We are in Germany, as 99% of you know. What most don’t know, is that the wonderful husband is still paid in US dollars. Now this is great for all American bills, but it doesn’t make it easy to buy anything off the military base. Normally, at big bases, this wouldn’t be a problem, but we do not live at a big base, instead, we live at a rather small one. We do have many services available to us, but those services are very limited in supply or options. This generally means, you find a bigger base, or suffer the exchange rate and buy locally.

Currently, the exchange rate, just sucks. Sorry, there is no gentle way to put it. The USD is in series decline here, taking more USD to make Euro every day. Buying locally means we pay almost double the cost. Even with the help of COLA (or Cost of LIving Adjustment money) it still hurts to buy locally.

Wonderful husband is military, his rank in the military sets the amount of money he makes, he does not get over time when he works 12 – 14 hour days since he is on call 24 hours and they can keep him those 24 if they need to. We have a set amount a month of money, rather low, but then I wont bash it. It is no where near the amount he would make outside the military, but I know he will get that paycheck monthly no matter what.

Because our monthly income is less them $3,500 a month, we are able to apply for free or reduced lunches for the kids. I love this because school lunch prices are so high now a days. I remember taking in $2.00 a day and buying a huge amount of food… Now, I have to send in $2.85 for just a basic lunch, no extras. That gets expensive, and the kids love eating the school lunches. Ok, not all the time, we tried the fixing lunches for school, I packed them huge lunches and they still complained.. But we can’t afford that either. We are closing in on the cap for Free lunch, if wonderful husband gets another raise, we will fall into the reduced lunch, which will be around $1.50 for lunch a day, again no extras.

Normally, this just went to the school lunches.

Saturday, we made a trip to a bigger BX at a different base. This base with the much more in supply and more options, is around an hour and 45 minutes away. This is also driving at Autobahn speeds, which range from 80mph to 95mph. No, kidding. It is recommended you go around 130kmp most of the time, which is 130 x 6 = 780, dropping the 0 = 78mph. In some areas, like construction and just some areas for some reason, the speed limit drops to around 80kmp or even as far down as 60kmp. So it is a distance away.

We got there around noon, and the first place I wanted to stop at was the optical center. We have a very limited supply of glasses on our base, the kids selection is really bad, they also don’t have any lenses, so any glasses we would find, would have to be shipped away. At this other base, they had a full optical office, complete with most basic of lenses and many options for frames.

This being my first time there, walking in, I am in just complete aww. I have gotten so used to seeing the limited supply at my base, but to see the amount they had, I was like a child in a candy store. I wanted to check every display. A nice lady asked if there was anything she could help with. I pointed to the three oldest and told her I have three kids that need glasses. The next question threw me for a loop. She asked if the kids were on any program for lunches at school. I told her they were on the free lunch program, in which she asked if I had a letter. Of course not, why would I need their free lunch letter when getting them glasses?

This wonderful lady, then explained that they have a program, where if the kids quallify for free lunch program, they also qualify for free eye glasses.

Wait… What?

She pointed me in the direction of a display case that had all kinds of sizes, shapes, colors, etc, of eye glasses. Explaining that if the kids can find eye classes from this case, they will be free. So, we looked. We found three cute pairs of glasses, the kids look wonderful in them. And when she range them up, she handed me a recite that said I owed nothing… I should come back at 3pm to pick up the glasses.

I walked out of there in a complete daze. I made the trip up, expecting to pay around $400 in glasses and frames, and here I am, walking out with three pairs of glasses for free. I have to contact the school to see about getting the letter she had orginally asked for and to email it back to her. She was 100% confident that I will get the letter. Even if I don’t, the glasses were only $50 each, still less then I planned on paying. So I will be contacting them as soon as I can so I can get that letter over to the glasses place quickly.

Saturday was a good day. We made it home, the hubby and I currled up, watching the first three discs of Season 2 of Full Metal Alchemist. The kids, enjoying their new glasses played video games, went outside to play with friends, and read books.

It was a nice relaxing day after a very long drive.