Family – Page 2 – Sannipanni

You’ll Never Forget How to Ride A Bike

July 10, 2014 1 Comment

Part of my wonderful birthday surprise from dear fiancé was the awesome gift of a new bicycle! He had given me a region free DVD player (so now I can watch all my German DVDs (that are all in Germany,… minor detail)!!) and a massage gift certificate earlier in the evening and taken me to a restaurant I had been meaning to try forever so quite frankly, I thought my birthday was awesome and done with. Oh no. We came back home after dinner and he called me down into the den where he was waiting with a beautiful, super fancy hybrid bike. Swoon!

Blue bike birthday surprise! Whoop whoop!

My first thought was “Oh sweeeet! Now I don’t have to research bikes to buy one!” Hehe. I had been wanting to get one this summer but had been dreading doing the research what with all the wedding prep. Mind you this is the first time I’ve had a bike in forever! I don’t even think I had one in college but perhaps I had one in Hamburg for a very short period of time. And all those bike’s I had had were completely functioning right outside the box. Apparently that’s not the case with fancy bikes. The babe was busy over the next couple of days to mount a kickstand and lights and a lock (don’t think we’ve figured out how to mount that one just yet. YOU’D THINK!!).

But finally everything was put together and I had gloves and a helmet (Don’t ride without one peeps! Don’t want your noggin to be smashed!). So off we went! I was sooooo nervous (and giddy – hello 32 year old child). Shifting gears?! I’ve never had a bike with more than 8 gears and I’d always been able to break by trying to pedal backwards. But, thankfully, that wasn’t hard and it really is like the saying – you never forget how to ride a bike! This one translates beautifully into German, too, although we never “unlearn” how to ride a bike. No training wheels needed!

So we’re excited to go on bike rides in our neighborhood, to visit our friends who just moved a mile and a half away from us, and to drive up to the bar that’s a mile and a half in the other direction. We’ve mapped out parks and the Virginia Kreeper Trail and look forward to being active outdoors together. What a great gift!

Family, House, USA

House Hunters North Carolina

July 20, 2013 5 Comments

Soooo, WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!! Oh-Em-Gee! I get so giddy every time I think about it. OMG! Bounce around!

We had been browsing the real estate market online for some time just to see what was out there and figure out what we both liked and could afford. Complete nightmare to find a common denominator seeing that He lives in the suburbs and I live close to the city center? Nope, we actually agreed on most things (though I vetoed that cute house that was on a four lane road). This was our must have list:

4 Bedrooms (or 3 and a bonus room)
2.5 Baths
Renovated to our liking (or renovatable and super cheap)
Close-ish to the city center and our friends
Great schools
Natural light
Charming, established neighborhood

And then of course our long wish-list:

Screened-in porch
A nice yard
Hard-wood floors (preferably original, decades-old)
A window over the kitchen sink
Garages
Lots of closet space
Subway tiles (believe it or not, he wanted those)
Open-ish floor plan for entertaining
A breakfast bar
NOT a wood-paneled hunters’ lodge type family room
….. and of course tons of more things one could wish for like that jewelry making studio and a golf putting hole but hey, do you still believe in Santa Claus?!

I’d heard some horror stories about house hunting that included looking at dozens and dozens of houses or the most evil sellers so I was just a bit anxious about the process. In all honesty, we were just going to check some out just in case one came on the market that was an absolute must-get-now-before-someone-else-gets-it house. I think our proper time line was to buy a house in half a year to a year. But when am I ever proper?! 😉

So surprisingly enough, we only looked at a total of four houses before we made an offer on The One: The Wallpaper House, The Blue House, The White House, and The Renovated House. How many hours we spent browsing online listings though, well, we’ll just keep that confidential. Too many. But in the end, it was actually that browsing that got us our LoveHouse.

So we’ll be moving lots and lots and lots of things from my apartment and his storage unit in the next couple of days. I can’t tell you how excited I am! It definitely feels very grown up and just a bit weird to get so excited about washing machines, mortgage rates, and paint colors. I draw the line at lawn mowers though. They’re still as lame as ever.

