Well I finally got around to posting the photos from our recent trips. In February, on Valentine’s Day we went to the Wilhelma Zoo in downtown Stuttgart. We didn’t really plan on doing much for V-day so on a whim we went to the zoo. It was cold almost snowy day but we went anyway. As expected not all the animals were out and about, regardless we still saw quite a few beauties like the tiger, peacocks, polar bears, and penguins. The baby penguins were the cutest, I don’t know if I have any photos of them posted because they were hidden in the little caves so none of the shots I took came out nicely.

On the first day of spring we went to Legoland, Germany to enjoy the start of warm weather. It was the first opening day for the year. It was smaller than I expected but it was nice. I loved the mini world; cities like Munich, Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, and more were there. They also had Neuschwanstein Castle, which was a nice preview because it was our next trip.

Our most recent trip was to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles in Bavaria on an USO tour to see the castle that inspired Walt Disney for Cinderella’s castle. I’ve been there about 10 years ago. I must say the tour changed quite a bit; no photos inside!?! The first time I went there I brought a 35mm camera with black and white film (yeah, stupid I know) so I was hoping to get new pictures. Anyway, I posted a few cool shots from outside; although the photographs do not come close to the beauty of the place. It was so surreal. Everywhere you turn is so picturesque, absolute breathtaking beauty. A fairytale scene in real life. The lake alone was captivating, the water was so clear I wanted to drink it, the Alps in the backdrop just completed the dream. We plan on returning in the Fall to see the change of colors.

So in my boredom I started stumbling and I came across this recipe “The Most Dangerous Chocolate Cake Recipe.” Before reading the article/recipe I figured it would be this rich and tiresome to prepare chocolate cake, but no… it only takes 5 minutes to make! I definitely have to try this… probably tonight. If and when I do I’ll post a photo and let you know how it was. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will taste absolutely horrible so I won’t have another easy fix to my fat cravings.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about something fun other than school projects. The January term ended last week with a week and a half break, so here’s to catching up…

On February 13, 2009, Stephen and I went to the Mercedes-Benz Museum. We got up fairly early to catch the SBahn which dropped us off almost at the doorstep of the museum. As you can see from the photos the building is quite huge, from the outside it didn’t look as big as it did walking through it inside. I think there are 6 floors. You begin the tour by getting on the elevator that takes you all the way to the top and you work your way down the spiral design of the building moving through time represented by the cars. I took over 400 photos, of course too many to post online… that would be a bit boring to look through so I posted 82. I tried to take photos of all the cars but there were just too many, plus I skipped the cars from the 1980s and early 1990s because they were god-awfully ugly! Very Back to the Future-istic. I took us about 7 hours to walk through the entire museum, which turned into a dealership toward the end. It was nice to see the brand new cars.

click the image to see the photo album

Here’s the final version of my island. I put sound on it but the file is too large, I’m still figuring out how to make the file size smaller but retain picture and sound quality to post online. Here it is, much better lighting and a few other fun stuff added to the island. How I wish this is a real-life getaway.

(double click image to play video; this may take a while to load it’s a very large file)

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For the last half of this term we were allowed to pick whatever we wanted to model. Initially I was torn between doing a living room and a tropical island. Once I started working on the project, I just started working on the island and didn’t even think of the living room. I worked on it almost everyday of last week. I’m thinking about adding a boat to float by the dock. This video took about 10 hours to render from Maya to a QuickTime movie. So here’s over a week’s worth of work into 48 seconds.

(double click image to play video)

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This term is almost over and I’ve learned so much the past 6 weeks. I really thought I’d never like Maya but turns out it is so much fun. I was sick during week 5 of class so I couldn’t finish my mouse animation on time. I finally submitted it a couple days ago. I am a bit disappointed in my work though. I spent very many hours, even days, on rigging my mouse to animate it but I couldn’t get it right so I had do dumb down the mouse animation. So here it is, over 30 hours squeezed into 7 seconds of animation.

(double click image to play video)

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I haven’t been feeling well since I woke up today and I really wish I could just stay in bed, but I had to get up because today is Wednesday. What’s so important about Wednesday’s? Well its homework day, lots to post. Normally, I would have gone through all the lecture notes and videos but I totally skipped Monday to attend to other matters. Yesterday, I spent all day watching lecture videos and doing them myself so by 6pm I was drained. This morning I woke up feeling like poop, took some drugs, and got back to reading lectures and posting for one class. Now, I’m too lazy to read the lectures for the other class but I have to. So, in my laziness I thought about the Accessibility Tools Windows Vista have, I was hoping for a program that reads so I wouldn’t have to read just listen. Before I found the Narrator I discovered the Snipping Tool. I was curious of what it does so I clicked it open. It’s one of the most useful tools! You know how you do a print screen and then have to paste it to Photoshop or something to get the screenshot and then crop what you need then save it as an image? Well the Snipping Tool just lets you snip any part of your screen and lets you save it. I use screenshots a lot for many things and I’m so glad I was lazy today, I found a new tool to cut down on some steps. I love being lazy sometimes, I find the coolest shortcuts to do things.

Well I gotta get back to school, get my Narrator on to read my lectures for me.

