Memorial Day poll winner!

Wow, thanks to everyone who voted on the little poll for "Where should we go for Memorial Day?" How fun is that?! People actually read this blog! haha :)

Anyway, I am happy to announce we have a winner! I booked the flight and hotel package yesterday evening....... and the winner is..... Madrid, Spain!

Haha! I know, it wasn't even a choice, sorry! Originally, we were choosing among the four cities I had put in the poll. We were going to book a train +hotel package through our Army travel agency here. We had actually decided on Brussels (main reason: it was the cheapest!) even though we want to go to all of them and I really appreciate the words of advice from those of you who offered suggestions! It was very helpful, especially since I stink at making decisions!

However, when we went to the agency to actually book the package, they were all sold out of those deals! ughhh!! We didn't know it was also a German holiday weekend and those deals are also sold by other travel agencies all throughout Europe. Bummer!

So, we backed up and started at square one. Hmm. Where do we want to go? The beauty of living here is that we can go to so many places! Jen and Nate wanted to go with us, so one day Jen and I got on the computer and literally went city-by-city on where the cheap airline flies and what flights were available. Oslo? No. Wroklaw? No. Zadar? Where the heck is that? No. Madrid? Yes, cool!

Long story sort of short, Jen and Nate can't go with us due to Nate's job. So I started looking at hotel+flight packages thru all the travel Web sites. I did lots of research and comparisons on hotels, metro access, saftey, traveler reviews, etc. and finally, finally, finally was able to book a flight+hotel package for us to Madrid for the weekend. Now we just have to narrow down what we want to do in the little time we'll have there!

In other news, times have been super busy around here lately as we've been trying to plan ahead for summer travel and work has been obnoxious with co-workers being out, etc. Wednesday night Jen and I had a girls' night where we went shopping in Speyer and found a very yummy Mexican restaraunt!! Yes, it was Mexican and it was good! Definitely going back again soon. Last night we went to Lira's to celebrate her birthday. Sunday, her kids are coming to stay with us for the week while she travels to the States. Should be interesting as I'll learn how to juggle all the things that come with the kids -- dropping off at school, getting to and from soccer and softball practices, eating dinner, doing homework, making lunches, oh yeah and going to work and making sure the doggies aren't cooped up too long in the meantime. Should be fun!

Last week we picked up a new-to-us bedroom set from one of Carl's co-workers. It's very nice!! So tomorrow morning we'll go get the bedding and then we will officially have two (nice, if I may say so) guest rooms. :)

A couple weekends ago we also ventured out to the botanical gardens downtown and the zoo. Both were fun!

All in all, we've been busy enjoying all the beautiful weather we've been having, too. Each evening we have been walking the doggies on a 2-mile route we found thru the woods near the house. They have loved it and it's been nice and relaxing for us as well, not to mention good for our health.

Take care all and I'll update again soon! Thanks again for reading and also for voting. I will try to come up with another poll question soon!