Year in review: 2017

January
- Clark returned home to Naples, Italy and I stayed in Washington State recovering from my broken leg.

-My brother got married and I was a bridesmaid in the wedding in Seattle.

February
-I celebrated my 25th birthday.

-I walked for the first time in 14 weeks all by myself!

March
-I finally launched my own ecommerce site littlesloth.com which in July I realized wasn't bringing in the profit to make it worth it as this point.

-I drove for the first time on my own since I broke my leg about 4 months.

-I returned to Naples, Italy!

-We bought a king bed.

April
-Explored around Naples, Italy a lot.

-I attended bookclub and made new friends.

May
-Saw 3OH!3 in concert on base!

-Traveled to Greece. Santorini, Athens, and Sparta

-Continued to do PT twice a week.

June

-My family came to visit for 2 weeks. We went all around Naples and to Rome and Pompeii and Capri and my little brother and I went to Amsterdam

-We went to our third military ball

July

-Celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary

-Traveled to Poland, Lithuania and Latvia!

-We ate pig snout, skin, and tongue with our landlords. 

August
-We celebrated Knox's 4th birthday. 28 in dog years people. Crazy how we just got him 4 years ago and he is already older than both Clark and I ;)

-Clark traveled to USA for ALC for 6 weeks.

-I got my hair cut for the first time in about 1.5 years! Yeah.... haha

-I got accepted into an online bachelors degree program from the University of Washington.

September
-I started said college at UW again after taking 4 years off.

-I took my real first solo trip ever to Copenhagen, Denmark and Malmo, Sweden and it was wonderful. Although there are definitely pros to traveling with someone. But it felt good to be able to have a good time and enjoy myself all by myself.

October
-We went boating on the Mediterranean because somehow it was still hot enough to swim! We also visited the beautiful island of Procida off the Naples coast.

-Clark and I visited France for the first time. We saw some of the Normandy Coast, Disneyland Paris, and of course Paris.

-We won best family costume at Clark's work's Halloween contest.

-Clark did a 14.5 mile Spartan race in southern Italy and did really awesome.

November
-I remembered one year of my falling accident where I broke my leg.

-We saw Old Dominion in concert front and center and got their autographs and a photo with them!

-Traveled to Bucharest, Romania and Bran & Peles Castle in the Romanian countryside.

December

- We took a trip to Salerno Lights with Clark's work.

-We did a road trip to Tuscany Italy for the first time since living here in Italy and visited the most amazing hot springs.

-Took a short trip to Prague, Czechia and Saxony, Germany for the Christmas markets!

-I finished my first quarter back at UW with a 3.9!

-Clark got his 3rd tattoo, a shark jaw on this elbow.

Thoughts
-While this year was tougher than my Instagram or blog would lead you to believe it still has been a good year. 

-For the first three months of the year I couldn't even walk on my two feet. In November 2016 I broke my leg bad. It still hurts every single day. 

-But I think it's a good thing we are stationed in Europe because I still want to travel a ton so even though my leg hurts (somedays worse than other) I still walk and exercise and explore because I don't want to miss out on this opportunity. 

-I think if I had broken my leg while in the states I would have gone back to my parents house for longer and been kind of a couch potato and gotten really discouraged. 

-I also started college again back at the University of Washington doing an online bachelors degree program. So cool that I can live in Italy and still go to my dream school. I started in Fall 2017 and ended the quarter with a 3.92 gpa, and the next quarter starts in 2 days!! 

-We have made so many friends while being stationed here. Probably the most friends so far at one new location. 


PAST YEARS: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

Saxony Germany Bridges

Yes we went out of our way to look at not one but two bridges while on our trip from Prague to Dresden Germany. They were more than worth it though and really fun to see in the winter although I will say I am glad I brought two pairs of shoes because snow got into them on one of the trails. The first bridge we saw is the very round one that makes a perfect circle when the lake underneath is not frozen it is called Rakotzbruke in eastern Germany really close to the Poland border. It is in a little park and there is parking really close by. It takes about two minutes to walk to it from the parking area so super accessible.

It should be noted that it is massive blocked off and technically illegal to cross. They want people to be safe but they also want to keep this 1850 bridge in tact. So the people that do cross it to get the photo op are doing so at their own risk. 

The second bridge we visited we did on our last day on the way to the airport. We went from Dresden back to Prague and it was on the way. We had to go a little ways out of the way but not too much and it was definitely worth it. The second bridge is in the Saxon Switzerland National Park of Germany and is called Basteibrucke or Bastei bridge. Make sure to follow the signs to Bastei when you get near the area because I think our GPS would have lead us astray. We have learned that once your GPS gets you close to disregard it and look for signs to the location.

This is the place my shoes on wet from the snow it was a little more of the walk to the bridge and up and down some very icy stairs. I almost slipped twice but luckily I did not fall. Have a wonderful day!
love, Carlee

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas all! I hope everyone has been having the best holiday season. It has been pretty great over here although I will say December 22nd was not my best day. I first almost got hit by a car while driving to get groceries. It was so windy and cold as well. After I was done at the store I was driving home and hit a pothole and got not one but two flat tires both on the left side at the same time. Luckily Clark was already off work and came to my rescue. It was a pretty easy fix just took a little while. Another thing is one of my packaged didn't arrive to my family in time with their presents. I even sent it out on December 1st and it got to Chicago on December 5th and it has been in Chicago for at least 21 days. WHHHHHHAAAT!! So those are the bad things...

Good things... I have been making lots of Christmas goodies. I ordered tamales from one of Clark's bosses wives and since it is the holidays she gave me a dozen for free (sooooo sweet) and then I gave her some of my homemade truffles and cookies. Watching Christmas movies, lighting candles, making gingerbread houses, taking baths, staying warm, and thinking up New Years resolutions! We are spending Christmas Eve eating and playing games with some of our dearest friends here. Sometimes when we are doing something like walking along the streets in Prague I will say to Clark, "we have a good life." and he will say "it's great."

View our Christmas cards below plus some outtakes.

I took all these photos myself and of course I had to order two designs of Christmas cards cause I just couldn't decided which one I liked better haha. I love how they turned out. Happy Holidays and New Year!
love, Carlee

Dress: H&M

Boots: TJ Maxx

Knox's Scarf: Old Navy

Clark's Jacket and pants: H&M