How can I make this move easier for my girls?

This question has been on my mind ever since we decided to pull this off. They are the most important part of my life (besides Peter that is, but I know he will be fine) and they seem to be so vulnerable at times that I feel I need to protect them from any harm this move might cause for them, mostly emotionally and psychologically. Their initial reaction was "Mommy, we are NOT moving with you!", which was pretty much what I expected. Then they started to get excited once they got more and more information, pictures, descriptions and all. They started to ask me questions, like "do all houses in Germany have basements" or "what else do you like about Germany, besides being able to walk everywhere?" or "can we take uncle Benny with us?" or "what if our toys sink to the bottom of the sea?" or "do they have French Toast Sticks in Germany?".
So I am trying to answer most of the questions to the best of my knowledge and with lots of optimism and fun. I reassure them that they will be fine, that everybody around them will try to make their live happy and healthy (Laura said the other day that her life was "perfect" before she heard the news about moving, now is is just "kind of happy"!).

When I wrote that I am "trying to answer the questions with optimism" I mean that sometimes I have to force myself to sound upbeat and excited about the whole adventure. Like when we went trick-o-treating at the marsh walk and the trunk-o-treat event on the way home, I almost wanted to say "Girls, this was great, lets do that again next year!" but then the sentence got stuck in my throat, once I realized there will be no more trick-o-treating next year, no more pumpkins to carve or neighborhoods to be roamed for treats and sweets. Natalie even asked if she could be a hamster next year, and I answered a short "Sure, pumpkin!", not going into details of mardi grass as the only time for kids to dress up in Germany, the non existing tradition of Halloween and how she would have to dress a lot warmer than this year, because Mardi Grass is usually at a time of year where the day time highs are barely above freezing point!
To make it short, the last few days I realized that some things we will be experiencing for the "last time" now. The count down began and most likely this was our last Halloween, it will be our last Thanksgiving (even though I plan to keep it up once there) and the last Christmas season in the US!

When ever I feel blue, I start a project :)

So when Laura showed some some items from one of her favorite toy magazines I got all excited and thought that this might be a great idea: Building a 3D model of our new house, so the girls would be able to visualize their new home a little better, so they could play pretend and decorate it a little bit, with landscaping and all.

So sure enough, after school the other day we went on a quest to find some empty cardboard boxes at the dollar store and the lady there was super nice and gave us a whole bunch:

As you can see by the light, the cutting, glueing and assembling took way, way longer than I expected and it he wasn't until after the girls were asleep that the house finally took shape:

No front windows yet, no stairs leading into the house ...

still would like to make the garage on this side, add the little bathroom window...

wait till you see this:

the roof opens up to reveal the interior of the second floor, ha, ha. You can see the big bedroom to the left, that lead to the roof top terrace, that Laura has picked out for her. And then there is two smaller bedrooms on the right, one of which had that ugly vanity. The tiny little room in the front of the staircase/hallway is the upstairs bathroom, that will have a little shower, sink and toilet.

again, with a little bit more light!

the bedroom to the upper right has no heating yet, but will get a radiator in a few weeks as part of a general renovation of the heating and plumming system.

s

enough for the night, time to wrap it up and go to sleep

I am not sure if my enthusiasm for this project will last, but I will try to finish the first floor, cut the windows and put the whole house on a piece of cardboard property :)

Isn't it ironic ...

It had been a long time dream of my Mom to have her very own 1:7 scale doll house, with a bunch of rooms to decorate with victorian furniture, bobbin lace table runners, tiny accessories, fancy wall paper, working light fixtures, shingles, porch, well, the whole thing.
So what we did last time we went to visit her, we took a Vermont Farmhouse Kit with us. In a big, heavy box. All the way there.


This is the one me and the girls chose for Oma.


And we spent the first few weeks there - besides getting the girls used to German school and German food LOL - trying to build that thing. So after a few obstacles and challenges (like figuring out how to electrify the house, what kind of outlets to use, what kind of a transformator, where to install/hide the transformator etc.) we had it pretty much put together, painted and ready for roofing (hundreds of wooden shingles were waiting to be stained and nailed onto the roof top). I knew my Mom was going to be happily occupied for hours, days, weeks, months with the completion of this project of a lifetime. A dream came true for her and a new chapter of arts and crafts had begun!
Little did I know ....
that she was going to end up doing the same kind of work, wallpapering, figuring out where to put outlets, sanding, painting, drilling, prying, glueing, on a much bigger scale only a few weeks later!!!

putting some finishing touches around the newly installed energy saving windows

 With us youngens Peter and I far away to help with calling plumbers, carpenters, contractors, electricians and even worse not there to help with doing hours and hours of prep work for those handy guys, like tearing paneling down, taking ugly vanities and rusty steel bathtubs out, ripping layers and layers of wallpapers off, all this dirty work was left for my parents.


