I need to talk about something personal that is really annoying. For those of you who do not like reading overly personal medical information about strangers, feel free to click away. This post is also gender based, so if you’re a man go read some college football and save your eyes.

For the past twelve years I have struggled with infertility. In fact, I can count on one hand how many “monthly visits” I received during my 12 child bearing years because they almost never happened. Oh, how I prayed to be regular. Please, let me ovulate. Please, let Aunt Flo come visit. Please, make me normal.

Twelve years. For twelve years this was a major TOP (topic of prayer) in my life. Heck, it took meds and diets and more voo-doo than you want to know about to get my kids here, thanks to my housebound eggs. The girls just didn’t want to drop. Ever. (I have a bad case of PCOS, very irritating.)

Despite having three different doctors tell me at different points that I would most likely “never have another child,” we managed to populate just about every two years. By the time number four was ready to pop, I was kind of sick of miracle babies.

Tubes tied, prayer book closed, have a nice life. Finally, after all these years of hating my lack of fertility I was going to sit back and revel in the convenience.

And now my body is regular. Twelve years of tears and hormones and low carbs, and NOW my body is regular. Some things are so stupid.

On a different note, tonight I made amazing beans and thought I’d share them with you. Your family will love them, your house will smell homemade, and your husband will want to make love to you the second he walks in the door (they won’t make you ovulate though, sorry).

Also, they’re super easy.

Back to School Beans (I just made that up)

1 bag navy beans or small white

Pour into large pot and cover with lots of warm water. SOAK OVERNIGHT.

The next morning:

1. Rinse beans thoroughly 2. Replace water, cover about an inch extra 3. Chop up 1/2 lb uncooked bacon 4. Chop 1 med onion 5. 1 TB salt 6. Throw everything into the bean pot.

Cover. Bring to a boil on high, then turn to super low and simmer, stirring every 15 minutes or so. Simmer 3 hours (watch your water toward the end), salt to taste (you can always add more, but nothing is worse than too-salty beans).

Serve with brats, hot dogs, pork roast, etc. My entire family loves these (except Rex who doesn’t count where food is concerned), and you can add brown sugar, ketsup, mustard and molasses and bake it all in the oven the next day for some home cooked baked beans. Good eating!

I love pressure, I thrive on pressure, pressure is my friend. But looking back at last week, it’s no wonder that I’ve been avoiding my computer because the last thing I want to do is write about pressure. Too. Much. Pressure.

First there is Rex and the panicky feeling I get every time I think about trying to help him with school and friends and German. I know that keeping him in this school is not the easy choice for either of us, but for those of you out there who are wondering why I suck at being a mom because I haven’t yanked him, it’s because GOD DOESN’T WANT ME TO. That revelation came to me in capital letters so I felt it was only appropriate to share it in the same manner.

Then there is this small problem of My Stuff. It has been over three months since I’ve lived with my household goods and I am starting to unravel because I don’t have my sewing machine or my duct tape or my safety pin jar or my staple gun or my glue gun or my rubber cement or my favorite heels or any of the things that normally help when life begins to unravel. We are still in House Buying Limbo, trying to figure out the best way to purchase that house we really like, or whether it’s even going to be possible. Our stuff should technically be here in three days but until we know where we’re actually going to live, it has to remain in cold storage.

Am I living here? Are we moving to the other house? If we don’t get the other house, will we try for a different house? Should we just buy a van and park it down by the river? The kids would love that. Jason told me yesterday “not to worry” because “our stuff can stay in storage for three more months” while we figure things out.

Cause that would be so awesome.

I said no problem, I’ll just go buy us a new sewing machine and 300 storage bins and get right to work filling them while we wait. He just loved that idea.

And so, I would now like to share with you my Top Secret Methodfor Coping with Pressure. It is so top secret that I keep it from myself and refuse to acknowledge it out loud.

I like to watch my weight, so I routinely regulate my chocolate intake. But last week I found myself, more than once, sneaking away from Annie down to the basement and quickly stuffing two full-sized Reese’s Peanut Butter cups in my mouth before she found me. She hates to put those things into her digital calorie counter so we try to keep them a secret.

Between the candy bars and the bag of chocolate chips and the dozen chocolate chip cookies and the bag of Oreo’s and the Belgium chocolate…I consumed enough chocolate last week to invite an entire acne village into my world.

As of this morning I look like a 14-year-old girl, and my emergency cover-up stick is in storage. (I can think of about 17 funny things to say about zits and pressure, but I’ll save you from the sarcasm.)

Yesterday morning I sent a note with Rex and went in after his class to meet with his teacher.

I want you to know that I made a conscious effort to smile and be loving and tender; I didn’t bite anyone. No German kids were abused in the making of this post.

