We Found A House...Finally!

At church today the speaker reminded everyone to be kind to the  "new people" because she knows how hard moving here is. She told all the "new people" to not be ashamed if you have breakdowns, that this is normal. Another woman told us to plan to put a BIG X over the last few months....not to think about how the kids went crazy with little to do or house hunting, the amount of money spent on eating out, renting cars, luggage, etc. She said to just put a BIG X over it all and move on. 

They are right on some of that. Some days are better than others. We spent 17 days house hunting. 17 LONG days. Every minute we could we looked through every website possible for a house to rent. We looked at probably 34 homes. We dragged the kids to half of them I would say. Sometimes you would drive up and know you didn't like it because of the location or neighbors, but you would spend the time looking and pretending it was nice... just to be nice. We even went with a few immobiliens. Immobiliens are realtors and they often have homes know one else knows about. But if you like the home they know about, you have to pay them about $2000. euros, or $2650 dollars.  Thank goodness we never liked the homes they showed us. 

Yesterday we saw a house posted online, called on it first thing in the morning, and went and saw it. HURRAY, it is now going to be our home!!!! It is not the perfect home, but good enough. 

The home is at the end of a row of town homes. 

          House from the back. 

Main family bathroom. It has a shower in here too. Also a urinal next to the toilet. Tyler tried to try it out, but needs to grow another foot. So weird to have that. No bidet thank goodness, as many bathrooms do.  Bathrooms are generally very large in Germany.

Kitchen. It is nice, but this is all the cupboards and one is the fridge. The color is off in this picture unfortunately. You can see why Ikea's storage solutions are very popular here. There is plenty of wall space for that thank goodness on the other walls.

We were driving the other day and the scenery was so beautiful. Steve told me to take a picture. The picture does not do justice. 

I took this picture from our bathroom window tonight. It is so pretty here.

We went to the pool a couple of times this past week on Ramstein Airbase. It is an awesome pool. They have a swim team that Sarah will be joining. Maybe Tyler too. Kate is not interested in swim team anymore.

We found the Ramstein Library finally. Sarah had read every book we had brought, and was in need of something to read. We made the others get books too-we have to force Kate and Tyler to read. Here Megan was in heaven. She has been pretty difficult for the past 2 months. Throwing lots of fits and demanding I do everything for her. I am not sure if it is an age thing or a moving thing-or both. She is wearing us all out.

We went on another walk and found giant snails. The kids had them race! 

Tyler wanted to keep them as pets. Steve wanted to eat them. Just kidding!

Steve was dying to try some traditional German food, so we did at a place on base. It was okay, if you like lots of bratwursts and sauerkraut. Not my favorite at all. 

And last of all, our creative Kate made another "doll" on one of our walks. She is so creative always.

Here is to a week with no house hunting. I'm in heaven with that agenda! Now to get our air shipment, household goods, and van. 2 of those were supposed to be here this week, and they won't be, Who knows when they will come. Steve took a train 7 hours to get his car this past Friday. We sent it privately a few days before we left. We sent the van with the military 3 weeks before we left. Should have switched them around. Who new our van would still not be here 6 weeks later. That is the frustration with the military. Often slow and inefficient when it comes to moves. Yes they are dealing with thousands, but there are better ways. We should have sent the van privately because we have spent the cost of shipping it ourselves in renting cars and then some. You can see why the people at church say to forget about all this nonsense in the end. But we are still glad we came. Steve might really work soon...after about 5 weeks so far of out and inprocessing. HURRAY again!