THE JOB!!! YAYY!! It's really difficult for spouses to get jobs in Bamberg because the post is so small and they have to give a certain number of jobs to the local Germans.  So I feel extremely blessed to have gotten a job.  And the coordinator at the school told me now that I have my foot in the door with subbing and with my experience/background, more opportunities might come up for me while I'm here! I feel good that I'm putting my degrees to good use! It looks like it will take a few weeks to finish the background check and paperwork, but when that's all done I'll be able to work whenever I want! She said I would get calls pretty much every day to work if I can/want to!  Sounds like it will be the perfect job situation for me.  That was only the first birthday surprise though...the second one was even better!

Chase left over two weeks ago for field training and started Pathfinder school today! We were told that he would get to come home this past Saturday, January 28th, for the day before reporting to Pathfinder school.  I was pretty excited that he would be coming home the day after my bday at least! Well I got a call that afternoon from Chase and he told me he was on post in Bamberg and he needed me to come pick him up...SURPRISE!!! He got to come home a day early! Well turns out that he knew days in advance (and so did some of my wife friends) but wanted to keep it a secret! We had a "girls night" planned for my birthday dinner and when I found out the guys got to come home that day it turned into a "coed night" celebration.  We went to dinner at this great Italian place (of course!) called Aposto.  We had an awesome dinner and fun drinks!

SO happy!!

My "Birthday Hurricane" ... YUM

Ryan and Summer bought me a sparkling birthday soufflé 

Best birthday surprise ever!

I opened presents with my family via Skype and they got me TONS of board games and card games to start our collection! I can't wait to have our friends over for dinner and game night.  They also sent an awesome sweater! I got a cool blazer from my mother-in-law! And Sutton got me a beautiful necklace (I wore to dinner that night) and an awesome "Thank you...for being such a sweet sister" card HAHA ;) Nana also contributed to the game collection with Skip-Bo...but I'll have to be honest my favorite gift she sent was three bags of "flakes." For those of you who know me, you know how obsessed I am with homemade chicken broth...and even more obsessed with flakes! For those of you that didn't know that, now you do.  And fyi...flakes are just little tiny square-shaped noodles, but for some reason I have always LOVED them.  The timing was perfect since I just made a HUGE thing of homemade chicken broth and froze most of it. :) I also received a lot of cards from family that I put up on our window ledges so I can be reminded of how many amazingly thoughtful people I have in my life.

It felt kind of cool to be back in the country I was actually born in 23 years ago!  I actually celebrated in the same time zone I was born for once...pretty neat I thought!  I'd have to say my 23rd birthday was a successful day! Thanks to everyone that made it so special. 

On another note, I dropped Chase off at Pathfinder school yesterday and the classes started today.  It's a very strenuous three week course so please keep him in your prayers as he goes through it! I know he will do such a great job...but it will require a lot of time, energy, and studying all while being away from home.  We're crossing our fingers that we get to see each other at least one of the weekends, but you know how it goes. 

I'll leave you all with another "view pic" of the sunset from our living room windows...

Life is good!!