After removal!



Panelling before



Before: pink tiles in the upstairs bathroom (I almost considered saving them)

After: banging off all the lovely pink tiles and jack hammering (lack of a better word) out the old tiny bathtub upstairs

wallpaper on top of wallpaper on top of wallpaper ....

Mom!!!! Something tells me you should be playing bridge or going on a shopping spree with some ladies or taking an afternoon rest instead of THIS!!!

Remember: vanity in upstairs BED!-room

YES, this is the AFTER picture: that hidious thing is gone.

 It makes me feel rather guilty even though they keep reassuring me that they "enjoy" the unexpectant work load, they feel "rejuvenated" and they are "rising" to the challenge.
Well, I know their quiet, endless days of retirement are officially over and they started a new phase of going to work every day. Again.
We are very thankful for all their hard work, we worry every day and hope that they stay safe

Drawings of the new house, done by our two girls

Since we told the girls about the exciting news there has been several times where they lost themselves for long periods of time in drawing images of their future home.

This is Laura's first drawing after she saw the first few pictures that her Oma emailed to us:
It resembles very much the photographs that she saw, with the added details of the car door, Smokey and American mailbox!!!

Natalie's vivid color scheme looks happy and content, the designs on the walls showcase her current interest in zums (webkinz butterflies).


Laura's room, with bookshelf, puppy stickers and pastel colors

 In both Natalie's and Laura's drawings I added the walls, the little recliner and the window. Natalie tried to do the door by herself in the second drawing.



zum on the wall, lightning patterns on the floor, even a zum ceiling fan!



in this one Natalie drew the door herself, rainbow on the wall, zums again



Had to add a picture of one of Van Gogh's famous paintings that came to my mind after I saw Natalie's drawing :) Same colors, wall perspective, door.

Well, I will be interesting to see how their pictures and drawings will change over the next few weeks and months. We told them that they would be able to paint their rooms any color or pattern they would like. I hope we don't regrett this promise, ha, ha. What if they want a life-size Justin Bieber above their head board!!! Let's hope they will stick with peace signs, zums, rainbows and stars :)

Listing of our house here in Myrtle Beach

OK, in the past years I always said to myself I would NEVER sell this house, it is way too nice, family friendly, we got it for a fair price, love the neighbors, the location, floorplan, shady yard with trees to climb on. What could possibly ever beat that!! A move seemed totally out of questions, not only was there no other options - our favorite alternatives always seemed far too expensive: Germany, Long Island, Southern New Jersey, ... Fiji (just felt like throwing that in!)

, so we never spent too much time and energy on the whole subject. Besides things were always very comfortable and alright here in Myrtle Beach. Not until this past year did we realize that neither my husband nor I had any real roots here or felt like belonging here in the long run and we just can't see ourselves growing old here. After some of our family has moved away recently, we felt like we needed to reevaluate our situation. It dawned on us that a change in location had to be done rather sooner than later, due to the age of our children and the psychological scope of such an undertaking. Even though they are still fairly young - 8 and 6 - they do worry about our plan, they try to understand what is going to happen with them, they ask tons of questions, about "how is it going to be living in Germany" and "are we going to like it there", or "will we be able to visit our friends here every year". But anyway, we ended up finding an affordable house in Germany and things suddenly made sense, and decided to move there.
We try to reassure them that things will be fine, even though we don't know much ourselves, as we step into the unknown in many regards. My hometown has changed in many ways since I left over 15 years ago, besides I never lived in it as an adult, looking for work, juggling family, work, friends, etc. I am very excited yet slowly getting cold feet, especially because we are actively trying to sell our house now. It will not be easy to let go, neither of the house, nor the memories associated with it, or all our friends here, that are almost like family to us.
I almost hesitate to post this link, because I would LOVE to keep my house, ha, ha.
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/5661-Tern-Hall-Drive_Myrtle-Beach_SC_29588_M53778-35025?source=facebook
But all you nice people out there, come check it out.

Our Myrtle Beach house is for sale now!!!

