So long, farewell, Auf Weidersehen, adieu... Adieu, adieu to you and you and you

Today is the day! I am leaving for Germany!!! Yay! It has been about 2.5 years since I was there... things were a bit different on that trip than they will be on this trip...

For starters it was just the two of us... Alex and me... Me and Alex...

Well, 3 of us... Martin joined us for part of the trip last time...

And, when I was there, Alex and I went to Oktoberfest in Munich... and did a little bit of this:

And took in a little bit of sightseeing as well

That's Neuschwannstein in the background...

Yup, yup... this time will definitely be different! Our agenda will be quite different... you see, Alex and Martin had a sweet baby boy in September and he is being baptized this weekend! I am headed over to participate in the ceremony as I am the proud Godmother. Yay! Can't wait to see him for the first time, and spend an entire week catching up with Alex and Martin. To say I'm excited is an understatement.

When I started telling people I was headed to Germany, they all naturally asked why I was going and when I said "For my Godson's baptism"- they asked how I got a Godson in Germany?!  So, I thought I would take advantage of this blog post to tell those were curious just how this truly unique and special friendship came to be nearly 4.5 years ago! 

September 2008... Jas and I are living in Houston, I'm working as a nurse in the ER and Jas is working on PhD at Baylor College of Medicine. Hurricane Ike comes up out of the Gulf and hits Texas before heading northeast and leaving a trail of states with severe damage and power outages for days. Thankfully, Jas and I weren't really effected by the storm. Jas and I actually slept at the hospital for 2 days during this period and our house sustained minimal damage. 

One of the girls in Jas's lab, Alex, and her husband Martin- were not quite so lucky. They had been living in Galveston and had very severe water damage to their apartment and were told to find alternate housing. Many people that lived on the coast were displaced and Alex and Martin were struggling to find housing for them and their dog, Tequila. 

Jas caught wind of their struggles and being the nice guy that he is, came home and asked what I thought about offering to have these people move in with us. This is where the story gets interesting... I had met Alex once before at an Astro's baseball game. I was so excited when Jas told me that one of the girls in his lab was from Germany, and I was so looking forward to meeting her- I took German in high school, I have some German ancestry and I always wanted to go there... and I just thought we'd have to be friends. Well, call it just plain craziness women's intuition- but I felt like Alex completely snubbed me when she met me. I thought she had no interest in getting to know me, and just seemed like a not very nice person {Side note: it is so completely weird to be writing that because I know her so well now, I can never imagine using the words "Alex" and "not a a very nice person" in the same sentence... but I digress}. Long story short- no world stopping friendship was made. I left the interaction feeling snubbed and thought to myself "her loss." 

Now, we fast forward to September 2008 in the wake of this hurricane... and here Jason and I are discussing inviting THIS GIRL, HER husband and HER dog to come live with US?!? And you can imagine my complete and utter surprise... the conversation went something like this... "Jason, that girl hates me! What makes you think they would even want to live with us?! It will be so awkward! She doesn't like me. This is crazy. But, I do feel bad for them. Geez, that would really suck if we didn't have anywhere to go. Wait, did you say they have a Pitbull, lab mix?! We have a shih-tzu-poodle! She'll kill her! Well, I guess we can see what happens. If it doesn't work out we can always ask them to leave. Ok, let's do it." Little did I know- we'd later be begging them to stay!

As if the story couldn't get more interesting... we weren't even there when they moved in! Jason and I flew to Baltimore for my cousins wedding. So basically, these people that we barely knew moved into our house, started using our stuff... could've robbed us blind and burnt our house down... all while we were 10 states away for a wedding.

Well, we returned from the wedding... I was not quite sure what to expect when we arrived home- but the house was immaculate. Tequila the pitbull/lab mix was curled up on the floor... Nothing was out of place... and over the next month and a half that they lived with us we became very close friends. Chloe completely cashed in on the deal! She would clean Tequila's ears for her, and play tug of war. Tequila never growled at her or played rough. Perfect package. The day they moved out was a sad day, but thankfully they moved closer than Galveston so we could visit often.

Best buds on the couch (Tequila is not supposed to be on the couch... I let her break the rules. Whoops)

Tequila frequently tried to lay in Chloe's bed... somewhat unsuccessfully... Or successfully I guess, she seems happy. 

The rest of the time that Alex and Martin lived in Houston we remained close. We did things together frequently, and when they moved back to Germany I was so very sad. We Skype often, and thanks to technology we text message back and forth a few times a week. And NOW- I get to meet their sweet baby boy! I really cannot wait!

Time to finish packing! I've procrastinated long enough! Auf Weidersehen!