Our trip to the Keukenhof in Holland

I just wanted to share some of the fun times and beautiful things we saw during our trip to Holland. We stayed at NH Leeuwenhorst in Noordwijkerhout and took advantage of their Keukenhof package.  I was extremely happy and wouldn't have minded staying another night but the hotel was booked. The hotel was near the gardens, the seaside, and it just smelled amazing outside with all the flower fields growing on either side of the road. For info click here.

The tree outside our hotel

There were plenty of things for our daughter to do too! There was a playground, a petting zoo, things to climb on, boat rides, playhouses! I'm sure there was more that we didn't even get to see. 

the flower field right outside our hotel!

 I LOVE this place!

The North Sea

Last weekend we took a trip to the Netherlands to see the Keukenhof and made a stop at the beach! It was cold and windy but so beautiful. I'm so glad we stopped. I can only imagine how amazing it would be in the warm summer sun.

We stole sea-shells from the sea shore :)

Goodbye Sea!

Where we get our mail...

The CMR was the busiest I have ever seen tonight! I don't know if all the backed up Christmas mail finally burst through but there was a line all the way from the pick up window around the corner. By the time I made it half way to the pick up window, that many more people had joined the line and it was still going around the corner our of sight! Crazy! We check our mail everyday (except Sunday when they are closed for pick ups) and we had 3 packages today! YAY! I absolutely love getting packages. How often do you check you mail? 

(I love her outfit btw!)

My coat of arms

I had a pretty amazing day. A year ago in October I got interested in our family history. I signed up for the free 2 week trial at Ancestry.com. I figured that would give me two full weeks to discover all of our secrets if I really booked through the information. Ha! It's a bit overwhelming when you first start doing searches and reading through census records. I realized I should have done as much reasearch on my own as I could first before I started the trial. Ask around to relatives to see how much information I could get from them. Even knowing the first names or spouses or their children's names help when you are trying to match things up. After the trial was up I wasn't nearly as far as I had hoped to be and I was pretty burned out. I closed it up and hadn't looked at it for over a year. 


I don't know what got into me today but I decided to try searching with Google this morning. The amazing thing is I was able to fill out a HUGE chunk of my family tree! I now know that my Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandfather's name was Hans Klotz (and that our name has been spelled MANY different ways over the last 500 years!) He was born in  Oberjettingen, Wurttemberg, Germany in 1535. Here is some more information I found about my heritage (I don't know how much of it is true since the furthest back I could trace my direct line was 1500, and most of my family were farmers but I still found it interesting.

"First found in Hessen, where the family was closely identified in the early period of history with the feudal society which would become prominent throughout Europe. The Klotzes would later emerge as in influential noble family, having many distinquished  branches, and well known for their involvement in social, economic and political affairs. The earliest known bearer of the name was Berchtolt Klotz, who is registered in the "Furstenbergisches Unkunderbuch" in 1343."

Here is my family coat of arms!!

It was such an amazing feeling to be able to trace my family back to it's roots and to think I might even be able to visit some of the places they lived and are buried. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it but I had tears in my eyes. I had to share this good feeling!

The Army and Family (and $$$)

I belong to an Army wife group for the post that I live at and the wives on it often get into heated discussions over matters. (What do you expect with over 500 Army wives living so close together!) Recently women were comparing the amount of COLA they receive. (For those of you who are not military, Cost-of-Living Allowance (COLA), is paid to the military to help offset higher costs when stationed overseas.  It doesn't reimburse for expenses, but it helps make up the difference between what you could buy in the states vs. what you can buy with that same dollar overseas. It also does not take into account the remoteness of your duty station, the difficulty in buying goods readily purchased in the states, or hardships.) COLA is calculated based on a formula taking into account the Service Members location, rank, years of service, number of dependents, and type of housing. For instance someone higher ranking with several years in service with dependents will receive more COLA than a single soldier living in the barracks. Although the number of dependents is taken into account, it does not make up a huge difference. For example, if my husband were single and living in barracks would make $87 less than he would being married and living in government housing. Add one extra dependent (child) and he receives an additional $20. If we were to have more children the rate for the third, fourth and fifth dependent would increase by another $10 each. 

Some of the wives in the group (with larger families no doubt) expressed their opinion that COLA should be based mostly on family size rather than on rank and years in service. I have to disagree. Although the Army regularly boasts about family support I cannot believe that it is in their best interests nor do they want service members to have large families. Think about this... the bigger a solider's family is the more the military spends to house them, and the more it costs for health care. Not only for the births of these children, but to continue to keep them healthy during the course of the soldiers military career. If they were to base COLA solely on family size it would encourage people to have more babies just so they could earn more money. Everyone knows a married soldier makes more money than a single soldier and I personally know some people that have gotten married just so they could receive BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing). If the government offered those same people more money in exchange for having a child or two I'm not so sure they wouldn't have done that as well. I see nothing wrong with rewarding a soldiers dedication to service (years in service) and his leadership skills (rank). It encourages nothing more than to be a better soldier and to continue doing so rather than encouraging procreation. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that family size factors into the equation. But do men really need more reasons to have sex?

If you'd like to learn more about COLA - or finances in general there is a terrific blog with 12 frequently asked questions in regards to COLA. (this is not an offical DOD site, but one I personally find helpful) :

http://moneyformilitary.blogspot.com/2007/07/12-faqs-about-cola-and-how-cola-is.html

Here is also a link to the official DOD COLA calculator if you'd like to see how much your COLA is: 

http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/colaCalc.cfm