We have some exciting news...

We're adopting!!!

Who are we? This is the first question we’ve been asked on a lot of different adoption profile questionnaires and that's kind of a hard question to just have an answer to. In a nutshell, we are a happily married couple, in our late twenties, looking to find the missing piece to our family. We support and love each other, and I believe it shows to all the people around us. It’s been a long road to get to the point in life we are now at but we wouldn’t change any of it. Every day we grow more as a couple and are looking forward to what's to come in our future.

  We’ve been living in Germany for almost three years now. So far it has been amazing, we never want to leave! The culture and all there is to see is almost overwhelming. With only three years here we’re definitely trying to take in as much as we can. We’ve seen amazing castles, cities, and beautiful wine country. We love learning about all the rich history they have here. We live in an area that gives us access to biking and hiking trails, so we’ve been getting in our miles! Austin and I have been together nine years. When we talk about it, it’s like we’ve just always been together. For us, it's hard to remember what it was like to live without the other. Together we can face anything and are ready to add to our circle of love. 

  We meet in college, on Halloween 2009. From the first time, we meet we didn’t spend a day without seeing each other. I was taking online classes so I had a much more flexible schedule. Austin had work and school every day. So the first two weeks for him were rough. We would sit in the car outside my apartment for hours talking. Taking random trips to Walmart at two a.m because it was the only thing open in College Station. Once we were together we never let go.

  Deciding to join the military was one of the biggest and most life-changing decisions we’ve ever made. So far its been great. It’s giving us so many wonderful opportunities. From making great friends who we care about deeply, to traveling the world.

  We feel like our hearts and life have a lot to offer and we would like the chance to be able to share that with a child through adoption.

  Adoption had always been close to our hearts. Living outside of the states you have a big opportunity to see people living in real poverty. We sponsor a little girl in Armenia. She lives in a rural town with little access to things we take for granted. Her family didn’t have the money to send her to school or provide her with good consistent medical care. Through our sponsorship, she has the ability to go to school, have clean water, and receive medical care. We hope that she will take those things and make something wonderful from them. 

  Sponsoring her really started us on the road of wanting to change lives of others. We realized how much love, and support we have to offer. The desire to share our love and what our life has to offer to a child that without us would not have had the same opportunities has continued to grow.

  Adoption is expensive. It’s kind of sad, there are over 153 million orphans worldwide waiting to be adopted. In America alone, there are over 100,000 children waiting to be adopted. Of the 39% of couples that decide to adopt about only 12% move ahead with the process because of cost. We hope that with your help we can be one of the 12%. 

We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful new life into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a fundraiser. It may surprise you to hear that adoption related costs can easily total up to $70,000.  We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as he/she grows up. 

  It’s a big number we know, and we are working on doing everything we can to cover costs, but at the end of the day, we can’t do this alone. Anything helps. We thank each of you for any kind of support you give us. Adoption can be a long, stressful process but with an outcome, that’s truly a gift to everyone involved

If you would like to donate towards our adoption we have linked our PayPal down below. Again, thank you for supporting our journey.

http://paypal.me/kimberlyandaustin

Norman Goes to a Castle

Today was a lot of fun, and a lot of walking! We decided that it was time we took on the hill and made it up to the castle. It was quit the hike but so worth it. The view from up there was amazing and the today was a perfect day for all the walking. Cool, and mostly overcast. So the hill you have to walk up a really steep, but once we got to the road Austin saw a hiking trail the kind of wound it's way up the side of the hill so we took that instead. I seriously can't tell y'all enough about how beautiful it is here! As we walked up the hill the town looked so cute and the forest around us was so green and lush, we had a really nice walk up there.

Okay , so as we walked we found all these stumps that were carved into different things. This one is of some little people and a castle like thing... We aren't really sure

Now for the old man tree stumps. They were pretty cool, and as you can see someone put a stick in that guys mouth so a tree is smoking a stick.... Thats not nice!

I don't know why but Austin liked the sleep stump the best. Maybe because he wished he could of been off taking a nap inside of hiking this huge hill!

Okay... This guy was creepy sea guy... On the top of it you can see there was a jellyfish, and I guess they felt like he looked kind of like one because of the roots growing out of the bottom. But I just thought he was pretty creepy. And I can't imagine walking through these woods in the dusk/dark, because a lot of the tress have faces and I would bet you would be getting pretty freaked out.