We sat down with her sweet student teacher (who speaks relatively good English) and talked about Rex. Here’s the run down.

Rex doesn’t pay attention in class. He’s good at getting his work done independently, but he doesn’t like to watch the teacher and he can’t understand what she’s saying, so he retreats to LaLa Land and ignores her. She’s frustrated.

In America, teachers in this situation simply call the parent in or send a note home. In Germany, they clench their jaw and bear it.

“Well,” I asked, “Do you think I need to take him out and put him in the American school?” She hemmed and hawed, shrugged her shoulders and finally asked how he feels about school? Is he happy? Sad? Does he hate coming?

With the exception of the other night, Rex comes home every single day with a bounce and a smile, sings me German songs, loves doing his little assignments, and has never once asked to stay home. He is happy.

I could tell this news was a big relief to her. The lack of communication has been a huge barrier for them and this little bit of information changed the entire tone of the meeting.

“I have an idea,” I said, “How about we start a sticker chart at home to track his behavior. Every day you tell me how many stickers he gets for listening and participating, and when he earns an entire page he’ll get something wonderful, like Mama Snipe.” Rex practically jumped out of his chair at the mention of Mama Snipe, who Baby Kevin pines for on a daily basis. She’s super expensive and he’s been praying that she’ll come live with us.

I don’t think the German’s know about sticker charts or parental support because she was amazed at my brilliance. Apparently I have invented a new and improved method of parent/teacher communication, one that involves, well, communication.

The other big problem is his German. It’s holding him back from making friends and following simple directions. She said the only German words he knows well are his numbers and colors. Funny, those are the only things she’s sent home with him to learn, and by gosh I’ve drilled them into his dreamy little head with the force of a jack hammer.

“Look,” I said, “Why don’t you send a list of German words home with him every few days for us to work on? I will teach him German, you just tell me what words he needs to know.”

Once again, I shocked her with my ingenious parental prowess.

(I also offered to come and volunteer in his class, but they all looked quite horrified at this suggestion and didn’t seem to know how to translate it. I don’t think they want the mama’s around.)

So yesterday he came home from school a new boy. His teacher (who really is wonderful) had made him a special little color-coded book. There are five sections for Rex to work on and at the end of the day she evaluates how well he did. He either gets a smiley face or a frowny face stamp, depending on how well he did in that section. Things like paying attention to teacher, working independently, interacting with other children, etc. She also sent home two pages of German phrases and vocab for me to teach him at home.

Day one he earned three smiley faces for his chart.

As far as the vocab goes, this is giving me so much direction when it comes to working on the language with the kids. Yesterday and today we’ve spent about 20 minutes on hard core German lingo game playing, plus I’m now attached at the hip to iTranslate. We worked on “open” and “close” all day long. You’d be amazed how often those words come into play.

He also gets an hour of German cartoons every day.

The best part? Today the primary president, Angela (one of my new favorite people ever), came by with a plate of brownies for Rex and two must-have German phrases written on an index card. They were pretty to the point.

“Go Away!” and “Leave me alone!”

We’ve made them priority number one.

*For those of you who feel the same worries and concerns for your little kindergartener, I want to post this response for all of us. It touched my heart and brought both Jason and me a great deal of peace. Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts and love on our behalf. It takes a world wide web to raise a child, of that I am certain.

“Oh Annie and Rex, my little guy and I went through the very same thing through his years of childhood. I can tell you that my own gentle, creative young man grew up, married, became a father, has a great job and is still the joy of our life. You will think of many ways to help him, love always does. I held my boy close ,and helped him excel at what he was good at, his self-confidence bloomed when he found music, debate, politics, Rex will also, he has a wonderful loving mother and family and there is nothing a loving family, standing together can’t conquer. Help him cherish the fact that he is different, there are not enough people in this world that stand out from the crowd.
Yvonne”

Have you ever met one of those kids who always seems to get stung at the park? That kid who routinely loses the top of his ice cream cone, gets gum on his shoe, can’t keep his hair fixed and always manages to be right at the front of the line when Santa takes his hot cocoa break?

That is Rex (6).

Take Rex’s second day of German school. Not only does he not speak the language and pretend to be a monkey/puppy when he’s nervous (80% of the time), but he’s prone to wardrobe malfunctions.

Harrison hates shorts, so this summer Rex has inherited a slough of slightly larger than necessary “short pants”. On the second day of school he pulled out a pair of Harry’s gray cargo shorts and climbed in. They fell to the floor.

“Here baby,” I said, checking the shorts for an inside draw string. I found it and carefully tied them so they would stay in place. In hindsight, I should have traded them out for something safer, but Rex only started taking the initiative to dress himself unassisted last year and I really don’t want to mess with a good thing.

