2:00am

The other day my sister told me that she was having trouble sleeping, her mind was racing about things she couldn't control and all that thinking and worrying was keeping her up. So, she came up with a brilliant plan: instead of stewing about her issues. . . she would think about mine. Apparently, she thought my issues would be so boring that she would quickly fall asleep. It didn't work, but I'm totally giving her Kudos for her creative solution.

I'm awake and it is 2:00am. The windows are open and a cool breeze is blowing through the house and the sound of light rain drops fill the air. One may think that these are two very good components in the recipe for good sleep, but one would be wrong.

There are a few reasons why I may not be able to sleep but none of them involve stress or stewing: I had cappuccino after dinner, my friend found a pair of Adorable brand spankin' new Keen shoes for Gabe at our thrift store for ONE dollar and dropped them off on my doorstep -but they don't fit, I have a neck ache, I didn't work out today so I'm a little irritated with myself, and I played Angry Birds before bed time. Yes, I fell off the Angry Bird wagon. That is probably why my neck hurts too, looking down at that darn screen trying to kill that green guy with the bird.

Since I'm up I figured I should do something valuable with my time like write an incredibly insightful blog. However, as I sit staring at my keyboard I realize that although I am awake at 2am, I'm not really insightful.

But I can update you on what has been on our minds the past 15 days. Moving. Before you get too freaked out, we are not leaving Germany. We currently live in a little apartment with one toilet. The size of the apartment, not really a huge issue, but the one toilet thing is incredibly irritating. Long story short, there are some duplexes on post that are set aside for higher ranking people. Two weeks ago the Garrison changed policy and authorized people of Matt's rank to move over there. In order to do so we had to jump through some hoops and peel off layers and layers of red tape and finally yesterday we got the official word that we are approved to move. However, the tape and hoops took so long that there is no longer a house available for us. They put us on the waiting list today and expect that a house should become available any day now. Praise God! The process was really frustrating because everything was taking way longer than it seemed like it should which cast doubts about whether or not we would get approved and every day I would wake up wondering if it was going to be moving day. As of today, we are first on the waiting list and should be assigned one of the four houses that are undergoing some routine maintenance as soon as it is complete.

It almost got ridiculously ugly today when the housing lady told Matt that we had to have two years left on our orders to qualify for the move. We just hit our one year mark this past Saturday meaning we are now inside of two years. Matt was taking a deep breathe in order to completely blow a gasket when the housing lady so kindly said "well, you did start this process quite a while ago so we'll go ahead and move forward". Whew. We turned our paperwork in on July 23 and there was a house available. Our one year mark was July 31. A house was still available all the way up until August 2, but we didn't get our paperwork signed by all 2343 people who had to sign it until August 3. And this really is the short version of the story.

Right now we are thankful that our request was approved and looking forward to moving into a 4 bedroom 2.5 bathroom duplex down the street as soon as it becomes available. We are praying that this happens soon, not just because we want to get this ball rolling but we also want to make sure nobody gets crazy about us no longer having a full two years left here.

It is now 2:30am and I'm still wide awake. I'm going to take some Aleeve for the headache and try thinking about Katina's problems - maybe I'll get to sleep after all.