“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.