Thursday, January 22, 2009

Eye Surgery Adventure

Twas the day before surgery and waiting at the port to cross to France the snow was sure falling in hopes of Josh being able to see without the help of corrective lenses danced through his head. While I slept in the car getting ready to climb aboard the thought of Josh seeing and going to German help the dreams to come forth.
Our first stop was in Bruge, Belgium where we were greeted by a mystical creature called a golden troll who gave us the one finger salute. Okay enough with that... Josh was opted to get the free eye surgery called PRK was he ever excited he will no longer be needing glasses. Unfortunately we had to go to Germany for his surgery and drive there from England. Which sounds like a great adventure and it would be if it wasn't snowing. On our way to Germany we stopped in Bruge which has amazing shopping and is a very beautiful city and has great chocolate. But for some reason maybe because it was snowing and Cold we didn't get many pictures only this picture! The restaurant we ate at the building was built in 1614 which was really neat!! So once we bought our chocolate, Belgium waffle and took the picture of the troll we headed to Germany. Well it just happened to snow that day and the snow was coming down really hard and we had to stop for gas... The Tom Tom took us a wrong direction and we ended up getting stuck on a hill. The German people are so nice and so willing to help some guy stopped and asked if he could help us... but thank our lucky stars or Heavenly Father we got out!! When we arrived in Landstul which took us several hours to find the base we were so lost!! It sucked we put our emergency break on at the hotel not thinking anything of it... well bad idea our breaks got frozen and stuck. Not to mention the base wouldn't let us get gas even though we are military they wouldn't let us... We had had it!!! So we did what anyone else wouldhave done we went to a travel agent and booked a trip to Belek, Turkey all inclusive and WARM!! Since we had to stay in Germany for 2 weeks of those 2 weeks we only had to be there for 3 days we where able to take this wonderful trip!!!
Well Josh and I being the adventure types we didn't even know what we booked we were so excited to get out of Germany and go to a spa hotel we forgot to ask all the important things. But we were blessed to stay in a 5 star hotel!!! IT WAS AMAZING!! Since they are Islamic in Turkey you weren't aloud to walk around the hotel in your bathing suit you had to wear this robe and slippers and when you came to eat you had to be fully clothed and no swimsuits... of course the men could have worn whatever they wanted they could have been naked and that wouldn't have mattered LOL!! Our room was amazing and had amazing views of Belek!!!
So since it was a spa break we booked a spa deal for couples... it is a Turkish bath special they had going on... in the picture is a picture of the baths... we laid on top of this stone slab and in the rooms leading out of it was there baths that you could wash in but they brought the water to us... it was so neat!! They first scrub you down with Lemon scrub and they scrub your whole body they pretty much removed all of your skin!! It was like being reborn, skin wise!! Then they make these bubbles from the towels and throw a million bubbles on you and your surround by bubbles and they rub you down and massage you with this cream and between each step they throw the Turkish water on you... once they are done washing you down you go over to the baths and they shampoo your head and scrub your face down...
then they bring you to this room (VIP) and you sit in this bath that works as a aqua massage machine and you soak in anything you want from Chocolate and so forth we got the Cleopatra bath... that smelled like lavender!! It was so AWESOME!!!
Every night they had something going on!! Since it was all inclusive we would sit and drink soda's and wait for dinner or the next show that was going on!!
This night they had bingo and Josh won the grand prize!! HE IS SO AWESOME!! He won another aqua massage for two which we did in chocolate this time and free bowling that they had in the hotel we ended up playing pool instead, but after that we went dancing!! THAT WAS SO MUCH FUN!! We ended up being the only ones on the dance floor but I don't care we had fun!!
This is the beach and you can see the mountains in the back round it was maybe 100 feet from our hotel room!!
We went into town and went shopping... did they ever have stuff to buy we wanted more traditional Turkish stuff to put in our house but a lot of people sold designer stuff that was priced way to high... but this boy we ended up meeting and it was on Sunday, and he is Muslim and he was showing us what they wear in there meetings. He was a little scared at first because the hat he is wearing is what someone who is high in there church or religion would wear. He told us to hurry up and take the picture but he did it!! Another thing here that was really inexpensive was jewelry!! Josh bought me some amazing jewels that are so awesome for like a 3rd of the price!! WHAT A GOOD HUSBAND!! But in the videos you can hear them praying over the loud speakers!! That was neat!! But this boy was one of the devoted workers and stopped work to pray he told us that but he stopped so that was cool!!
Yes they have phones... Just wanted you to see it!! It was outside of our hotel!!
All of the hotels has massive security you can see the guy standing guard outside of our hotel. When we arrived it was dark outside and we see all these hotels barbwire at first I thought they were military installations or prisons but they weren't they are our hotels... I guess they have a lot of problems but turkey is very very very poor... the jewels we bought from the guy which wasn't that much money, he was able to shut down and not have to work for the rest of the month and it was the beginning of January he was very grateful and kept giving us stuff for free.
This is inside the security part but outside of our hotel this is maybe 10% if less of our hotel it was so big and the grounds were Big, if you want you can see it on the Internet google susesi if you have time and want to go to turkey stay here!!
So funny story... the people were so excited about us for some reason... we were the only Americans to ever visit this hotel!! The only ones!!! They didn't even have an American flag flying outside of the hotel!! Anyways everyone thought that I was Josh's Secretary and he was a big wig boss and we were having an affair... funny!! I have no clue why but all the managers and higher ups would come up to me and talk to me... because I am so chatty and at dinner every night they had baklava which is mine and Josh's favorite desert in the whole world!! So this manager comes up to me and sees me getting it and is kind of surprised and I tell him I LOVE BAKLAVA!! (thanks to the Greek festival and awesome parents taking me to it when I was younger and Josh coming to it) We know what it is!! So this manager is really surprised and says do you want to learn how to make!! I am so excited and he tells me come down and we will take you into the kitchen and show you how to make!! It was so cool!! they took us into the kitchen which is the size of our house and then some and takes us in the back to where they make the desserts and show us how to make it!! You can see it on the video!!
Another food that the Turkish people eat is fresh honey! Josh's Favorite!! They had fresh honey out for us to eat all day and Josh would eat the whole thing comb and all!! It was pretty cool!! There food was MAGNIFICENT!!! This was the best hotel we have ever stayed in even our complementary shampoos and stuff was designer stuff!! Best treatment ever by staff... they ran out to the local town to buy me black tights!! How nice was that!! We loved it and if the future lets us we will return!!! It was neat seeing a new culture!! To bad we had to go back to Germany!!

Monday, January 19, 2009

Its been a while...


Dolche is a Daddy... a friend of ours has an Maltese the beautiful white dog in the picture and with Dolche our Yorkshire terrier, produced 6 little puppies 3 boys and 3 girls, this has kept us pretty consumed for the last few months. Those puppies are really cute. It is always relaxing to see these little dogs. They have gotten so big too. Poor Balie was only suppose to have 4 puppies but to our surprise she had 6.































Its a good thing that Human's don't have Litters......
The puppies had a feeding frenzy Poor Baile!!

on the video we are voicing our concern for the puppies well beings so sorry if this upsets anyone but you just had to see them eating!!