Made it! We are officially touching a castle that was built in 1162!! Can you imagine all these stones have seen.... It's pretty crazy. There was a little video that you can watch about the castle itself once your inside. It almost made me cry, okay I know that seems ridiculous, but something thats this old and has so much history is special. To know how it was attack and ruined in different wars was just really sad to see. It's sad how little some times we appreciate these kinds of things. I love European history, and I can't wait for us to go explore more places!

The view from the top is pretty great. The wind was blowing and the weather was just perfect. You always read books about seeing as far as the eye can see, this is one of those places. It's so clear here that you can see super far. They don't show up well in pictures, but there are wind farms all around us and we love seeing them. It's kind of a weird things to like but we like them and it's cool to see them at night because they are always lit up.

So Austin can brag that he has seen other castles and all that but this was a new things for me. It was so cool! I know it's kind of broken and a mess not the fairy tail castle of Europe but it was so fun to go through.

So we have a lot of pictures from this trip so I'm just going to post a bunch of them and then I'll tell you about them if they need explaining

This is a picture of the ceiling of the stair chair of the tallest tower. The stairs were tiny and it was steep. It was so much fun to just have free reign to explore all over.

Norman goes everywhere with us, but half the time I forget to post pictures of him. So today we made sure to get him in on the action. He took some pretty cool pictures. We even talked to some people who thought it was really funny that we had a travel gnome that was out taking pictures. 

I hate pictures of me but Austin took this one and then he let me take some of him, because he likes posing on top of that stair case. I love getting to spend long weekends together. This is the first one in so long we don't even remember when the last one was.... 

The castle was so beautiful. There were tons of tiny little places that had flowers and the age of time coming out everywhere, it was crazy and amazing.

There is a lot of the castle that is no longer around but this part of it is used as a summer theater. It was really cute. They had fake trees on stage with garbage bag leaves. 

 We really had a good time up there. In all we almost spend four hours walking around, hanging out at the cafe, and exploring up there. Coming down the hill and back into town was cool too because we went and looked at a part we haven't seen yet. It was more like an art distract, with a bunch of galleries and art stores.

We couldn't help but start eating before I remembered to take a picture because this food is just that awesome. We feel like we are blending and making friends finally! There is a restaurant in town that we go too and we ended up meeting the owner and talked with him for a while. He invited us to come back and be apart of different events he's going to be having at his place. We can't wait!! This is how we are going to make our new friends here and meet new people. We are always going out with the hope of meeting people and getting involved, so this is pretty exciting for us! Here's to new friends and new adventures! 

Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day. We are headed into the city so we should see a lot of cool stuff and will definitely have a lot to share with y'all so check back with us later this weekend!

Remember if you haven't already follow us on Instagram at theadventuresofp_p and you can see whats up daily!

Love Always,

Pumpkin and Pookie

P.S. Oh I almost forgot. Austin has a warning for all the people out there who get hurt easily. Watch out for those tree's throwing branches. They'll get yeah!

Waiting games.....

SO it's official. We have been here fourteen days today..... Crazy how time is already flying by. Everyday is it's own crazy adventure and we are just soaking it all up. We are pretty busy, especially Austin, and by the end of the day it's bedtime for us. I love writing our blog but somedays there just aren't enough hours in the day for it. Tonight we went to our favorite Italian restaurant... again... It's always so good. We are becoming familiar with people around town. We even got comped a little after dinner liquor. Some kind of Italian hazelnut stuff, mmm good stuff. Now I'm sitting down with a good glass of wine and getting to the blog. Here you go Aimee!

So when I say we are getting familiar with people around town, its for real. There is this little lady that walks her tiny little dog everyday. We've seen her since our first trip out. I finally got a sneaky picture of her and her doggy. She's so funny walking it. When she passes people with kids, she'll pull this tiny dog off the ground by its halter and show it at eye level to the kids. I know that sounds mean but it's really not, the dog isn't upset about it at all. It's the cutest dog. The secret is, Austin wants a dog like it. Not me, Austin! He wants a tiny little yorkie. I'm not sure why he likes them so much but he always has. He'll love me sharing that with y'all......

I've said it a few times. We have the most amazing dinners here. We had Italian last night, but what Austin had was so good we had to go back tonight to have it. It's tagilarini pasta with shrimp. So before we moved here we were certain that any sea food would be a no go. I mean we come from a coastal state so we're used to fresh/freshies seafoods. Y'all everything seafood here is amazing. Like no joke it's great. Salmon, scallops, shrimp, squid, everything we have had so far has been really good and I have high standards when it comes to fish. I won't eat anything that tastes like it's dead on the beach.