It has been a very joyous but also very frightening day today: after finally deciding on a realtor (thanks, Sue, we can do it!) and on how to go about this project of selling our house in the worst possible market conditions, we achieved this big task of listing our house in this magical MLS list online. We should be visible for just about anybody in the WORLD who is looking for a house. I will post the # shortly, just want to make sure I got it right.
To leave behind this house, where Peter and I build our life in the US, where both of our children spend their carefree baby, toddler and childhood years will be very, very hard. Natalie asked me today with tears in her eyes "Mommy, can we never, ever live in this house again?" and I tried to avoid the answer, which would have been a devastating "yes".
The girls are handling the expected changes in the future very well so far but I am sure there will be some resistance once the day draws closer and closer. I am very proud of them and after I reassured that they DO have Amazon.com in Germany as well, Natalie calmed down and seemed kind of relieved :)

Here just one picture of my lovely house in Myrtle Beach, that will be missed so much!

Clock is ticking :(

A few days ago I read a note of a friend of mine who happens to move out west very soon and faces the same emotions as me: leaving so much behind yet being excited about everything the future has in store.
She asked her friends about things she should add to her bucket list of things still do to on the Grand Strand/East Coast. I feel very much like that too, like time running out and the clock ticking constantly!

When I first moved here I felt like an explorer, like the world was mine. I drove an 8 cylinder giant piece of car and owned the road! Back then - with no kids to distract me from my plans - I would check out strange neighborhoods, cruise all around town and just go wherever I felt like, one day downtown Conway or backroads towards Georgetown another.

Yet the last few weeks that this move has turned from a distant possiblity into a real plan that we have to tackle in small steps I realized that there might be quite a few endeavors I never took around here.
For example I still haven't been to the House of Blues, never shopped at the Hammock Shops, never swam or walked on Litchfield beach, never ate in any of the restaurants on the Murrells Inlet marshwalk (obviously we're not much into seafood!), never camped out in a state park and never played put-put (except on the birthday party of my daughters friend years ago).

My dear neighbor mentioned that I really need to visit Disney with the kids before we move overseas, too!!
Honestly I am really not very much into amusement parks, simply because I don't like motion, especially when I am being MOVED, like in any ride that is faster than an electric kiddy barbie car.
The girls are already past the stage of princesses and fairies and not yet into bigger rides and things. We'll just have to see if we can fit a trip to Florida into the time after Christmas, but I already know that we will get in trouble with the attendance secretary at school!!!
I am considering homeschooling the girls the last month or two before we leave so we can work on German language, reading and writing and maybe do some crazy things we have just never done before. Take a ride to the planetarium (in Wilmington? Never been there either), watch the sunrise and sundown on the beach, eat BBQ pork at Hog Heaven and enjoy the abundance of sunny weather.
My bucket list for the next few weeks is not very long, but I know the most important part will be to spend as much time as possible with the people we love, with my daughters dear friends and being in this house that has very much been a home for us the past 10 years.

Living in the present

Lately is has been very hard for me to stay focused on today, on what I am doing at the very moment on what I feel and see right now. Too many images from when I was little are stirring up and coming to the surface of my mind. After all, it feels kind of surreal to eventually return to a town and a place where I used to live almost 20 years ago before I went off to college and into the wide open world. Little did I know back then that a complicated line of circumstances, chance and spur of the moment would lead me there again so many years later, this time with a family in tow. Sometimes I wonder, why we don't know how it is to be grown up until we are. I feel like I knew nothing back then but I thought I did LOL
Part of me is obsessed with what has been so long ago, what mattered to me when I was little, what life was like in Germany, just all sorts of memories, images of me playing outside for hours without my parents knowing where I was and returning to my house when the churchbell struck 7 pm in order to be back home for dinner and for watching Bonanza! Or later on, being in highschool, struggling with horrible grades in French and Chemistry but enjoying every minute of it, because the teachers were dedicated, smart, funny and had a big heart for a hopeless case like me.
The reason why my thoughts keep leading me back to these childhood days are that I want to see - in my mind that is - if my girls would like to live in an environment like the one I grew up in. With a closenit community, no surprises, no extravagant leasure activities, just simple stuff.
Of course, a lot has changed since then, but yet I believe, live is still somewhat slow and humble there.

Then other times my thoughts race into the future and I try to imagine how things will be. How we will adapt to a new live. How our family dynamics will change? They most certainly will, who knows I might find a full time job and Peter might be Mister Mom! The incredible freedom that I learned to love over here, not necessarily in regards to mobility but rather in terms of being free of limitations and boundaries from conventions, like no one tells me what to do and when to do it. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to live my artsy dream and get all the support I need from my husband and my girls. Once in Germany I know I will have to be more disciplined with how to go about things and there might be a lot more feetback - positive as well as negative. Small towns have the down side that everyone knows what everyone does!!!