Gabby has been going to choir practice for a few months now and we finally got to see her in action. Unfortunately, Stephen is TDY this week so I went alone. The concert was very good, they sounded almost like a professional children’s choir in some parts. Here’s the video, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. You’ll probably ask why she’s not in the center shot all the time, I wanted to get her friends (two girls on her left) in the shot too. I am so proud of her! She sings at home all the time, and to see her on stage with the group is quite amazing.
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I honestly miss writing blogs! Since I started school three weeks ago I haven’t had time to do anything else online. The first week of school was a pain! I seriously wanted to quit and go back to a lazy bumm, but I worked through it. I forced myself to do some research on how to use Autodesk Maya and found that it is a pretty fun program. My introduction to Maya brought back feelings I had of Photoshop when I first run the program. I wanted to punch my monitor or crush my mouse! But all is good now, it actually is pretty fun. I’m so happy to be back in school learning totally new things. My other class is on InDesign, I didn’t think this class would be useful to me but there is so much I can do with it.

Steve left for Washington, D.C. yesterday. I’m lonely, again for a week. It’s girl week in the Sipes’ house. He doesn’t return until Sunday so I’m thinking about taking the girls (Gabby, Kookiis, Vandy) for a girls day out. The puppies are allowed in the mall so we might just do that.

I’m really proud of my work in Maya so check out the photo album to see what I’ve been doing the past three weeks.

January - I turned 21 for the 8th time.

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February - We drove down to Los Angeles to see Valerie. She was there for a week so I had to take the opportunity to see her, especially pregnant with her baby girl! We spent the day at the Getty Center. I don’t remember what we did for Valentine’s Day, but I know Stephen got me beautiful flowers!

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March - Uneventful.

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April - Stephen took me and the puppies up to San Francisco for a week! I love that city and I was so happy to be there with the person I love most in the world and my babies. Our trip could not have landed on a perfect time; we didn’t know that the 2008 Olympics torch was scheduled to be ran through the city 2 days after our arrival. It was a controversial one because many protested the Olympics held in China, there were protests all over the place. The Embarcadero was packed with people pro-China and human rights activists. Chinese flags flooded the streets like a blanket of blood (how ironic) and then there were the Tibetan flags scattered all over the place as well. It was great to experience the rallies.

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May - We find out we’re moving to Stuttgart, Germany! Stephen applied for a job and got picked up for it a couple weeks later. For a few days we were stressing out about it because the people he worked for didn’t want to give him up and they tried their best to stop his move. Thankfully people in high places put their foot down and confirmed his orders.

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June - I resigned from my job at GS&ES to get ready for the move. We didn’t have much time to prepare because his orders were to report in Stuttgart no later than the second week of July. I spent the entire month of June packing and preparing for the move. We also decided that Alex and Gabby come with us to spend a school year in Germany.

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July - We celebrated three years of marriage! Stephen got older. We moved out of base housing into a hotel for a week and then on the 1oth we flew out of LAX into STR. This was a very tough time for the puppies. It was a very long flight and they were cooped up in a travel carrier that fit under the seats in front of us. They were very well behaved but I knew they hated it, whenever I checked on Kookiis she was shivering. I wish I could have taken her out of the carrier and put her on my lap. Vandy did very well; I think she slept through most of it. When we arrived we stayed at a hotel for over a month.

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August - Alex turned 11. Kookiis turned 4. We finally found a house to move into! Moved in as soon as we could, we have lived in a hotel too long! Thankfully, we didn’t have to pay for the bills. Of course if the military had a better process they wouldn’t have spent over $10K for our hotel stay! Talk about tax dollars down the drain! Tay becomes very sick from GBS and begins his stay at the hospital.

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September - Vandy got older, we think she turned 3 this year; we chose this month for her birthday because we adopted her from the shelter in September 2007. We start to settle in and the kids start school. I get on a plane to Manila, Philippines to be with Tay and Nay. I arrived on the 2nd, by that time Tay has been in the hospital for about 2 weeks. I stayed the entire month, around the middle Yen joined me; she and I left at the end of the month. During our entire stay, Tay was in the ICU. He was in a state of paralysis and was unable to speak. I was giving up hope and my heart has broken.

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October - I am back home. I missed my husband and my babies so much while I was away. Seeing Stephen at the airport filled my heart with warmth. Tay remains in the hospital, critically stable. What does that mean? It’s an oxymoron to me.

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November - Stress starts to build in our home. Alex has become rebellious and very unhappy. He expressed his feelings about wanting to return to Texas with his mother. Tay remains in the hospital, still critically stable. Some great news ~ Mama Len has become an American, after years of waiting it finally arrived. Yay! Obama is elected president of the United States!

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December - Gabby turned 10. It completely escapes us that Christmas is near. The stress at home and the condition of Tay took away the Christmas spirit. We fought to get into the mood by going to Christmas markets, I attempted to decorate the house but when the tree was up and the lights were set they burned out! Christmas spirit killed. The catalyst was Alex depression manifesting into an unacceptable outburst, this time he had gone too far ~ he finally got his wish… to go back to Texas as soon as school was out for Christmas break. Needless to say there was nothing to celebrate.

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I welcome 2009 with open arms! Hopefully this year will be a better year for us.