I know..... and let me just say, yes it's as good as it looks. That was my main course, and what we came back to eat. We started out with calamari. Usually, I only eat the legs because I don't like the nasty rubber band chewiness of the round pieces. These are on a level all there own. Just the right amount salty, peppery, and the homemade marinara sauce I need that recipe. It's so good.

We go and get our bottle of wine, bottles of water, and then order chef specials. I have to keep posting pictures of this stuff to encourage people to come visit. Y'all want to eat here take my word for it.

I love the inside as much as the food. They grow there own olive tress inside. Isn't that so cute. We always sit outside so we get a little bit of a breeze, since there is no AC in Germany. I'm so excited that they are already starting to remember us and that we will have a restaurant that we frequent enough that we can get to know them.

It's so funny how many things they have here that we have back in the states, but sad too. Because here the rules are a lot stricter. So sodas and junk food isn't as junkie as it's allowed to be back home. Honestly, I don't drink soda very often to begin with and haven't had it at all since being here. I've had a taste test of stuff Austin will try but not more than that. Orange Fanta is really good! This Fanta was just in a cool bottle so I wanted to use it for the blog... 

We haven't had an really good blog-able beer so far. Maybe thats what Austin is saving his first blog post for... But he did finally find something that spoke to him at the store, Jack and Coke. Jack Daniel's is one of Austin's staples at home. Okay, funny. I have to stop saying that because here is home now... A habit I'll have to break. Anyways, it's his thing and he was really happy to find it. 

Childhood in a can. My mom taught Aimee and I to love Ovaltine, and Tang. Austin walked past that and was like " EW GROSS Ovaltine!!". Hey, no it's good! Honestly, I never thought I was anything like my mom till I came to a point in life that I was so uncomfortable I didn't know what to do. I was really scared when Austin first started his career. I wanted to be there for him and support him in the right way. But also make a good impression on people that would matter in his life. I kept finding myself thinking fast what did she do in this situation. My mom was an amazing supporter to my dad, and to this day is the best thing that could of been giving to him. When I was little I was extremely strong willed and didn't see the strength that she had everyday, through everything because I was a little to busy fighting against it. You've done amazing things mom, I'm so proud of you. What you do everyday takes strength that a lot of people just don't have and I love you for teaching me how to have the strength too.  Hopefully you've been reading our blog and now you know this made me think of you!

The other night I got to meet Austin's aunt, uncle, cousin, and her kids. It was so nice! I'm not even saying that just to be nice. I was the most at home I've felt since being here. It was so nice to be with family. His cousins kids were so cute, and super funny. I loved talking to them. We really had a great time, and I look forward to seeing them more. It's awesome to have that opportunity, because really if were still at home it could of been a lot longer till I would of even meet them!

This was my breakfast this weekend. I'm telling y'all the truth here, I haven't been so relieved, and relaxed in years. I was so stressed back in the states, that my blooded pressure was so high from anxiety that my doctor wanted to do a heart study on me! Things have been stressful but not at the same time. I have complete faith in Austin to do what he needs to on a daily bases to take care of whatever. After that things have fallen into place perfectly for us, and I think that is because we make good choices. We have reached a great time in our lives. I finally get to go back and complete my degree, which will let me have the job that I was always gunning for. I don't regret a thing of the past six years because it was all building blocks and sacrifices that got us here. We were talking about that at dinner tonight. We are so proud of the things we decided because it's all worked out. We chose to do things a lot differently than maybe people thought we should but it's really worked out. I can't wait to keep moving forward with Austin, and see where life take us.

We love ya'll, and I love your comments. Thank you for feeling the love! It makes me so happy to see  you'r comments and I always read them to Austin too. I promise he'll get on here and write a post too! I think once we get int our house in mmmmmm two weeks..... He may have more time then. Isn't that crazy.... We have seriously been living in hotels for a month! We are so tired of eating out at this point it's not even funny, and we both love junk food! I can't wait to try out all my new pintrest meals I've pinned that are European inspired.

It's a four day weekend for us this weekend. So get ready because we have some pretty cool things planned and I'll get some pretty awesome pictures.

