St. Patty's and Easter

Tomorrow we leave for the States for a long-deserved Clough family reunion. We can't wait for good home-cooked meals, fun times at the farm, and a gathering with an awesome family! We will return to Germany on the 27th and two days later, will host the Catlin sisters on a tour of Germany. This will be full of adventures, mishaps and fun stories we will look forward to re-telling on the blog.

The past three days have been an incredible never-ending St. Patty's day. We began the celebration at the James Joyce pub on Friday to see some friends in a band play there, then continued on Saturday when we returned for another night on the town with some of Jon's co-workers. Last night, the actual St. Patty's day, we celebrated at the Irish pub with an authentic Dublin band that played some great traditional Irish tunes. It was a really fun night, although no one does up St. Patty's day like good ole Scruffy Murphy's in Waco or Greenville Avenue in Dallas.

On Sunday, we "starred" in another stellar performance at our church as "disciple John" and "mother Mary" in an Easter play. Our friends, the Aussies, were also acting in the play, so it was really fun to have all of us roped into performing together.

Happy Easter to all and we'll catch ya next week!

Juan's Cooking Success

The lovely dish to the left is none other than an imitation of Beckie Clough's famous Spanish Tortilla that she learned to make while living in Spain. Although we received the recipe from her for this dish months ago, we finally (well, I should say Jon, as I was being lazy and watching TV on the couch while he slaved over the stove) got around to testing the recipe last night. It's basically a combination of potato, egg, onion, garlic and milk and is a well-known tapa in Spain. Jon did an absolutely superb job on his first try and he's already thinking of ways to spice it up a bit with jalapeno peppers, his favorite cooking staple. Speaking of jalapeno peppers, he made a great dinner on Saturday night for a group of us and our Aussie friends, consisting of spaghetti with alfredo sauce, bacon and jalapeno peppers. Although our friend Dave was sweating profusely the whole time he was eating it from the "heat," he absolutely loved it. So, you can imagine that I'm feeling a bit like the un-useful house wife, considering Jon's been picking up a lot of the cooking slack lately. What a guy! But, I will say that I master the cleaning like none other..., so at least I'm good for something.

We had a pretty low key weekend as we were dog-sitting, which served as a great reminder why we don't need dogs while in Germany, no matter how cute and cuddly they may be. Although we had the opportunity to feel like real Germans when walking our two dogs in the parks numerous times this weekend, we felt chained to our apartment and to Wiesbaden due to the dogs "going out" schedule. It was fun for a weekend, but I don't think we'll be tempted to adopt dogs anytime soon.

Part of the reason Jon and I have decided to take things easy for the past couple weeks, is due to the fact that we have a crazy few weeks ahead. A week from Wednesday, we head to Virgina where we will spend a week visiting Jon's family. We can hardly wait! Two days after we get back to Germany, we will host my sisters for about 10 days. It will be SO GREAT to have them here and we are planning an event filled week highlighting the best of Germany's quaint village charm. So, not to worry our few yet faithful blog readers, there will be some exciting blog entries ahead! To all, have a fantastic week!