So while I daydream about my past and try to imagine a possible outcome of this adventure I KNOW that I should just go day by day. I know that I can't change what has been and I can only shape some parameters of the days yet to come.

enjoying pouring rain in PJ's - PRICELESS!

My resolution for the next weeks and months therefore will be to clear my mind as much as possible of the past and the future. The little moments of each day are so precious and mean so much to me that for now I will try to focus on those times and be present to what happens NOW.

Selling a house in a buyers market :(

Even though the times are bad to sell a home, we decided that we have to let go of this house, that we pretty much lived in for almost 10 years. For a little while we considered renting it out while we live overseas, but the distance is simply too far to keep up with tenants, maintenance issues, paperwork, etc.
While the girls and me were in Germany Peter already did an awesome job fixing up things that we wanted to do for a long time, like laying new carpets in the whole house, new vinyl in the kitchen, making the yard nice, painting doors and window frames etc.
Why does the house have to look nicer than ever now that we are leaving??? Just a few more finishing touches, like pressure washing, little touch ups here and there and tidying up and we will be ready for potential buyers. I have a strong feeling that they won't show up right away and that we might have adjust our pricepoint to the slow market in the next months. We'll see and hope for the best.

Sometimes old houses are like a box of chocolates ...

I was tempted to write about tons of other things, like my heavy heart these days when I love being here so much, or about how proud I am of my children, not only of how they handle the preparations for the move, like getting "their" house ready for sale and figuring out what stuff we can already sell in order to unclutter the house, but also how much they've learned already this school year and how creative and selfconfident they are. 
Well, but like I promised, I will not keep you guys waiting any longer and will jump right to the fun stuff:
the outdated, shaggy, 70's style look of the interior of this old house.
But, wait, one more thing. I am not sure how interested anybody is into floor plans, but I am going to throw them in anyway, just so the layout gets a little bit clearer.

Here is the first floor:

Top is the street, on the upper left is the dining room, upper right is kitchen,

then entrance from the left, hallway (stairs that lead upstairs), and tiny bathroom,

then under that comes kind of a foyer room (when you turn right, right after you enter the house), to its right is what could be a master bedroom,

the new addition to the house has white walls: on the bottom left is the living room and bottom right the master bath (not a bedroom like they drew it in the plan)

From the living room you could exit onto a little balcony.

The top level looks as follows:

on the top would be the road again.

to the top left is a smaller bedroom, on the top right it sais "Kueche", which means kitchen in German, but it rather another bedroom, even though it has a terrible vanity inside, that you are about to see in just a minute.

In the middle is the upstairs hallway and the stairs, then to the right a little bathroom, with as of now just a dwarf-sized bathtub and a toilet.

Bottom shows the biggest of the three bedrooms upstairs, with possible space for walk-in-closets on either side. Right now those rather big spaces are only acessible from the hallway through tiny little wooden doors.

On the plan it shows a balcony, but after they added the living room and master bathroom on the first floor, this balcony turned into a rather big roof top terrace!!!

the addition to the house, window on the left is the foyer, window to the right is living room

How about this vanity in a bedroom style room upstairs complete with plush carpet and wooden built-ins (too bad you can't see the tacky "beauty in the bathtub poster, one of her breasts sneaking out of the bubble bath ;) that is taped discretely behind one of the countless doors)?

And you gotta love the panelling and the wallpaper!!! There is more little doors towards the left wall that has the window facing the street.

putting this town "Mengen" on a map

Knowing that our future location is not nearly as famous as Myrtle Beach I will try to show where exactly we will be going. The easiest way of pinpointing it in words is "we will be smack in the center of Europe!"

Take a look (Mengen is the little red pin): Germany is surrounded by France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands to the west, Switzerland and Austria to the South, Czech Republic (former Czechoslowacia) and Poland to the East and Denmark to the North. Hope I didn't forget any countries :)

Distances are a lot smaller than in the US, I think the whole area of Germany is about the size of North and South Carolina together!!! 

Now lets zoom in a little closer:

Mengen is still that little orange bubble pin.

To get to the mediterranean sea that you can see on the bottom of the map takes about 8 hours I believe.

I just keep going closer and closer and closer, alright?

This satellite image shows the immediate surrounding area of Mengen. On the top of the image you can see a winding river, that's the River Danube, running from left (west) to right (east) and it will eventually flow to Vienna, Budapest and ultimately the Black Sea.

