General update

Well, nothing as exciting as falling into a canal in Venice has happened in the last few days, but I do have some more pictures to put up from that trip. You can find them here.

House & Associates
I found out a few days ago that our second shipment of stuff is going to arrive on June 20th, a lot later than we thought. We sent it April 21st and two months was the absolute longest it was going to take. Such good luck!

But, we have some good news, just with some awkward timing. Our house is going to be available this coming Saturday or Sunday. We cannot move in yet because we haven't scheduled a time for the movers to move our stuff from storage to our house, but we might be moving in sometime this next week. We won't have a bedroom set for us, but we will have at least a mattress, and some other random items. It will almost feel like a house. I'm still missing pots and pans, silverware, and the normal stuff, but we can borrow those items from the lending closet until I buy them and until our registry items get here.

We are getting the key from Burger today to go check things out just to make sure everything is in order. I am getting really excited and can't wait to move everything in and start setting up our home!

Visitors!
Four (sets of) people have already told me that they are going to come visit me, and I am terribly excited. My mom is going to come just after Matt leaves in early July, a family from Nashville that I love is coming late July, and my brother is coming for the first half of August. Then both my parents are going to be coming again in mid-September because they will already be in Prague, which is just a couple of hours away. That said, I love visitors, and would definitely enjoy you coming. If you come, you can fly into Frankfurt, Nurnberg, or Prague. So be checking out those ticket prices and let me know when you're coming!

I know that I mentioned that Matt and I don't have a bedroom set, but we do have a bedroom set for the guest room, so don't think you'll have to sleep on the sofa or an air mattress. You'll probably have the most put-together room in the house!

Vilseck Rose Barracks Organization
Vilseck is the name of the town just south of the military installation. The name of the actual installation is the Rose Barracks, but it is everywhere referred to as Vilseck. Inside of Vilseck is the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment. There are six squadrons that are associated with the Regiment. Matt is in 1st squadron, so when people around post ask me who my husband works for (instead of saying "the Army" like I would to normal civilians), I say 1-2 SCR, or just first squadron.

The regiment is traditionally for armor soldiers because they're dealing with strykers (like tanks, but smaller and more mobile), but recently they have realized that high-speed infantry-men work very well with strykers. For this reason, Matt and a lot of other of his lieutenant friends, all infantry-men, have been recruited for this regiment.

Because there are six squadrons on post, each squadron has its own personality. I'm not quite sure what the other squadrons' personalities are, but 1st squadron has a reputation for being the most intense. I would usually say this is a bad thing, but while Matt is being productive (as much as possible with the regiment down-range), his buddies in other squadrons are sitting alone in their hotel rooms watching military television. His CO (commanding officer) is a very cool guy and is all about giving the new lieutenants and the current NCO's as much experience as possible.

Around Post
We had a town hall meeting yesterday with the first squadron where people got to ask a lot of questions and air a lot of rumors to the squadron's leader who is back for a couple of weeks from Iraq for R&R (rest and relaxation, though I hope you already knew that one). One thing that was very valuable to me to hear was the history of the squadron over this past deployment. Like I said before, the 1st squadron has a reputation for being, um, awesome, they are the squadron that is being used for tactical missions in Iraq. They were actually separated from the rest of the regiment and were involved in some of the toughest firefights since the war started.

I'm sure that because my husband is in 1st squadron I hear a lot of biased opinions, but they have indeed been in some of the hardest places at the hardest time, and keep getting put back there because they have proved themselves. I felt very proud of our squadron, though a bit nervous to be sending my husband there. Praise God it will just be for a few months.

Post has a movie theater that shows one movie a day on Thursdays-Sundays. I think we get two movies on Saturdays. Because of that, and because we're all the way over in Europe, we don't get new releases, and when the movie is playing that you want to see, you have only one option. Matt and I have been wanting to see Prince Caspian for a while now, and it is playing tonight, and only tonight, so we cleared our schedules to have a date.

I think that's about it for now. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but that will leave something to blog later.