We are home….

I can tell you that PCSing is hard work.  And stressful.  Add in the fact that we are a large family moving from Europe back to the US and you have a recipe for melt-downs and mishaps….

Thankfully, we’ve had a smooth move on this side of the big ole “pond”.  Except with Housing on base…but I just won’t go THERE. 

We chose to live off base rather than wait in the hotel for 2-4 months for housing on base to come open.  Our BAH wouldn’t even begin to cover the hotel stay after our initial allowance.  We worked hard for three days looking for a home.  We drove to Richmond Hill and discovered that it was a beautiful little town with expensive housing and TOO FAR from Pat’s office.  We found the house we are renting the second day but looked for a third day because we wanted to make sure we got what the “best” for our family with what we could afford.  We wanted to make sure we were in the “good school district” for the boys who are going to still be attending public school High School.  Here’s the realtor’s picture of our new home:

I haven’t taken any photos of the inside of the house but I can share later.  We move in on Monday.  There’s a slim chance we’ll have the keys on Saturday.  The owner is coming down to finish cleaning and removing some of her belongings.  She also is going to be replacing the stove. 

We got the Water and Trash, Electricity, cable and Internet set up today as well.  So we should be able to feel more at home in our own place. 

Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland

Today is our last day in Germany.  We are sad to be going.  We met many people here whom we love and will miss dearly.  Most we will never see again.  I will miss my church family from Trinity Baptist Church.  These people showed the love of Christ to our family during our struggles this past two years.  I can’t imagine how we would have made it (and stayed sane) without them.  Our landlord and her family have made living here a blessing…helping us with language barrier issues and cultural issues.  Oma treated my children like her own grandchildren, including feeding them sugar and offering presents.  I doubt they’ll ever forget her. 

The above picture shows Champion Village, which formerly belonged to the US Military.  It was sold back to the Nationals recently (not sure how long ago) and is now being rented out to military members as well as civilians.  I labeled the building where we lived for the past two years…sorry you can only see the roof.

We were happy here.  We enjoyed our time…although it was filled with stress and uncertainty.  We learned LOTS about ourselves during this time, but mostly we learned lots about the love of Christ.  I know that one of our children will never be the same from this journey.  We pray that it will make him a stronger and more whole person. 

Today I went walking downtown to take some pictures of the town where we have lived. 

I love this building.  Love the color scheme.  LOL

This is our favorite Doner Kebab shop.  YUMMY

This is the lady who would make our kebabs.  Emily is shy and didn’t want to stand too close to her…LOL.

A kind soul took our photo in the town square.

ATM machine we used off base….

The next set of photos are a walking tour to our fave restaurant in town.

I drool just thinking about the Cordon Bleu or the Schnitzel with Championsauce.  YUUUUMMMMMMMM

Bye Germany…we will MISS you!

Inventory of what was left

We had 12 crates of belongings.  6 of those are safely in a warehouse right now.  We had to inventory and re-pack those today.   We worked for about 6 hours.  My inventory is in my own handwriting with descriptions that make sense.  That’s going to be a switch when we get our Household Goods this time.  Normally I struggle to read the inventory list.  ;)

We searched through the debris some more today.  We found some more of our Polish Pottery and was able to save some more of it.

We lost somewhere around 70—75% of our belongings.  It’s all the high value items and most of our furniture.  We did manage to see that we still have a dining room table and chairs left. 

Again…the photos and scrapbooks are what I am worried about losing.

My computer monitor

DVD’s were left looking like this….

It’s just stuff….

Really, it’s just stuff.  I keep telling myself this.  It’s just stuff.  Oh wait…you have NO idea what I am rambling about.  Which isn’t surprising coming from me.  LOL!!

As you know we are PCSing from Germany to the US.  You also know that we’ve had our movers in our home last week.  You also know from my Friday vent that it was a disaster.  Well…it got worse. 

When the packers left on Friday, they had a truck load of our stuff.  Four packed crates and some loose stuff because they didn’t bring enough materials to crate the remaining.  They left it on the truck over the weekend.  Someone decided to set the truck on fire…we lost EVERYTHING on that truck.  EVERYTHING.  No big deal, it’s just stuff.  Right?  Yeah…but all of our High Value Stuff was on this truck…..our WII, TV’s, furniture, 400 plus DVD’s, all of it.  But those things are replaceable.  These are NOT:

Those are the things that I am upset about. I can’t go back in time and get them back.  These photos are gone.  Forever.  These are the photos that are lost forever because they aren’t digital prints and aren’t uploaded to Snapfish.  They are just gone.  So are the negatives. 