And so off he went for his second day of German school. In the afternoon I sent Harrison down to pick him up from the bus and walk him back up the hill. As they approached, I could hear a frantic, “Mom! Mommy! You gotta see this!” from Harry.

I looked out over the upstairs balcony at the boys running up the hill, Rex clutching his stomach. He saw me, broke into a grin and stopped to wave.

And his pants fell to his ankles.

We’re not talking about slipping down around his hips, we’re talking about a dead fall to the floor and BAM! There’s Scooby Do. It had been happening all. Day. Long.

Today is Harrison’s second day of school on base. Here’s hoping he has better luck than Rex.

We had a three-day weekend in Garmisch, thanks to Jason’s TDY, and left on Thursday. It was mostly a blast, interspersed with some unfortunate head kicking (June, not me) and a day of nasty rain clouds.

I did not buy this dress. I really really wanted to buy this dress. Instead, we bought the girls traditional Bavarian drindle dresses (I’ll post pictures next week when they wear them for the first time) that cost us nearly a month’s rent. Okay, not quite that much but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that we didn’t eat much on Saturday.

This would have been the perfect afternoon in a German paddle boat had I not gotten stung by a bee on my ring finger the second I stepped in. Ouch to the tenth power. At least it was me and not one of the kids, they absolutely loved this part of the weekend. We took the boat out on Lake Eibsee. Tons of people were swimming, most of them had clothes on. We did wave to one older couple only to realize that they were both buck naked. They waved back.

We took an amazing hike and got this really cool picture of red tape.

This is right before the storm hit. I think I would have preferred cats and dogs over the rain, it was 50 degrees and pouring buckets. We had to stop and buy me a jacket (I didn’t bring one from Utah and our stuff will never, ever get here) so I had to run in and grab something at C&A. (For the record, Dave Ramsey hates it when I have to make unexpected purchases like that. He doesn’t want me to be cold, but can’t I just run in place or something?) By the time we left Schloss Linderhoff (our only attempt to sight see on Saturday) the kids were all bawling about being cold and wet and I couldn’t feel my hands or feet.

The good news is that we discovered on the way home that McDonald’s here does in fact have a Euro menu! Unfortunately the ones around our air base do not because they know the Americans will pay through the nose for our Pommes and cheeseburgers.

All in all, the kids were pretty darn good on this trip and I’m feeling more and more confident that we can take them out in public without getting arrested. Good thing because we’ve got an 11 day cruise scheduled for November–Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel–and they have to come with us (it was too darn cheap to pass up). I’ve got to get them in shape so no one loses a hand (do they still do that?).

This morning I woke up, gazed at the sparkling sun creeping over the Bavarian Alps and touching our quaint little cabin window, and instantly I was grumpy.

I stomped and frowned my way around the cabin for twenty minutes while Jason got ready. Finally he turned and looked me in the eye. “What’s wrong? We’re in one of the most beautiful places in the world, the kids are happy, the sun is shining and I can’t figure out why you’re being such a sour puss.”

Before I could make up some excuse about my gout or early PMS, my mouth went and told on me. “I FEEL FAT!”

I. Am. So. Lame.

I feel great about myself, I look great, and there is no reason for me to be anything but happy. Therefore I blame the devil himself for planting seeds of irritation in my brain because I’ve had four days of counting my calories right up the scale. Really, we all know that a week of careful calorie consumption and gallons of water and I’ll be right back where I was (which is six pounds away from where I really want to be by Halloween).

The point isn’t how much or little I weigh/eat, it isn’t the time frame or my diet plan or What To Do With My Gluttonous Heart. The point is I’ve fallen for that old trap that keeps me from loving this day and these people around me because I’m all wrapped up in my freaking vanity. The world is beautiful and I’ve got people who love me and two arms and two legs so I can play and hike and fix their hair cute.

I got myself ready and the kids and I took a leisurely stroll around the area (the kids fought the entire time about who got to push the stroller). Jason will be back from his meeting in twenty minutes and this is going to be an amazing day.

That old turkey we call the devil knows just what will tip us in the wrong direction, and if we’re not actively seeking to find the little rays of sunshine in our day he will rain on our parade faster than a flash flood. The trick is shrugging off the blue or black thoughts and running in the other direction as fast as possible.

Bring on the sunshine and mosquitoes, I’ve got my sunscreen and bug spray all ready to go.

Here’s this week’s column.

“Over here in Germany they take their festivals seriously.

We keep hearing tales about the summer German Renaissance festivals and how fun they are, so on Saturday we decided it sounded like the perfect super cheap outing.

We pulled the toy van into the village parking lot (aka big empty field) and climbed out. Two cars down the doors opened and out stepped Robin Hood and his merry girlfriend, complete with bows, arrows and boots that zipped. (I’m not judging, moccasins aren’t my thing either.)

