May is a big month for us. In the forefront of my mind is our second anniversary at the end of this month. Last year, we traveled to Paris on Memorial Day weekend to celebrate (you can read about it here and here). This year, we are traveling to Burgundy, France, to celebrate on a small-town level in a bed and breakfast. I am so excited! More on that when we get back.

This month, our family had two other celebrations: my niece’s sixth birthday (Happy Birthday, Emma!) and John’s brother and sister-in-law’s second wedding anniversary (yes we got married within one week of each other).

Our garden is also starting to require a bit of attention. I’m not sure what’s going on, but our pepper plants are looking pathetic. They’re looking a little shriveled but not in a dry way. If wilty were a word, that’s how I’d describe them. I thought it was because of how much rain we got (about 3 weeks straight with no sun), but they’re looking even more puny after 4 days of sunshine. Does anyone have any advice?

Perhaps the most exciting thing besides our anniversary is the fact that we are now down to 51 weeks until John signs out of the Army. Hooray! I don’t plan on counting week by week, but it is exciting to say that we have less than a year to go. We will probably pack up our household goods in about 9 months. Crazy!

On a pathetic note, I was searching through our archives today and found another anniversary of sorts. Today is the one-year anniversary of owning my iPhone. I can’t believe I decided to include that tidbit in this post. I am not sure what it says about me.

We then went across the street from out hotel to the mall. Uhhh, it was disappointing. It was desolate and the clothes were either really expensive or really ugly or both. They had a GAP, which I was excited about, but the Paris GAP must carry different clothes than in the States, because I cannot imagine the general American demographic wearing most of the clothes they had in their women’s section. The trip to the mall wasn’t all bad, though. We found a cool little market in one corner of the mall, which had European Dr. Pepper! John had told me that it tastes different than American DP, but I wanted to try it for myself, so we got a can. We also bought some delicious looking strawberries. Unfortunately, they molded within a day. Gross!

After our leisurely morning around our hotel (which was near the Arc de Triomphe for those of you familiar with Paris), we took the metro toward the Louvre area for – get this – a wine tasting! It was basically a beginner’s wine class, and John and I really enjoyed ourselves. The “teacher,” Sebastian, was entertaining and informative, and then wines we tried (accompanied by a variety of cheeses and breads) were all delicious. That 2-hour wine tasting was enough to turn both of us into French wine snobs. Seriously. I now have the urge to check the color, legs, bouquet, texture, etc. of wine. I also don’t like calling them “legs” anymore. The French word translates to “tear,” which I much prefer. It’s a much better description of what they look like. Oh…and in France, it’s socially acceptable to make this kind of “gurgly” sound with your wine the first time you take a sip. It helps get in all the flavor since most of your flavor-sensors (I can’t think of another word for them) come from smell. John and I both like doing this weird thing with our first sip, and I have a feeling we’ll get a few looks for it over here as well as back home in the States (someday).

Overall, the wine tasting was a great experience, and I highly recommend it if you’re ever in Paris. The one we went to was very small and intimate. There were only 4 other couples and one single man there.

Following the wine tasting, we stopped off in the biggest Sephora ever before we meandered toward the Seine and found a cafe to grab a small lunch. When we were finished, we walked across a bridge and enjoyed the viewed before heading back toward the cafe (we decided we wanted to walk around the Louvre area). On our way there, we found our anniversary gift to one another.

See, we couldn’t figure out what to get since money is kind of tight and the traditional first anniversary gift is paper. We agreed that we would just try to find something in Paris that we could buy together as a keepsake. Well, on our walk to the Louvre, we found it! There were several little vendors set up along the Seine and several of them had small art prints depicting different Parisian landmarks. It suddenly dawned on me that these prints were on paper, and we should get a paper gift! We ended up getting 3 prints, which only cost 5 Euro! I can’t wait to get them framed and hung up in our living room. They will be a great reminder of our first anniversary in Paris.

Moving on…we walked through the Louvre area and the Jardin des Tuileries, where we stopped to see children pushing boats around a fountain area with sticks. One of the children fell in. We missed it, but I think it would have been pretty funny (she was ok). My sister and her husband stopped in Paris on their honeymoon and did this boat thing, and she’s wanted us to stop there since the last time we went to Paris, so we did this for her.

