Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Officially Moving In

** Warning ** I am about to go off for just a minute so please bear with me.

Where to start? As many of you know, we've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of our car and, well, basically everything we own - furniture, tv, the rest of our clothing, decorations, etc. We had been told that our "household goods" would not arrive until May 28th and while that was WEEKS longer than we expected, at least we were prepared for that. However, we had also been told that the car would be here 2 weeks ago....and for 2 weeks it was always "it'll be here the next day or the day after that." It was torture knowing that my car was only a couple hours away but because some yahoo didn't fill out the proper paperwork, the car just sat there and sat there and sat there. THEN on Friday the car finally arrives, Brad goes to pick it up but they won't issue the license plates...again, thanks to the proper paperwork not being sent. Something about my name being on the title and Brad's was not, blah, blah, blah - how on earth did they think we got the car out of the US? Did they think my husband stole the car from his wife or something? Absolutely not, all of that paperwork had been taken care of prior to leaving Dallas so what's the hold up folks? Grrrr. At least we had the car.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only hiccup on Friday. We have been using rental furniture that Army Housing provided until our furniture arrived. Silver lining to the story - our furniture shipment came in earlier than expected and was scheduled to be delivered on Saturday. So, Brad called the housing office to schedule the pick up of our rental furniture. What do you know, they don't answer any of their phone numbers....FOR TWO DAYS! Which meant the movers would be moving in all of our stuff around all the furniture that was already here. Wonderful. But there was nothing we could do about it but get a good nights sleep as the movers were to arrive at 8:00 am.

Stella woke us up bright and early at 6:00 am and we got started moving the rental furniture as out of the way as we could. The hours ticked by and when the movers were still not here by 9:00 am, we knew this was a bad sign. The only number we had for the company was sitting on Brad's desk at work, so off he went. Called and called with no answer. Ahhhhh! Fortunately, they just had trouble finding the place seeing as how the housing office sent them to the wrong city. One of the movers came in to let me know they were here and were going to start unloading boxes. About 2 minutes later he comes back in and asks if I know who drives that BMW outside. "Ummmm, yeah, that would be my neighbor, Steve's car. Why?" And as nonchalantly as possible said "I scratched it." Just like that. You picked the nicest car in our little parking lot to scratch (with the exception of my rockin' Audi but Brad was still gone so it didn't count). Well we sure were off to a good start. Time to go tell Steve his BMW now has a scratch on it (which I had yet to see). We go out to see the damage....a scratch??!!! He dropped a flippin' dolly on it! Opened up the truck and the dolly fell out onto Steve's car!!! At this point I can only imagine what is going to happen to our furniture.

But the move went fine and as far as we know nothing is broken. I know it's strange but I honestly don't mind the unpacking. We have about a million boxes and it's a daunting task but I just don't dread it the way I normally would. Brad has been amazing and helped so much! We tackled the kitchen together and got most of it knocked out in one afternoon. The kitchen is what normally takes the longest and I can already check that off my list. The clothing situation is going to take some work though. The amount of clothes (and shoes) between the two of us is a little ridiculous...but not as ridiculous as the amount of "closet" space we have. Wish me luck.

Brad took the day off Monday to get everything squared away with the car. More and more paperwork but we received the license plates so we're official now!! All we needed after that was our gas card. As an American, we can buy gas on base for whatever the average cost is in the US or at certain German gas stations if we have this card. Otherwise, we'd pay about $6 a gallon! So we drive to the next place for our card...low and behold, they tell us Brad is not in the system. All we can do at this point is laugh. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can go right when it comes to this stuff. We took a break for lunch and by the time we finished they resolved the issue with the system and we were on our way. Whew! What a crazy few days!

Things are definitely looking up though. Our apartment is starting to feel more like a home and I'm really looking forward to decorating it. We are finally able to have Tommy and Melissa over after the million times they've had us over. We no longer have to rely on everyone else for a ride when we need to go somewhere (it will be nice when we have two cars though). And the weather has just been beautiful!

Fintherlandstrasse (it's a mouthful, I know) This is the name of our neighborhood


Home Sweet Home

The Neighborhood - A view of the park


Our "Private" Backyard - we're really lucky, our yard is tucked away from everything since we're on a corner.

I think I hear boxes calling my name so I'm off to do some more unpacking. But stay tuned as we're hoping to have a fun adventure this weekend! I hope everyone has a wonderful Memorial Day!!

2 comments:

  1. i can't wait to see the pics of your newly decorated home :) miss you tons!

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  2. Home always sweet, very interesting post and enjoyed a lot. Thanks for this post.

    ReplyDelete