I jinxed myself

A package I was expecting from FEDEX was stolen (along w/ several others, they say) two stops before it was set to be delivered to me. Honestly, who steals from FEDEX?

The world still is a safe place...at least in Brugge

Since we've been in Brugge, Scott and I both have this horrible habit of leaving our keys in the door and shutting the door leaving our keys on the outside. It happened once and we remembered right away and went to get them and they were still there. The next time it happened, we left them outside over night...and amazingly, they were still there. This time when it happened, I had gotten caught in a huge down pour and was soaking wet from coming back from the bank that I guess I was too focused on my umbrella and wet shoes to grab my keys. About five hours later I was reading a book on our 2nd floor and all of a sudden I heard our door open. I thought it was Scott coming home early so I went to the top of the stairs and looked down and saw a hand placing my keys on the floor. The hand quickly shut the door. I loooked out the mail slot and didn't see anyone. The funny thing is my first thought was....what happened if they made a copy of my keys. (Growing up in the hood of Albany, GA will make you think worst case scenario) I called Scott and he reminded me that it's been one year and we've yet to find a place to make keys in Brugge. So, we're going with the theory of a nice person trying to help someone out. Still weird though!

Still finding new things to do

We went pub hopping on Saturday night and had a great time. After being here one year, we found another Irish Pub called, Druid's Cellar. It's actually better than our regular hang-out, Celtic Ireland. We like our Irish hang-outs because the menus and signs are all in English.

Our New Year's resolution was not to go into a bar or resturant that we'd been to the previous year. So, keeping true to our New Year's resolution, earlier this year we entered into what we'd like to call Brugge's hidden treasure....Lucifernium. Scott and I didn't have enough kahuna's to enter in alone so we enlisted our friend, Doug (who had previously been there) to "get" us in. It's actually right around the corner from our house. The signs are all in Spanish and from what we gather it's only open on Saturdays from 9 until 2am. We were so interested from our first experience that broke our resolution and we went back a second time on Saturday. Here's a recap:

In order to get into the place you have to "ring the bell." (Scary I know, but we did it anyways) As we were waiting for them to open the door a party of about 25 women wearing devils horns and crosses showed up) A few minutes later someone opened the locked door and we all entered in. We found a seat and ordered from their RUM based menu. I ordered a mojito and Scott ordered the Coco. Scott quickly learned that the Coco was a glass full of plain Malibu. As we scanned the crowd, we noticed the devil-horned woman were placing women's panties on men's heads. So we deducted they we selling the underwear....I guess to keep their club going. Sure, devil-horned wearing women with crosses on their clothing, selling underwear. After being here one year, you learn just to go with it....instead of questioning it. It didn't look like Hankie Panky (the best brand of underwear in the world) to me so we past on the opportunity to purchase. The last time we visited we remembered an old "grandpa" like man playing the piano...and he was there again this time. He played "only you" and "i will survive" during our stay there. We've seen the owner of the bar around our side of town driving a huge van with graffiti-like content of doctor-healing powers. To be honest, we were really scared of the van when it parked in front of our house. Last weekend we saw him biking around town. The rumor goes that his wives are the waitresses. (There were at least 6 waitresses in the place...all of Spanish decent) We talked to him while we were there and told him we were neighbors. We managed to speak in Spanish while we were there (the "house" language). Just brushing up for our trip to Spain in September, I guess. On our way out, he informed us that he has to keep the door locked so the noise doesn't bother his neighbors. Anyways, come visit us and stay over a Saturday and we'll show you the weirdest bar you've ever seen!

HAPPY 29th BIRTHDAY JOE!!!!

Atlanta

We had a great time in Atlanta visiting with Scott's side of the family. Little Alli is just adorable!

Click HERE to see a few of the photos. I'll probably post the actual Baptism photos once we get them from Scott's mom.

We didn't have time to look for me a new computer so lets hope mine can last until December. I can get on it a few hours per day but that's about it. It's to the point where I've put all of the ITUNES on the external hard drive to free up memory. Hopefully, that's the problem and it will quit crashing.

Until Monday!

One Year in Europe

Lacy's computer just turned 5 years old and is now in the emergency room. She doesn't have a computer today so I (Scott) have the honor of writing the weekly blog this week. She is actually been trying to get me to write the blog for some time now but this time I am out of excuses and can't let the faithful readers down. So let get it started...

On June 5th we hit our one year anniversary living in Belgium. This date is memorable not just for last year's move, but in 2002 Lacy and I went out on our first date and in 1974 my sister, Kelly, was born. To commemorate the one year anniversary I thought I would mention some of the highlights in the last 12 months.

- Since there is nothing tying us down we tried to travel Europe as much as possible; and travel we did! We have been to France, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Ireland, Scotland, England, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Malta and of course Belgium.

- Family and friends coming to visit us are always a highlight. We had four different visits; my mom, our friends Damon / Danielle, Lacy's best friend Shannon and Lacy's parents. Family and friends are always encouraged to make a trip out. We love visitors.

- The birth of our new niece. My brother and sister-in-law gave birth to a new baby girl, Alli Eichenberger. Lacy and I are traveling to Georgia this week to attend the Baptism which I am priviledged to be her Godfather.

- Christmas in Colorado. I love Christmas in the real snow and this year we had an adventure of a life time which rivaled John Candy and Steve Martin's Planes Trains and Automobiles. But most important we made it in time to take a sleigh ride on Christmas night with family.

- Being a part of Lacy's adventures and misadventures. The last year Lacy and my world has really expanded and our cultures flipped upside down. It has been great to see how Lacy has grown and pushed herself to experience new things. It ranges from something simple as riding a bike down the busy cobblestone with a large bus rolling behind her to navigating through the Dutch/ French bus system to a train system in order to meet me for dinner. Lacy also managed to navigate through Europe for two weeks with Shannon. Most importantly I am impressed in how she has transformed from a fast food junkie to a real Rachel Ray.

I think I speak for both Lacy and I when I say the last year has flown by. Time flies by when you are having fun.

Until next year,

Scott

My computer had a heart attack!

I have managed to revive my computer several times and he's still hanging on. What will I do without a computer! It's my life-line out here. If anyone knows anything about Disabling BIOS memory and caching and shadowing, please share. All I've managed to find are definitions:(BIOS - Basic input/output System)

I've got to be quick before my computer crashes but, I'll try and be more detailed later!

Along the canals in Amsterdam

The windmill in Damme.