Chapter Closed

We had our walk-thru today of our previous house.  It was just as stressful and dramatic as we had hoped it WOULDN'T be.  But now we can close that chapter of our lives, and focus on unpacking and making our "new" house our home.

Our "new" house was built in 1979.  Our "old" house was built in 2010 and was VERY modern.  So this house is VERY different.  It has some definite 70's German charm!  But it has LOTS of space for our family, so we felt we could work with the "charm"!  It already feels much "homier" than the other house...and we don't even have our things hung on the walls yet!!

We feel good about this house and about the current landlord.  We had a clog in our kitchen drain the other day...R called the landlord, and he was here within 10 minutes to take a look at it! 

So now we have LOTS of hard work to unpack, hang up, and make this house our home!!  But I will leave you with a sneak peak of one room that is relatively done.  It is our 1/2 bath in the entryway of our house.  It is in all it's original 70's glory, but we are just gonna roll with that! : ) 

This room has solid concrete walls...so it is really hard to hang things on the walls.  I can use the Command picture hangers...but since they are $3.09 each at the PX, we will hang things sparingly! : )

Our "new" home...

We are moving this weekend.  I have mixed emotions...I am happy to be freeing ourselves from the landlord situation we have going on at our current house, and we are blessed to have found a house that suits our needs AND keeps A in the same school zone.  But we are finally feeling settled in THIS house, and to pack up and move somewhere different is always a challenge.

I still feel it was the right decision, even while we are in the trenches of moving our entire household!  I am anxious to get settled in our "new" house, and make it feel like home.  So, I may be absent from the blog for a while...we won't have internet for a couple of weeks at the new house...and I'll be working frantically to get everything situated.  In the meantime, I will leave you with a pic of where we are moving to...with a promise of more to come once we are moved in!

We are still here...just busy!

I got on the laptop today that has the blog as the homepage...and noticed I haven't posted since Jan. 1st!!  OOPS!!  It's just been a busy time, and we haven't been on any trips lately, so I just get bogged down in "normal" life and forget to update the blog...sorry...will try to do better!

Update on us...January has been pretty busy, but pretty uneventful.  We survived R's first TDY back to the States, leaving us here alone in Germany for a week.  No major issues while he was gone, so that was great!

We have been househunting, and found a new home to move into.  We continue to have issues with our current landlord.  We move to our "new" home in February...so we have a lot of work in our future.  But I think it will be a better home for us, and definitely a better landlord situation.

The girls got semester report cards this week, and they both have all A's & B's.  Yay girls!

Little R continues to attend German kindergarten, and continues to refuse to speak any German!! : )

And that's about it..."normal" life for us!  But I will leave you with one little tidbit of how my day went today....

Germans like "see thru" stairs in their homes.  In ALL their homes!  I despise the "see thru" stairs for a number of reasons:  the cat fell through them her first day here (still have no idea how she wasn't injured); fear that 4-yr old boy will fall through them at least 20 times a day; dirt and dust collects underneath the stairs in the basement, because it all falls through from the upper floors; and there are others, but that is all I can think of right now.  But today an event occurred that caused me to despise the see-thru stairs EVEN MORE!!

Imagine an active 4-yr old boy, who is always busy.  Usually too busy to go to the bathroom until the VERY last second!  Imagine this 4-yr old boy, pulling down his pants & underwear to his ankles and running for the 1st floor bathroom.  Now imagine that 14-yr old sister is in that bathroom with door locked!  4-yr old boy then realizes his only hope is to get to the 2nd floor bathroom in like 10 SECONDS!!  Imagine 4-yr old boy walking upstairs (with his pants & underwear still at his ankles, hindering his progress).  About halfway up the stairs to the 2nd floor...TOO LATE...peeing EVERYWHERE!!  Imagine this would be bad enough if it was normal stairs...it would be puddling and running down the stairs.  But NO...in the world of "see thru" stairs it is puddling...then running down between the stairs to next stairway below, all the way down to the basement.  As the pee runs through the stairs, it is hitting the basement floor with such force (remember it is coming from almost the 2nd floor) that it is splattering everywhere downstairs!!  Have I mentioned we use the space under the stairs for storage???  PEE  EVERYWHERE...on the stairs, running through the stairs, and hitting the basement floor and splattering ALL OVER everything!!!!  Ummm....yeah....that was fun to clean up...

And there you have it...you are updated!  : )  Never a dull moment in the Willis household! : )