Next we tried to go to the Musee d’Orsay, which houses artwork by Monet, Degas, Renoir and Cezanne. Unfortunately, the line was dreadfully long, and we didn’t have that much time left in the day. Instead, we decided to go to Montparnasse and get a good aerial view of the city. It was a great alternative to the Eiffel Tower, which we toured during our visit in December 2007. Of course you have to go up in the Eiffel Tower if you’ve never been before, but I also recommend Montparnasse. There were NO lines (as opposed to the 4 hour line in the rain and cold at the Eiffel Tower) and it was inexpensive. Additionally, the elevator took something like 37 seconds. In the Eiffel Tower, you have to take a couple different elevators and they take awhile. However, in the Eiffel Tower elevators, you do get a good view of the city, where as the Montparnasse elevator is just a normal elevator.

We went back to our hotel to get ready for dinner after we finished our tour of the top of Montparnasse. We had reservations at our favorite Parisian restaurant – Le Procope. (Isn’t it weird that we have a favorite restaurant in Paris?) Le Procope has been in business since 1686! We were lucky enough to be seated upstairs near the small balcony. They were wonderful seats! We ordered the same thing we got last time – coq au vin. We also got a wonderful glass of red wine – I believe it was from Medoc (love wine from this AOC!).

As you can probably tell, by the time dinner was over, we had had a very long day and were ready to go back to the hotel to get some sleep.

I will post the photos from this day of traveling later this evening. I don’t have access to them right now, so come back later today for another dose of SoJo Blog.

- Sarah

Me: This is weird. I’ve never had an anniversary before.
John: Yes, honey. That’s why it’s called a FIRST anniversary.

D’oh!

That’s right. Today is our first wedding anniversary! I can’t believe it’s already been a year. I’m so thankful for my thoughtful, loving husband and the covenant of marriage that we entered into before God a year ago today.

:o)

Dancing by the groom's cake after we smashed cake in each other's face

We have had a great day today. We slept in (woohoo!) and went to the Kaffeehaus for brunch, which was actually just lunch today because it was so late.

On the way there, however, we saw a sign that said “Erdbeeren,” which means strawberries in German. We then saw a bunch of people bent over in a field and realized they must be picking strawberries. We turned around, drove to the field and picked our own strawberries too! They were incredibly cheap and are so delicious. They only cost €1.50, and in the markets, they normally cost about €4.50. (This is compared to about $2 versus $6).

I took the liberty of taking some photos on my iPhone…

the strawberry fields (about 1/3 of a mile from our apt)

Yum!

Our loot!

Lunch was great, as usual. We ordered a little more than we typically do – including a mimosa – and took our time there. We even got to sit in our favorite waitress’ (Anita’s) section. After lunch, we ran some errands at the PX and commissary, because we had some presents to get for Béni, some stuff to get for my office and groceries for the week. It was a fun, relaxing shopping trip!

When we got back, we made our homemade granola and yogurt and took Béni to the dog park. We also worked on some leash training to get him better accustomed to obdience on a leash. He did wonderfully!

After that, it was time for dinner, so we headed to the Brauhaus in Schwetzingen, which is a steak place. We had a so-so wine (the only French wine on the menu…I think our last trip to Paris turned us into French wine snobs) and some delicious steaks as well as wonderful conversation and quality time.

Upon returning home, we watched our wedding ceremony on our wedding DVD along with 2 short movies the videographers put together for us. While we watched, we had excellent refreshments…

Earlier today, John surprised me with an extra anniversary gift (more on those in a post this week) – a bottle of French wine (Bordeaux) from an area (Medoc) we sampled while in Paris. Not only was the bottle special because of this, but he also had the bottle engraved:

I am so blessed to have such a thoughtful husband!

I hope we’re able to keep this bottle our whole lives.

We also enjoyed a small glass of this wine with some cheese we bought in the Netherlands a couple weeks ago. Yay for wine and cheese!