Oh, which one is the LoveHouse?! Well I’ll tell you about that in another blog post – back to packing boxes for tomorrow’s move! 😀

Family, Me, Myself & I

On Owning A Dog

April 24, 2013 No Comments

This week was my dog’s fourth birthday. What a relief; he’s survived living with me! Gee, time flies! Soon he’ll be wanting to get his drivers license and go clubbing. 😉 All joking aside, it is amazing how fast those four years have gone by. Owning a dog has been such a great experience. I knew taking care of a puppy was going to be stressful. Very stressful. Especially living alone. And though I had and still have wonderful friends who came with me to pick him up from his farm or watch him occasionally those puppy days were not stress-free!! Driving home from work at lunch every day for the first half year was super stressful and having to throw away shoes and other oh so delicious items that accidentally got between Alfi’s jaws was friggin’ frustrating! OMG, he would steal my underwear!! Ugh! Now that he is all grown up and mature (as far as boy dogs go…) he just shreds tissues – I can totally live with that.

Alfi – Summer 2009 with one of the many stuffed guinea pigs he mauled

But you know what, it’s all been worth it. He is such a joy and coming home to a fluffy bundle of happiness is something I look forward to every day. He does have a fierce underbite and with all that fluffy fur looks really vicious but has never hurt a soul (other than his stuffed toys but I think they’re soul-less). That he is a sweet one and sits, lays down and comes on command is a HUGE relief for me. Trust me, I was rather worried about raising a dog and him or her turning out horribly!! But yes, he’s great. Except for when he peed on my friend who was dog sitting him. That was mortifying (but hilarious to some I hear ;-)). Happy Birthday Alfi-Dog! Lots of love, your human!

Care to share your favorite Alfi-memory in a comment?

Boys, Family, Friends, Travel, Uncategorized, USA

Lucky Me

October 14, 2008 6 Comments

Hello hello!
I’ve been feeling quite lucky these days and thought I’d blog a bit. Well, my throat is hurting quite a bit again (on and off for the past 3 weeks really but now it’s back full force after a fun filled weekend). But other than that…

Lucky #1: So my friends here make fun of me here because every time a firetruck drives by I wave and get all excited and drool over the firefighters. The other day I get a facebook message from a firefighter (normally I ignore those “stalking” messages but come on, from a fireman!) so we chatted a bit and we went on a date. Firefighter date! Free sushi! Great times! Invitation to attend firefighter recruitment school graduation! Got to sit in firetruck! Fireman suggested Cheesecake Factory! Firefighter seems like a fine guy with brains and muscles, three dates so far. Yay!

Lucky #2: I went to Chapel Hill a good week ago to see UNC play some football. We bought some tickets from some people at Craig’s List and then went to eat pizza at California Pizza Kitchen. Yum! There were people at the next table and they asked the waitress if she wanted their extra game tickets. Well, she had to work then still but my friend asked if we could have them instead and yes, they gave us REALLY good tickets for free. We gave ours away to somebody else then and got to sit in row 9, really close to the field. Super cool!

Lucky #3: On the way back from Chapel Hill to Charlotte the speedlimit was 70. Well, no body ever goes the speedlimit but I guess I got a bit carried away and I was going around 83 or so. All of a sudden I see some lights come on behind me and hear sirens. Grrrrreeeaaat…. So the trooper pulls me over. “You’ve got to be careful who you’re passing. You were taking my doors off flying by me”. Ooops! Well he was really nice. I told him I was anxious to get home and catch the Panthers game because I like running when they play. What the heck but it was true… So he checks my license and he comes back and tells me to turn on the radio to this and that channel so that I could listen to the game! I wound up with a warning, not a ticket so that was REALLY lucky! What a nice cop! Well, no more speeding for me, I always said I’d stop after the first warning.

Lucky #4: Oh yeah so I was out sick for 2 weeks and then the week before that my friend Jens was visiting but nonetheless when I went back to the gym, I was super good and ran 5km in one piece!! Didn’t plan on doing that and wasn’t scheduled to do that either but I just kept jogging and at some point the dreadmill said 3.1 miles. Yay! Now I just need to put that to the streets. Ugh.

Lucky #5: My poor sister who was traveling in India got ill with appendicitis and was in hospital over there in the little nook between Nepal and Pakistan and China in the north. SCARY!! Luckily though she did not have to have surgery (she had to remind them to disinfect her skin before setting the IV and stuff like that so yikes!) and got to catch a flight back home the day she got out of hospital and is now safely back home in Germany. Yay! I mean it sucks and all but I think she was lucky in the end!!

There’ve been some other really lucky things happening but I don’t remember them all but yeah overall I have been very blessed. Oh like I was leading my fantasy football league the other day but uhm yeah not anymore after this weird football weekend. How’s everybody doing? Happy fall!!

« Previous 1 2 3 4 … 6 Next »