Goooooaaaaallllll!

Well, the World Cup is in full swing and I did my fair share of watching this past weekend. I saw all or most of every match except one. I watched some great soccer and all my teams (Mexico, USA, and yes, even Germany, Betina) got some big wins.

Hopefully Mexico (my main team) can make it far this year and make a run for the Cup, even if it's not very likely.

Last weekend I was finally able to go down and see my grandparents for the first time in a quite a while. Aurelia got to meet her great grandparents for the first time and she had a great time, although she seems deep in thought in this picture.

I hope to get down there to see them a few more times before the move as I won't be back in town very often.

Speaking of being out, I have decided to burn up some vacation days and started giving myself some three day weekends. I came back to work on Monday to see that someone had made an addition to my list of places that Abu Dhabi was not it.

I made this list in order to help my coworkers understand that I was not going anywhere overtly dangerous. One of my cube-mates was nice (or bored) enough to draw out a little map to really nail down the location, and he did a pretty good job.

So, things are going ok so far and I'm just trying to stay positive and keep chugging along until we make that trip to the desert oasis that is Abu Dhabi.

Castle... Castle!

Things have been relatively quiet since my last post. Betina is finishing up school and getting ready for her summer teaching job. This is the last week Aurelia will be in daycare, which we are extremely happy about, as she gets to spend more time with us at home. Plus, we can start saving that money for the move. Pretty much a normal ending to the school year.

Bailey is coming down from Asheville on Friday and everyone is excited to see her, even me. This will most likely be the last time we see her until Christmas time, which happens to be the subject of the title of this post. We will checking off one of our vacation spots off the list as we look to be heading to London and Dublin for Christmas break with the kids. Now you wonder how that ties into a castle. Well, Betina found this great website called airbnb.com where you can rent apartments and homes and whatnot instead of staying in a hotel. There are tons of options and the prices are really good. So as we are looking at some different places to stay in Ireland, Betina comes across a castle. Now this place isn't Camelot or anything, but it's still a medieval castle. So the plans now include renting a castle in Ireland for a couple days and celebrating Christmas there. "A castle! The whole castle!" That pretty much sums up Bailey's reaction to the proposition, as she was pretty excited to say the least.

My best friend Josh came down from North Carolina this past week for his brother's high school graduation, so he and his wife finally got to meet Aurelia for the first time, as did a lot of other people I hadn't seen in a long time. I also got to get back out on the golf course for the first time in what feels like a year. I am still pretty bad, but apparently I should be a golf instructor because I was giving one of Josh's other brothers some tips and he was crushing the ball pretty well. Better in the theory of golf than the practice for me apparently.

Also going on in my world, I've started the process of applying to Penn State to finish my degree while we are overseas. I will be looking to get my bachelors in Political Science and finally have a college degree. I also plan on getting Masters and Juris Doctor, so this is the beginning of a lot of learning for me.

Now that I've gone back and read this post it seems that there is a lot more going on than I've realized. All I can do is take it as it comes and hope for best.

And here is Aurelia just lounging.