- Sarah

Photo from RealSimple.com

I decided to try it since it looked pretty simple, and wow! it was delicious! It was also extremely fast to fix. Once you have the almonds chopped, it takes less than 10 minutes to make. In my opinion, the red peppers act as a kind of tomato sauce, so I was liberal with those. Oh, and one tip: be careful not to overdo it on the lemon juice on your green bean salad. I made that mistake the first night, and they were a bit too tangy for our taste.

Bonus: there’s only 457 calories per serving, so I did not feel guilty whatsoever about having double chocolate fudge brownie ice cream for dessert.

If you try this recipe, let me know what you think of it. I’m definitely adding it to my regular recipe repertoire (oooh alliteration!).

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Today is also “Hi/Lo Thursday,” which is a blog carnival from the Riggs Family Blog. Don’t skip this week’s – I have some pretty big announcements listed below!! Check out their blog to read everyone else’s highs and lows for the week. I’m going to end with our highs this week, because I want to end on a happy note

Our Lows:

• Yesterday, I was so overwhelemed by driving back and forth to John’s work 4 times (yes, 4 and it’s 30-40 minutes round trip), plus taking care of Béni who has seemed to hit a “terrible 2′s” sort of stage, and dealing with “post clean up” that I started crying around 6 PM when John called me to come pick him up from work. I was just so frustrated that I had been trying to make the bed, do the dishes, and get some homework done all day but everything else had to come first.
• My left arm has been hurting a lot for the past few weeks. I think it’s from carrying Béni up and down 2.5 flights of stairs several times a day. (He now weighs about 26 lbs.) Yesterday, my arm gave out twice while carrying him and I dropped him, which upset me even more. John thinks it’s tendonitis.
• This one is kind of a mixed high and low: several of my friends have recently gotten engaged (yay, high!), but I am really bummed that I cannot be there for them during the planning process. I’m also sad that we have already had to miss so many weddings of our good friends.

Our Highs:

• We have made plans for our one year anniversary!! We are going to Paris for a 4-day weekend the week before our anniversary. I’m really excited to be able to see Paris in the spring since last time we were there it was December/January (2007-2008). We have already made reservations to have dessert late one night on the patio of a restaurant near the Eiffel Tower with a great view as well as dinner reservations at a restaurant we LOVED last time we were there.
• We put in a request for an exception to policy so we could move to the other housing area, which is actually in town. It got approved!!! (We weren’t optimistic about it going through.) The move will allow John walk to work and I can have the car to run errands and also drive myself to work should I ever get a job offer (that’s a whole other deal…). Additionally, that housing area is right near the metro system (the Straßenbahn), so we’ll be able to utilize public transportation to get downtown now instead of navigating the narrow streets and parking garages in our big Xterra. We don’t know when we will get to move because we’re at the bottom of the list, but it will happen eventually. Yay!
• Béni is dreaming and just started barking in his sleep. It’s the cutest little “woof” ever. I love him.
• In light of my frustrations yesterday, I had John take the car so I didn’t have to drive back and forth this morning and to bring him lunch. So far today I have done the following (and it’s only 12:22 PM):

1. showered, blow dried and straightened my hair and put on make up
2. made the bed
3. taken my graduation gown and hood out of the bag and put them on a hanger (yay for getting these!!)
4. put away some dirty clothes
5. dusted the bookshelves, tv, entertainment area, coffee table and one side table
6. walked Béni
7. gone to the store and gotten lunch and dinner
8. started baking chocolate chip cookies for John’s office
9. got the air conditioner working again
10. read a couple blogs
11. updated this blog

and I still want to:

1. schoolwork for tomorrow
2. work on a friend’s website
3. reply to emails
4. clean the bathtub
5. address my graduation announcements
6. prepare Mother’s Day cards for mailing
7. get my mom’s Mother’s Day gift ready to go
8. get oil changed

So…that’s it for me. I know it’s quite a list. Hopefully, I’ll get it done! What are your highs and lows for the week?

- Sarah

This weekend, we have had a good time gathering supplies to send to Makarios as our birthday present to one another (since our birthdays are so close). And tonight, we just got back from a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant in Schwetzingen. The only downer was waiting 20 minutes for the bill AFTER we asked our waitress if we could please pay.

Also, I just realized that today is our 8-month anniversary, so yay! (Yes, I do celebrate and get excited for things like that. Let me be.)