My early birthday present?  Was on that truck.  I found this part of it: (I didn’t find the photo of the frog)

I had an extensive collection of beautiful Polish pottery.  It was all on this truck. 

My clothes…on the truck.  Pat’s tools.  The tools that were literally our bread and butter until Pat joined the Army in 2001…on the truck.  Gone.  All Gone.

What makes this really horrible…some of these tools were given to Pat by his grandfather who also made his living as a mechanic for many years.  Pat loves his grandpa and cherished those tools.  I’m upset about those things too.

My scrapbooking stuff.  Gone.  All of it.  My computer. Gone.  My furniture. GONE. 

I know this could have been worse.  This could have been a fire in my home with loss of life.  I am so very thankful to the Lord that this didn’t happen. 

I saw my favorite pair of pj’s and my favorite pair of Levi’s in the debris.  I saw my oldest son’s baby book, or what was the charred remains of it.  I cried.  I’m devastated.

Tomorrow, we go back to open the crates that were NOT on the truck.  Praise the Lord the arsonists weren’t successful in burning down the warehouse too.  The other 6 crates were in there.  We don’t know what is in those.  They all have to be opened up and an inventory taken of their contents, recrated and resealed before being shipped to the US.  Pray for us.  I am hoping that some of my completed scrapbook albums and the pictures/negatives were NOT on that truck.  Keep us in your prayers.

Packing day is done

Sorry, I don’t have any photos to share on this laptop (yet).  But we’ve had a long week.  Wednesday morning we woke expecting to have packers arrive early that morning.  They didn’t show. By noon, I wasn’t a happy camper and started making calls.  I got hold of the Custom’s Inspector from Transportation assigned to our pack-out who called the moving company.  The moving company then called me with some lame excuse as to why they hadn’t shown up. Then asked me if that was OK. 

UMMMM, no.  It’s not okay.  We are a family of seven. S*E*V*E*N  I homeschool.  This means I have a TON of books.  Remember this post?  I didn’t show all the bookshelves. I have 8 altogether.  This is after I gave away some of the books.  On top of this, we are a family of 7….I think I just mentioned this.  LOL!!  We have a ton of stuff.  Transportation had schedule three days to pack us out.  They NEEDED it.  I told the lady (probably the secretary) that NO this was not okay.  That they needed three days to complete this pack out and that I wanted them HERE when they finished the pack out they were working on.  The manager then calls me.  I told him again that we needed them here.  I also mentioned that I was concerned that if they didn’t arrive that they would be in a hurry to pack us out and then things would be damaged.  I believe my next words were “Then, sir, I will be filing a claim against your company for reimbursement of any and all damages”.   They ended up not showing.

The next morning they arrived….LATE.  BUT they arrived.  They packed hard all day.  They came back Friday.  Packed hard all day.  They did finish, but not before damaging our stairwell and the walls in the building. I am frustrated.  Why you ask?  Because they did the damage with a craft armoire that took FIVE guys to carry up our stairwell.  FIVE so that it wouldn’t touch the walls or stairs or drag.  FIVE so it wouldn’t damage the armoire or the building.  They did it with THREE.  How you ask?  THEY ROLLED IT END OVER END DOWN THE STAIRS.  I am afraid to see the armoire.  They damaged the vinyl coating on the stairs.  My landlord just painted the stairwell walls…there are black scuff marks on the walls.  AAARRRGGH!!!!

So…that was the pack out.  I am glad it’s over.  We have furniture from Housing on loan to sleep and sit on.  We have a Hospitality Kit from ACS to borrow for the 13 days we have left in Germany.

BTW, military wives…did you know that you have a Professional Weight allowance?  you do…make sure you get the information from Transportation when you schedule your pack out.  And USE it.  Set aside that professional weight.  It doesn’t count against your weight allowance. 

Night…tomorrow is an important date….Father’s Day. 