Love y'all,

Pumpkin and Pookie

 

Things we love so far.... and never knew we could

Germany is definitely leaps from where we come from. I feel like I was way snobbier back home than I'm allowed to be here. Everything from water, toilet paper, stores, restaurants.... and just about everything else you can think of, is totally different. I mean normally I would go to the store and buy like twenty ply toilet paper. For real, softest you can find. Here........ Mmmm lets say I'm lucky to have toilet paper. Single ply, organic, recyclable is what you get. Take it or have nothing.
  Poor Austin has pretty much been starved for water because he hates water "with bubbles" but if you want it without it usually isn't tap, it's out of a tiny bottle. So he can either buy like nine little bottle or wait till we get back to the hotel. These are my people! I love san pellegrino, or any water with bubbles. I have to say, Germany is the first place I have ever lived that I would actually even drink the tap water, so props to them for having some fresh tasty water! I'm big on taste. I hate water at home it taste like pennies or something nasty like that, gross!

We have found a water that we both really love it's active o2 water. Mmm the apfelkiwi is our favorite so far. Y'all can probably guess what that is, apple kiwi. Super good and it's really refreshing! 

We found the cutes, authentic Italian restaurant. I'm telling y'all, this is a place we are taking anyone that comes to visit. When we went, we totally felt behind in life. The people that work there, and honestly most people around here, speak three or four languages! It's crazy, and inspires us to get on it for learning German!!!!

Aimee, you're going to die. This is how pasta carbonara is suppose to be. Japan was good, but this is better! So creamy and amazing. Austin got a chicken pasta with cream sauce, and it may have even been better than may. 

When we went to the store we found some wine close to what we had at dinner. So I'll keep giving Austin glasses of wine, or if i get to bored during the day maybe I'll just drink it!

Okay, one thing to know about Austin is how much he loves sweets. We went to the grocery store here and found pretty much every type of Haribo imaginable! We now have way to many Haribos, but these snakes are good! 

These are Austin's newest love since arriving here, Happy Hippos. He loves Kinder eggs. These babies are about the same just in Hippo form. I've yet to have one but Austin dies for them.

 So far we haven't had any beer here that we are really in love with. Wine on the other hand, my fav. Austin is growing his wine-o-cation, and so far is doing really well. This wine tonight was a merlot, not usually a wine I would choose but being straight from Italy, it was really good. I get my wine taste from my grandfather. Who is a hard core California wine drinker. Cali all the way for him or he doesn't like it. Red, red wines is his thing, cabernet sauvignon. Austin can't keep up with that quite yet. Cabernet is to dry and earthy for him but I'll get him there. 

I wait all day for Austin to come home, aka back to the hotel, to go out for our nightly walks around town. We see some beautiful things, have some amazing dinners together, and wonderful experiences. We are so lucky to be here and sharing this amazing trip together. I wouldn't do this with anyone else. He is an amazing man. He works so hard everyday to do the best at his job as he possibly can. Seriously, he has done amazing thing the last few years and we have come so, so far. I wouldn't ever take a trip like this without my best friend and soul mate by my side. He deserves some big props from everything he does and has so far accomplished. I know he will get everything he wishes for and more. I can't say enough about him but I won't swamp y'all with my gashing love, but its all true!

This weekend I am so excited to finally be meeting Austin's family that lives in Germany. We are going to be picked up by his cousin and go have a nice dinner at his aunts house. I can't wait to meet this side of the family and get to know them. 

I'll take as many pictures as I can the next few day. Fingers crossed we'll buy a car this weekend.... And maybe y'all will get to see that. We can't wait for our first real weekend here where we don't have to scramble to make something happen and just enjoy being here. I hope y'all are enjoying the blog and pictures! We would love to hear from you so leave comments and remember to follow us on instagram at theadventuresofp_p  

Love Y'all,

Pumpkin and Pookie

Wir fanden ein Haus!!!!!

We found a house! Okay so some back story to our forty eight hour dash to find a place to live in. On Friday Austin had a meeting regarding housing and what would be available for us to stay in. We knew what German towns we liked and were hoping to live in. Obviously these people didn't get that memo because they told us the house they would offer us would be in the total opposite direction to where we wanted to go and farther from his work. But here's the catch: if we don't accept what they give us they take away the hotel allowance that is helping us pay for a German hotel, which is pretty expensive. Of course, I'm mad like right after hearing that and was like fine then we'll take care of ourselves and screw all that other stuff. Austin had the same feelings on it. I got online, and I'm not even joking went through three hundred and something houses. By the time Austin got home that evening I had about twenty picked out and we narrowed that down to eight and then down to three or four. We have an amazingly helpful friend here named Dana. She called German landlords for us and helped set up times to meet at those houses. Two didn't get back to us, one was already under contract. So we only ended up looking at two. The first....... uh total dud. Ugly, broke down, dirty house. Big no. Today thankfully another landlord was welling to meet with us and that ended up being our saving grace. The house is perfect for Austin and I. We loved it from seeing it's outside and loved it even more once we walked through it. It's a sixty five year old home but they literally just finished renovating the whole thing. It's repainted outside, and the inside is so homey it made it easy to say yes we'll take it!