The landscape shows a very rural patchwork pattern, result of a history of splitting properties among male heirs in farm families. The dark green areas are forests, mostly diciforous (spelling?) trees, I mean the ones with leaves :)

Topographically this part of Southern Germany has rolling hills, nothing spectacular but the Alpes, YES the real Alpes, kind of like the European Rocky Mountains, are just about an hour to the South. On a clear day you can spot the snow covered peaks on the horizon.

Sounds cool but how often do you actually take the ride???

Now lets look at the town setup:

On the left you can see houses with mostly red roofs. They are part of the historic center of town, once surrounded by the brick wall, like most German towns in the middle ages.

Only small remnants of that wall are still there.

My parents house is in the bottom right corner of that historic part of town.

In the upper right area you can spot a bigger building with sort of a park around it. That is the hospital where I was born, now converted into a home for the elderly.

If you look even closer: 

then you can see the hospital very good on the bottom left and our new house will be the little house in the upper right corner. You might be able to spot the little yard to the left of the house and the grey rectangle on the South side of the building. That would be the roof top terrace facing South.

But now enough with Geography and maps and all, even though I could go on and on and on. There is something about maps that has always intrigued me, but I can imagine that it might be rather boring for others.

Big promise: In my next post NO more maps and things, just ugly pictures with nasty wallpaper. Yippie!!

NOW and THEN!

The reason why I decided to start this blog TODAY is that I just wanted to share my excitement about our latest discovery: The house we will be living in in Germany turned out to be 20 years older than we thought. One of our future neighbors gave my parents an old postcard with postage stamp cut off that shows the house with two ladies in front. The postcard was written 1913!!!

Now I just wish there was still the old front door, the doublesided stairs leading up to the front door and the beautiful old wood framing visible on the south side of the building. Now there is an addition to the house (which includes a living room, master bath and roof top terrace/ balcony)



NOW







THEN





couldn't turn the image, but the card IS from 1913!

Now you can imagine the kind of plumbing, heating and electrical problems we are facing!!!
100 years old!!!
That is quite something, isn't it.
Well, pictures of the raggy, shaggy interiour will follow soon. Check back, if you dare ;)

“Change is never easy, you fight to hold on, and you fight to let go.” – The Wonder Years

 Here it is: As my parents call it "Haus #2"

front view of the house with my Dad's bike

Some of my friends and family already have heard the news:
Probably by early spring our little family of fourwill jump into a new adventure by moving into a little house in the town where I was born. 
Even though I know the area very well and many places evoke sudden memories of times gone by, I still feel like this is a big step into the unknown, as I haven't lived in Germany in 10 years, and I haven't lived in my hometown for another almost 10 years before that, while I travelled and went to college for the better part of the 1990's.
So we try to stay optimistic and brave as we know about the problems that might and will occur on this move.
The hardest part so far was telling the girls about our plan. But after their initial shock reaction, they started to ask specific questions on where they will be living, how far the new house will be from Oma's house, if they could paint their room any color they would want to, if Smokey can come too and if our fishies can come (we might let them swim to Germany on their own - setting them free at the beach! -  and see if we can recapture them in a nearby rive a few weeks later once in Germany ;).
They main question of course though was, what about their friends, their BEST friends. Well, that is a tough question right there, the distance between these two countries is incredibly far, it never seemed as far as this past time, when we flew back from Germany after staying there for 3 months. We promised the girls to do everything possible to stay in touch with every single one of their best friends and if time and money allowed it, we would try to visit once a year. And that we would write, email, call, etc.

AND, that anytime anyone would want to visit us in good old Germany, they most certainly could. That we would have an extra bedroom ready at all times!

 There are many things about this move that we don't know ourselves, like when exactly it is going to happen, kind of depends on how quick we sell this house. Or what kind of jobs we are going to find, unemployment is rather low there right now, though. We also don't know how hard it is going to be for the girls to adjust to the culture in the long run, after all there are no French toast sticks, there is no Halloween and absolutely NO shopping on Sundays!!

Considering the scope of our move and the impact it has on our little family I want to use this blog not only for keeping my friends and family updated on everything, but also as a tool to keep a diary for my girls, on how this move came along, how we did it and how we coped with missing so, so much from here and how we adjusted to all the new things over in Germany. I know it won't be easy for all of us, especially my husband and our girls, and there are days where I do get second thoughts. But within the last 10 years me and Peter realized that even though Myrtle Beach has been good for us most of this time, and even though it is our home in the best sense of the word right now, because we love our friends, we love the memories of the girls growing up here, we love this house of ours, we still can't see ourselves growing old here and staying here for good.

So we had to make a change, better now than when the girls are even older.

This decision has been the hardest one I ever had to make.