Moving in and Adjusting

Greetings again from across the Atlantic!

(I wrote this the first week of November but am just now publishing it)

This warm, sunny day finds me still lying flat on my back in bed typing this but from the comfort of our new home!!! And the good news is that our household things were delivered this past Friday morning so we got out of the hotel in Maichingen AND my back hurts less and less and I find myself able to stand and sit for longer periods of time and with less pain with each passing day. It is hard to sit (or lay) amidst boxes and not really be able to do much about unpacking them, but I know we will get settled eventually. It just will take a little longer this time around.


These last almost 4 weeks in the hotel were quite a challenge as you would expect. Living in a small 2 bedroom hotel apartment with one bathroom for six people has given us moments of laughter and moments of great frustration. And trying to keep everyone fed more cheaply by cooking our own food in a kitchen with no stove and no oven has also been interesting. We got quite creative with our ONE stove burner and also we purchased a rice cooker/steamer and an electric griddle which helped. We also borrowed a crock-pot from friends just down the road so that helped with our cooking options as well. I can proudly say that we didn’t eat a single serving of hamburger helper this time around.


Anyway, this time together has been a blessing in disguise in so many ways. It has been great to spend time listening to music with my son, and watching my younger daughters be creative in their leisure time with no toys. The little girls have spent time knitting, building forts, playing hide n’ seek, and creatively made houses and nests and rooms out of luggage, tables, chairs, boxes, wads of paper, blankets, and anything else they could manage to move and manipulate while living in the hotel. We were also able to watch an occasional movie on one of the laptops for entertainment.

Elizabeth has had to hardest time adjusting to the new time and place but that is mostly because Elizabeth is choosing to have the hardest time adjusting. L So, many life lessons here. Cory and I had a great discussion with Phillip and asked him what he learned the last time around when we moved here and it took him a while but finally he said, “You know, I think I cut myself off from everyone and was depressed because I chose to be depressed and chose to cut myself off from everyone.” Now that took Phillip at least 2 years and some hard life lessons to get that point of realization, so we will continue to be patient with Elizabeth as she adjusts to life here in Germany.

So, normally our days here, whether in the hotel or in our house, go like this: we get up and do school, eat lunch, and then the little girls go outside and play at the park or take a walk to the bakery or bio market with their big brother or now we unpack boxes and try to fit all our American furniture into our German house. It is kind of like a puzzle to try and figure out where we can put the bookshelves, dressers, shrunks (wardrobe closets), desks, etc. since we are working around multiple, large windows, radiator heating, entrance doors in every room and sometime slanted ceilings. Every single door in the house also has a key which is going to be a challenge to keep track of those! Cory is the tetras master and this skill helps immensely with making every piece of furniture fit just in the right spot!

I will try and get some photos of the rooms in the house uploaded now that we actually have furniture---Yay!