The village was set up in a small field surrounded by shade trees. White tents lined the edges offering everything from animal hides to factory made toys from China. The store keepers had a few more teeth than might have been anticipated, but no reenactment is perfect.

The kids especially loved the “village mouse,” a supposed prince living under an evil spell who’s punishment is an eternity of entertaining the masses with a game of chase the cheese. For one euro you can play “guess the mouse house”. The board game was a round table with numerous row houses lining the entire edge. Players choose a house, put their money on the roof, and wait to see which house the mouse runs to. If he picks your house you win a piece of candy.

Most expensive salt water taffy I’ve ever  heard of (we didn’t win).

At one point we found ourselves in the company of the village lepers. I fished out a 2 Euro coin and gave it to June (3), thinking I was going to teach my children the fine art of being nice to the icky lepers (they were sporting some impressive costume make-up–at least I think it was make-up). She put  in the fellow’s dish and he promptly gave her change for it. I tried to make him to keep the money, but he gave the kids candy instead.

Now my kids love lepers. Jesus has to be happy about that one.

Then there was the sword fighting. What do you get when you cross two middle aged men in full knight costume on a really hot afternoon in August? A really anticlimactic battle where two guys hit each other with “swords” for ten seconds intervals, interspersed with water breaks and village gossip sessions.

Then the real action started. They pulled out styraphome gray noodles for the kids to play “sword fight” with. Oh how Harrison wanted a noodle, but it’s always hard to figure out the rules when the peasant dude is screaming them at you in German. When he saw the signal to “grab a sword now” he rushed with the swarm of children and fought like the dickens to get his hands on one.

He ended up in the most intense tug of war battle I’ve ever seen–it lasted almost 30 seconds. The other kid was significantly larger and perhaps more determined (meaner) and the sword was finally wrenched it out of Harrison’s unwilling hands.

Talk about defeat. My son slumped his shoulders and huffed his way to the car. He walked away with a first hand account of what it feels like to be bested on the battle field.

For the record, I now know why the women always wanted their sons to pick the church: warriors are super moody.”

So we love our house. There’s no doubt that moving to this village has been the catalyst for getting my kids into the German school system, making a few super wonderful friends, and realizing that yes, we really do love living this far off base.

We love it so much that Jason and I have made a really really big crazy decision: we’re gonna buy a house.

Because obviously owning a house in Utah and property in Washington isn’t stressful enough.

In actuality, a lot of civilians decide to buy over here because a) we’re usually here longer than most active duty and b) the long-term investment opportunity is great; when you leave it’s pretty easy to sell and even better to rent it out (especially if it has lots of bedrooms or a big yard).

I swear it was meant to be, within 24 hours of thinking about this and putting out one tentative little feeler we were looking at a home.

Not this one, although it is for sale in our village if you’re looking for a 200 year old fixer-upper.

We were looking at this one.

(I know, he’s super hot, but stop staring at him because he’s mine.)

This baby is gargantuan. Do not be deceived by it’s curbside appearance, that garage alone will hold four cars bumper to bumper. It’s about 4000 square feet with 7 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 2 kitchens (we could eventually rent it out as 2 separate units) and a yard and patio to die for. And did I mention that it’s on a dead end street with a bike path that circles through the woods and ends up at our back gate?

Also we’re getting a killer deal on it.

Don’t get me wrong, if you’re one of those people that has to have a new house, you won’t like this one. For American standards, it’s old. It was built in the mid-80’s but ten years ago it got a new kitchen and new heated floors throughout. The tile isn’t my favorite, but the fireplace and the windows? We’re in love, plus that’s what area rugs are for. Those windows run the length of the house.

The biggest hangup for me has been our wonderful landlords. We love them, they’re so good to us and helpful. I can’t bear the thought of leaving this house without personally finding them an amazing family, someone so wonderful they’ll be glad to be rid of us. I’ve been praying about this all week, to know what to do or where to look. So far I’ve had absolutely no inspiration. I almost sent out an email to someone yesterday but right before I pressed “send” I knew I needed to just…wait.

An hour ago my doorbell rang. It was my beautiful American neighbor, a young mom with three small children who go to kindergarten with Junie and Rex. She lives two houses away but would you believe her basement just busted out with mold? And are we still thinking about moving? Could she maybe look at the house before it goes on the market???!!!

This is not set in ink yet, but I have the feeling the chips are going to fall fast and sure. More pictures to come, we’re taking the kids to see the house tonight.

I got asked by the amazing girls over at the Steal Network to be their Mom Tip Monday gal this week. In case you haven’t used babysteals, kidsteals etc., you are missing out. My SIL got me on to their site during her pregnancy and I love them way more than Dave Ramsey approves of.

Check out my article if you get a second.