Ok, so as I've mentioned to some of you, my belly seemed to expand exponentially this past week. So, I'm including a new belly pic for you all. Please note the big smile on my face. There are two reasons for this:
1) It's really nice out today 70 degrees (unseasonably warm)
2) possibly most important - I had a KFC two piece hot & spicy chicken meal for lunch, which beats my usual peanut butter or grilled cheese sandwich at the apartment by a mile!

A small side note: KFC here does not have mashed potatoes or biscuits - Boo! They do, however, have better coleslaw than in the States and FREE DRINK REFILLS! No one here has free refills and drinks are kiddie sized (.2-.3 liters), so they get big points for that. Good on ya' KFC! Think I'm still delirious from the happy taste buds...

Well, Derek & Andrea are back in St. Louis and we had a great week with them here. Just wish it could've been longer - it went very fast!

Here are a few more pics from our week.

PS - Derek, took Finn to the dog park today and banana hammock guy was there again - looking gloriously old, wrinkled, tan and unclothed! ;-) Yuck!

Yes, I've been a slack blogger this week, but only because we've been so busy with Derek and Andrea here.

We've trekked all over the place, visited the Munich sights (Rathaus, Engl Gdn, etc), including Nymphenburg Palace, which I hadn't seen before. It was beautiful inside and had a very cool carriage and sleigh collection. Unfortunately they didn't let us take pictures inside the palace. So, you'll just have to take my word that it was beautiful. We also went to the Olympic Park - neat architecture.

Then over the weekend, we visited Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein Castles, which are about an hour and a half south of Munich. They were built by the Bavarian royalty during the 1800s and were both beautiful. The countryside in the area was gorgeous, especially with the fall colors! After 5 hours of touring and hiking, we stopped for dinner at a small town on the way home and unintentionally found a nice little Greek restaraunt. Then it was back in the car for the trip back to the city.

Great times were had by all :)

So, now for the trip to Salzburg...

Took us an hour and a half to drive there through some beautiful countryside. Brendon is now a pro driver on the autobahn, topping out at 180 in our Opel stationwagon. Yes, that's right we have a station wagon and Brendon's wishing he could bring his BMW over from the States to really drive fast, but alas, it is not to be.

We got to Salzburg at about 11am, figured out the park and ride system in Salzburg and took the bus to the city center. Salzburg is located in a beautiful area, on the river Salzach, sits between the Kapuzinerberg and Mönchsberg mountains and has some of the best architecture I've seen for a town of it's size (150,000ish). We visited the Festung Hohensalzburg (Fortress) first, which is one of the biggest castles in Europe, on a hill above the city and dates back to the 1077. After that, we visited St. Peter's cemetary and the Catacombs, which were pretty cool and then went on to the Salzburger Dom (cathedral).

After returning to the car at 4:45, we had a lovely drive until we hit some nasty traffic. It took us 2 hours and 20 minutes to get home, only 45 minutes longer than it took to get there and have been told by friends that EVERYONE is returning to Munich from weekend trips at about that time and traffic always sucks. So, yay, really looking forward to more traffic jam weekends in our future! ;-)

Salzburg was really beautiful though and well worth it. I'd recommend it to anyone who gets a chance to go.

The next two blogs are going to be out of order, but I have too many pics from Salzburg to go through to post it yet. Anyway, we had a great time in Salzburg on Sunday and I'll have more up on it tomorrow!

As for today, I think I have set a new record for length of doctor visit.

I went to preregister at the University Hospital today and spent over 5 hours waiting for different offices/doctors. Good lord!!! Despite my 9am appointment, I sat outside the registration booth waiting my turn for an hour. Spoke with the lady about my insurance, then went to get paperwork finished at another office.

From there I was sent for basic tests (BP, urine, weight) at the gyno clinic. I managed to spill half a bottle of rubbing alcohol all over myself while reaching for a cup to pee into. It was sitting on a shelf next to the urine cups in bathroom and someone had left the cap loose. Now, if you've never experienced the joy of peeing into a cup, lucky you and let's just say it's not much fun anyway, much less covered in and reeking of alcohol in a subfreezing hospital bathroom.

After toweling myself, the floor, wall, etc. off and completing the urine specimin and turning it in, they asked me to go to lunch and come back in 45 min. because the final doctor was not available until then. So, I left and came back (15 min walk home & 15 min walk back), waited for 20 more minutes and the final doctor they sent me to said he didn't even need to see me until 34 weeks and he wasn't sure why they sent me to wait at his office.

Not sure that the communication gap could get much larger. Bad f*ing day!

Anyway, for all you who have been asking, here's the latest belly pic. (24 weeks) and I've topped the 120 lb. mark. I am officially 55.3kg/122lb, which I've been told is right on track - 10 lbs. total so far. Hope you're all well and having a better day than me.

Happy 30th Birthday Brendon!!!

So proud of you and how far you've come honey. Love the hat ;-)

What a fun weekend! We had some friends in town for Oktoberfest this weekend. Chris (Sampson) and Jim got here on Thursday and Bryan and Carolyn arrived on Saturday. I found non-alcoholic beer on Saturday afternoon at a beer garden (see pic). Then Saturday night we went to Oktoberfest - talk about crazy. The boys had fun trying to win us things at the games and, after much searching and leaving a table of vomit, we were able to find a "clean" table at the Hofbrau Tent. We unintentionally got into a political discussion with a very drunk man from India - interesting to say the least... Then we headed to the Irish/Aussie pub. All in all a very fun night, although a few of the guys were hurting a bit Sunday morning after staying out until 3am (girls went home at 1). Very impressed that Chirs and Jim caught their plane at 9am on Sunday!

On Monday, Bryan, Carolyn and I went on a Mike's bike tour around the city, which was a lot of fun. I didn't see many new things, but I did volunteer and got the highly acclaimed role of butt babe in our tour group. Meaning that I got to be the last person in line and make sure we didn't leave anyone behind - there were two stragglers. Anyway, got a free frisbe for my troubles. :) I'll have to post more pics when I get them back from the rest of the group.

Take care all!