The Big Move

Where do I begin?  Let's just say this move has been crazy!

For those of you that don't know, we have been living near Fort Gordon, Georgia for the last year or so.  Before that, we lived in Hawaii for 2 1/2 years.  (My kids don't know what cold weather is, and I've forgotten).  We recently moved to Germany, where we hope to be for the next 3 years, though knowing the Army we probably won't.

Starting in the last week of October, Eric graduated from his last course at Fort Gordon.  That same week, the movers were scheduled to come pick up all of our stuff.  On Monday, when I was planning to spend the day doing last minute organizing, Marcus got sick with a stomach bug.  So, of course, instead of getting ready for the packers I was taking care of Marcus all day and hoping Dominic wasn't going to catch it.

The movers had scheduled two days for packing up all of our stuff, but they did it in one really long day with no breaks.  There are both good and bad things about this.  The movers still weren't scheduled to come until the 3rd day, so we could get the house somewhat cleaned up during the day in between. However, it made for a really long day with no good opportunity to get the kids lunch or even dinner because they worked until late and they packed up all of my cooking utensils first.

On the third day, the movers came to load everything on the truck, but it took longer than they expected because they only sent two guys and we have a LOT of stuff.  Also, the movers discovered that the packers hadn't actually completed their job on the first day, so they had to finish up some of that stuff as well.  Those guys were there well past 7 pm and I eventually gave up and left to get us checked in to the hotel and grab us some food.  The boys were exhausted and driving Eric nuts because they had spent all day at the house with nothing really to play with.

We weren't done yet.  Moving to Germany, we are also allowed to place some of our stuff in storage.  This stuff was to be packed up and carted away on Friday.  This was done under Eric's supervision while I took Lauren to the doctor for her 2 month check up (she was 9 lb 15 oz, by the way).  After the truck drove away, we realized that they had mistakenly taken a few things that were meant to go with us, so I got to drive with Lauren to go rescue our things from storage.

After spending the weekend cleaning our house and living in a very cramped hotel room with 3 children and a dog, we packed up the kids and the dog and our mountain of stuff and headed off to Florida.

We drove 6 hours to Fort Rucker, Alabama to drop off Kimber with her boyfriend Dexter, and my friend Chantal.  Not before, of course, Dominic threw up in the car an hour away from our destination.  With all of his clothes packed in my suitcase, he got to ride the rest of the way to Florida in just a diaper.

With Kimber and her crate out of the van, we had a much more comfortable 2 hour drive to Florida to see our cousins, Axel and Lucas.  Their dad, my brother Mike, is stationed at Eglin AFB.  That's where Eric was stationed when we got married and we love going back to that area any chance we can get.  We spent a wonderful 10 days with our cousins (which will get its own post) before they headed up to Kentucky and left their house in our care for two weeks.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, we loaded the kids back up in the car and headed north to pick up Kimber.  After Eric took her to the vet to ensure she was ready for the trip to Germany, we headed East to stay with our friends Heather and Jerry (our neighbors in Hawaii) who now live just outside of Savannah, GA.  They own Kimber's best friend Amber and graciously allowed us to invade their house for the night.  While it was a short visit, we enjoyed being able to catch up with them again and hope they get a chance to visit us here in Germany.

The next two days were spent making our way up I-95 to Baltimore where we had to turn in our car for shipment to Germany.  On Thursday, we spent the morning consolidating all of our stuff into as few pieces as possible and getting the kids ready for the airport.  Our flight wasn't scheduled to depart until 8 pm, but we were allowed to check in as early as 2 pm and we wanted to get rid of our stuff as early as possible, so we went to the airport early.  Our stuff barely fit into the hotel's shuttle, it's a good thing nobody else needed a ride, but we made it to the airport and got a cart large enough (amazingly) to hold all of our stuff, including the dog in her crate.

We couldn't drop Kimber off until 6, so once we got rid of our checked bags and Marcus' car seat we headed down to the USO to hang out.  The kids were able to play for 3 hours in the kid room there, we were able to grab a ton of snacks and then we headed back to the ticket counter to drop Kimber off.  After making it through security with 3 kids, which is not easy by the way, we headed to the gate where Marcus was enamored by the airplanes outside.

The flight itself wasn't too bad, except for the fact that they never turned the lights off.  It must be an Air Force rule, but as the mother of young children, if you ask me it's a pretty stupid one.  Marcus promptly fell asleep after watching us take-off and didn't wake up until right before we landed.  I was expecting him to be the hardest to control as he didn't have his car seat, but he ended up being the easiest.  Dominic had no trouble falling asleep, but because of the lights he woke up every hour or two crying and had trouble getting back to sleep each time.  I was expecting to nurse Lauren during take-off and landing, like I did with the boys when they were her age, but she refused.  So I shoved her emergency pacifier in her mouth and held her until she fell asleep.  She only woke once and then went back to sleep through landing.

The boys on the airplane, ready for take-off

Due to the fact that we landed on an Air Force Base, they took care of customs while we were sitting on the plane, so we only had to go through Passport control and then we could go get Kimber and all of our bags.  Once our bus was ready for us, we loaded up for our 3 hour bus ride to Schweinfurt.  All five of us promptly fell asleep (the buses here will do that to you).  Eric and I started paying attention with about an hour left, studying road signs and the map along the way.  (I saw the IKEA on the way and I'm excited to go back once our car gets here!)

We moved in to our temporary home that afternoon.  It's a 3 bedroom apartment on the 4th floor.  The three bedrooms are nice, the 4th floor is not.  Just think about transporting 3 kids (who can't do stairs very well, we've never lived in a house with stairs) and a dog up and down 60+ stairs anytime you want to go do something.  Not to mention, for the first couple of days we were also carting all 3 car seats up and down the stairs with us.  Finally we got smart and asked our sponsor if we could just leave them in his car.

Our temporary home

Now we're looking at houses and waiting for our stuff to get here from Georgia.  Hopefully, we'll be in a new house and all set-up to have a normal Christmas this year.