Not the best angle for the house but that's our cute yellow German house. We will be living in a small  village. I guess here it's considered a town, but to American standards it's to small for that and much more village like. Super clean, like everything here. Very well kept up. This morning there was a woman walking her horse back home from a morning ride. There were people out walking the hiking trails. I mean come on.... How much cuter can you get when thinking of a little European town. It's great. Close to the autobahn, close to work for Austin, close to shopping and restaurants. Another fun part of this house for us is around the corner to the right, the town ends and it's beautiful fields and woods, that have a walking/bike path along it. So that's pretty perfect for us wanting to get out on walks and all that. 

Our kitchen is so nice, it looks small but its not. There is plenty of room behind me in the picture for a breakfast table and an American size fridge! Thats a plus. We were totally okay with the small size fridge we thought we would get in our house, but hey now Austin can pack it with even more rare beers he wants to go find!

This guys, is our dressing room!! Yeah, its a room for a closest, again not kidding. In love! It's the size of a normal bedroom. I'm thinking that a nice bench on one wall and then a vanity on the other wall would be really nice. Get some seating in there and then a place to finish getting ready. 

 Another view of our dressing room. They just put in all new storage, which there is a ton of. It's so nice. I can't wait to move in and start getting our things hung up and out of suit cases, which we pretty much have been living out of for three weeks even before we got here.

The bathrooms are redone really nicely. We have two so I guess maybe Austin can have his own full bathroom now and he can clean it. No more toothpaste on the mirror for me! I won't be so lucky though, he'll be to busy with work.  

I just put a picture up of the dinning room so y'all could see it but it's not a great picture. The door leads out to our garden and patio. There is a super cute dog that lives next door that I've already scoped out. We aren't sure if we'll live here the whole time we are here but this is a good starting point for us. We are so exciting to be doing so well here already. I mean this has been the crazies six days ever! From one side of the world to the next and in less than a week we have seen and done so many things it's just crazy. Every morning I wake up, go to breakfast with Austin and just look out the window of the breakfast cafe and I'm in awe of where we are. We have fallen in love with Germany in less than a week, it's amazing.

The rolling hills surrounding this area give you the opportunity to see for miles and miles around. We  get in the car and I just stop talking because I'm to busy looking outside to care about whats going on in the car.

I hope one day soon America, start waking up! Everything doesn't always need to be about convenience, and so excessive. We need to not be so caught up with directing other peoples lives and start paying attention to the simple things around us that are failing because of laziness. It's time for some major accountability, enough with blaming everyone else. Looking at all the beauty here you can't even put it into words really. Their is such a great appreciation for the land, and the things they own. People watch out for each other, back home you can't hardly stop because you might get robbed or worse! Here they are mindful of if I do this how will impact other things. Seriously, I think that's part of why its overwhelming when you first get here because you suddenly realize, "Oh my god, all that stuff about Americans being so annoying in other countries is true, and we are!" We walk around so entitled in the states. People are always screaming there option not caring who its hurts or makes people feel because it's my option I can say what I want! We are so loud, and obtrusive. We are living on our land and curbing to our needs, instead of having an thought for anything but our convenience. It's been difficult for sure. But we're unwinding being here. I sleep better than I have in years. I was living in a constant state of stressed out and anxious all the time. It sucked! We both were really, and I think most people are, we just don't always see how bad it is. Here dinner could last three or four hours and thats just for two people because they just enjoy taking the time to enjoy whats happening then and there. It's pretty cool. We got checked by life moving here, but we are melting into pretty well now. Now we just have to get the hang of all the recycling that they do here, so we don't end up those people to the neighbors....  

I'm not saying Germany is perfect or perfectly safe, but they're sure doing something right and for such a young country, we have a lot to still learn that's obvious. We drive through a town that just celebrated it's eight hundredth birthday in July! Can you believe that? I'm not sure how old our town is, but I'll find out. It's so beautiful here and we are so happy to be sharing everything with all y'all.

I'll leave y'all with this sweetness, and fizzy water. It's was so good! Happy Sunday!

Lots of Love from,

Pumpkin and Pookie