Fleamarket finds for our new old house :)

Since we decided to make this move with NO furniture at all, we saw ourselves faced with an empty new house and - since our boxes finally arrived today, 47 of them - lots of stuff that needs a place.
Luckily this tiny town has a second hand furniture warehouse with lots of goodies, at least for junk shoppers like me LOL.
This is my collection of the last few days, I love all of them, Peter does, too, except he called the little dresser thing the ugliest piece of furniture he's seen in a while. It was only 15 Dollars and I will try to paint it sometime soon and show him the hidden potential inside this piece, ha, ha. We'll see. In the meantime it can be used as a toolbench in the shed.

The two chairs and couch were 25 Euro alltogether, about $ 35. Perfect shape, just the fabric needs some cleaning. The sewing mashine table is a gift from our neighbors, we might use it as a little side table or for the phone.
The white high desk thing was $ 30, I have no idea yet what to use it for, but with some love and cleaning it could be a cute little something to put in our hall way, maybe to hang our keys from or to put our wallets in.

This one need a little TLC :)

nice little features though

new seats, at least temporary until we can afford IKEA, ha, ha

chair and high desk thing, otherwise the living room is EMPTY. Love it!

OK, I admit, this one has a big layer of grey on it, but some goop and carpet cleaner might do the trick.





god knows how old this thing is, but with some furniture polish it will make a great end table.

our stuff came today!!! 47 boxes, none missing, none broken !!!

space bagged stuffed animals! Good thing I labeled all of our boxes ...





 

Finally some toys to play with! The girls could only take two stuffed animals with them on the plane when we left.


On some of the pictures you can see that the painting of the rooms has come a long way, in the living room we chose to have the upper part painted in a light sand color and the bottom white, seperated by a white wooden chairrail, that isn't finished all around the room yet.

I also found some vintage fabrics in my moms house and at the flea market, will try to make something cottage style out of them, maybe some throw pillows or curtains or something easy like that. ....

might decorate the dining room in shades of blue and the living room in pinks, plaids, stripes, reds and florals....


Will post some more pictures soon. Maybe in before and after style .....



The girls and the house





Since the distance between the new house and my moms house is so small, we started to give the girls a little more freedom by letting them walk from one place to the other by themselves. Sometimes we tell them to get something to eat from Oma's house or their homework. This is their favorite spot for an afternoon snack: 

Oma painting some more in the new old house. 

instead of moving the grass with a mower: passing out two pairs of scissors and getting the girls involved



Killing time while Mommy and Daddy do more remodelling: watching movies on their portable DVD player and eating cookies :)


Just took some more pictures of the progess today, might try to post them tomorrow ...




Our arrival and first few days here

One whole month has already past. Time to look back how things have worked out for us since we got here.

 The flight was long and bumpy. We started around 4 pm at Peter's fathers house in Staten Island, drove to JFK, hung out over there for a few hours and ate our last meal of Burger King and departed around 9pm.

 By that time the girls were ready to go to sleep and missed dinner and the movie (too bad, it would have been a good one: The cronicles of Narnia: Voyages of the Dawn Treader), overall things went smooth, except for the fact that Laura vomitted on just about every plane and every airport (Dublin and London, except Stuttgart!).

The soft pretzel and coke we ate/drank at Heathrow airport in a make shift picknick at the gate, must have had some miraculous effect on her digestion :)

Well, once we got to Germany around 6.30 pm we still had about an hour and a half of driving through the country side ahead of us in order to get to my parents house. Needless to say, it took as a few days to get back on track with sleep cycles.

The very next morning I already had a job interview about 30 miles from here lined up. Feeling like a zombie and not having had time to prepare or research I felt like my chances were extremely slim to make it halfway decent through the interview. Well, to make the story short, the place called me about 2 weeks later that I got the job.
One last word about the job situation: The other day I had another job interview, at the county hall,  that I had applied for months ago. Knowing that I had already secured the other job, I almost didn't go to this interview, but ended up going just out of curiosity and after all, the more interview experience I get in the long run the better. Sure enough, 4 people ended up asking me questions, all super professional yet friendly. It's about an administrative job, 50 % postition, helping people with disabilities of any kind to apply for government or private assistance. Probably lots of paperwork, yet nice team and great benefits. Besides having a secure job. I got an offer for this job as well and will check it out tomorrow morning.
I haven't decided on either one yet, both are with people with disablities, the first one in helping them finding independent living arrangements and helping organizing their lives, the other applying for money and services from the government. The first job is in walking distance from our new old house, the other can be reached by public transportation (first train, then bus) in about half and hour total.
The first job is 25.5 hours, the second 20.
Lots to think about.
I also have to figure out how to do everything with the kids once Peter finds a job, too. Of course my parents are close by but I don't want to overuse them as baby sitters. They have a new thing in my daughters elementary school called "reliable school", which means that the kids can stay an extra hour or two if they are already dismissed at  11 or 12 am, if the parents are working.
This is the school schedules of Laura and Natalie:

Their day starts either at 7.35 or 8.25, they get out either at 11 (which is way too early to get anything done in the morning!!!), 11.50 or 12.40 the latest. Most days my girls don't have the same schedule, so I end up walking one of them to school at 7.35, the other 45 minutes later, then I have about three hours and have to go back to get the first one and then go back 45 minutes later to get the second one.
Well, lots of exercise, that's for sure, ha, ha.
Tuesdays both of them have after noon school for another hour and a half.
And that's it!!!

Now just a few pictures óf our first few days here:
The first celebration was my birthday the day after we got here:




Prosecco :)



Then we had Easter:

Then the girls got the new old house all cleaned up before Peter came. Mostly sweeping and clipping the weeds :)

Waiting for Daddy's train to come in:

At Oma's house:

 On the steps of our new old house:

Finally here!!!

To be continued!!!!

Looking back at the last 3 weeks

Things have been very busy the last 3 weeks and as I am typing this new post we are already rather comfy in Germany. But I still want to take a moment, catch my breath emotionally and look back at what has happened so very fast the last 3 weeks:
Well, first of all I have to say a word about Chris, from UPACKWESHIP, I don't think we could have pulled this off without his customer service. If any of you ever move overseas, google his company and you won't regret it! I must have called him tons of times about the most ridiculous questions that popped up in my head. But enough advertising, ha, ha. (I still want to mention the warm good-bye from all my friends, but will do that another day)
Getting rid of the furniture and big items wasn't the biggest problem. Sorting through years and years of belongings, papers, school mementos of the girls, photos, birthday cards, etc. took us ten times longer than we had anticipated. At some point we just had to speed sort and if we had any doubts about keeping something, we decided to junk it. We really ended up with the bare minimum of stuff: 47 BOXES!!!!

Ha, ha!!!!
Bare minimum you might think..... well, I have to admit some things I just couldn't part from, like the cast handprint of my preemie daughter Laura, just too incredible was the size of her little hand. Or the oval dinner plates I bought in St. George (Staten Island) together with my father in law. At a restaurant consigment store for about a buck a piece!! Or the box full of original documents from Ellis Island, from turn of the past century, when most of Peter's ancestors immigrated from Italy. Have to frame a few of them!!!!
Or the quilt I sewed over ten years ago but never finished up. It already made its way back and forth over the Atlantic Ocean twice.

Yes, Laura's shoulders are kind of slumping, the thought of leaving her best friend and everything she has ever known behind was hard to take for her at times. She has handled the change very well though and makes me very, very proud because of her gentle and caring nature.

Once we had everything picked up by a giant 40 foot container trailer, we spend the last few days in our house living and sleeping in empty rooms:

The girls sleeping their last night in our house.

The very next morning we had to be at closing at 10 am and only with the help of our dear neighbor Robert were we able to pull this off and clean out the house in time. Thanks!

This is us trying to look relaxed and confident, even though we worked the night through, totally exhausted and feeling emotionally drained, only kind of ready to sign our house over to new owners.

Oh, now here is the really hard part: Saying good-bye to my daughters best friends. Just looking at these pictures makes me choke up and wish there would have been another way. Chancey is Laura and Natalie's oldest/longest friend and the brother they've never had, loyal and kind, funny and smart, just a great kid to see my girls spend time with. Kelli and Paige are the two sweetest friends anybody could hope for and I can't even think of words to describe how much we miss them.

May the future be bright and exciting for all of you and may the friendship you've shared with each other strengthen you for the life ahead. I so hope that we will see everyone again soon.

At Cracker-Barrell we had our last batch of pancakes with my niece Morgan and nephew Michael before we headed north on April 16th, to leave the last 10 years behind and head into the once known and fanilier but now rather uncertain destination Germany. Wohoo, what a stormy good-bye roadtrip it was!!!

I will never forget the funnels, hail and devastation :( 

One thing is for sure, the United States sure know how to leave a lasting impression!

Once we made it to NewYork alive the few plane rides didn't seem that much of a deal anymore. Even Laura said after airport hopping of 20 some hours "this was actually not that long of a trip". She even said that she enjoyed the trip, even though she trew up in every plane and on every airport! I was close to run out of items of clothing and wipes....

dinner at JFK, last Burger King Fries in the US

Laura was wiped out from all that vomiting and had to rest in London.

What some Coke and Pretzels can do for an upset stomach :)

To be continued ....