Wordless Wednesday: Moving

PCS Time…keeping the homefront clean

Did you know that when you move from a OCONUS location to a CONUS location, you have to pass EPA and customs regulations?  Tis true.  We have a custom’s inspector at our house Friday morning, BRIGHT AND EARLY.  He looked at all of our outdoor type equipment, grill, lawn chairs, pots for plants, golf clubs, etc….and told us what to clean, BUT was mostly surprised that it was already clean…except the POTS.

Saturday is “Saturday Morning Clean-Up” in our house.  This Saturday, we included cleaning things for our move.  Things like the pots (and the attic and the storage sheds…and…and…)

We don’t want to bring soil, bugs (dead or living), mold, mildew, etc….home with us to the United States.  If any of those things had disease, we could potentially infect our food supply with a devastating disease.  UHHHH, yeah, I’d like to avoid that.  While I’d like a smaller rear end….starving to death isn’t on my list of ways to get one.    Just a thought.

So after scrubbing my pots, ( a few more than I photographed)…..they looked like this:

And now that my teens have discovered yet another reason “why my mom is weird” (because I took pic of my dirty and then clean pots)…I’ll let ya go….ROTF

Technorati Tags: military

PCS Time

Technorati Tags: military

This is one of the most stressful times, next to deployments, for military families.  There’s so much to do and things you cannot do until your sponsor has his orders.  Once those orders are in hand, you don’t always have much time to get things accomplished.  LIke purging…which is one reason why you need to stay organized and purged at all times.  I used to be excellent at this.  Either I have gotten lazy or SOMETHING.  It can’t be lazy…

Once you have appointments made for the movers to pick up your things, it’s time to separate shipments into Unaccompanied Baggage (from here on out called UAB) and Household Goods (HHG) AND in  both of those shipments you separate your husband’s professional weight from the personal.  Sounds easy, right?  UH NO.

I have been going through closets, schooling materials, toys, closets some more, etc pulling things that I know we need right away in our new duty assignment.  I had to pull out at least two units worth of our main curricula so I know that we can start on time this fall.  That included pulling out needed resources from the shelves.

I ended up with a duffle bag so full of books that I can barely pick it up. 

Clothes…we live in a cool climate.  We are moving to a state where it is HOT.  Not just hot, but H*O*T*.  We aren’t used to it.  But that’s besides the point.  We are going to have to pack in a manner where we have jackets and jeans here in Germany AND at the same time have plenty of shorts and the like for Georgia.

Enter the UAB.  I have a 31 gallon Rubbermaid tote that I am throwing the rest of the kids’ summer clothing into so that we have what we need in GA.

Kitchen stuff….I am going to be separating my kitchen things:  pots, pans, silverware, utensils, etc….into what we NEED right away.  All of our 110 kitchen appliances go into the UAB.  The pots and pans I’ll use the most go into the UAB. 

Linens…I have make sure we have sheets, blankets, pillows, towels to use in GA.  I have one 31 gallon tote and 2 18 gallon totes packed with clean linen.

I’m not done….and they come TOMORROW to pick this shipment up.  ACK.  So if you need me, I am buried underneath our UAB.

Is it better…your call….

I’ve completed 8 LO’s in the process of meeting my goal of cleaning up my scrappy table before dh comes home from playing soldier.  So the question I ask you….especially YOU, my friend…is it better or WORSE now?





Robin…there’s LESS orange.  LOL. 

Here’s another LO:

And a picture of my MONKEY:

And he can’t be undone by my friend’s little guy Nick…he’s just as cute in a cowboy hat, isn’t he Martha????  (the proper answer is yes…even if it IS patronizingly patting me on my back because of course any good momma thinks her kid is cuter than anyone else’s…but I just KNOW it).

On a ROLL…two more done today!

I might make this goal…truly.  It’s OK if I don’t but at least I will have tried!!!!

This set of pictures is really sentimental.  I have pictures of Courtney taken in front of this same water fountain!!!

This set of pictures just immortalizes my view of driving to Patch Barracks every day (or rather when I drove there-which was quite often as the commissary and the medical clinic were both there). 
Both LO’s were done with patterned paper from my latest DCWV stack purchase.  The striped piece and the flowers in the first LO  both came from Citrus stack and the blue piece from the Taj Mahal stack. Both stacks are absolutely gorgeous with glittery papers and all!!

Here’s another photo I love.  This was taken on Easter Sunday of my Love…

I love the expression on his face.  Or maybe I am just missing him too much.  ;)