Where has the time gone?

It’s been 4 months since our last post about how slow the expat process was going and yet with the way the world is currently it seems as if it’s been a whole year.  

We are finally together in Germany but more about that to come later!

It’s hard to remember at this point but December was a blur, full of sickness and Christmas chaos! The weather was mild and enabled us to get outside! A new year began in January with the same agenda of getting ready for this upcoming move!  We hadn’t locked down dates for the movers yet or done anything more for the move except continued  to clean out closets to donate or sell and slowly set aside things we might need for the shipments. 

We celebrated Williams 3rd birthday a little early since Dave had to be over in Germany on his actual birthday on the 16th. We secured our pack dates for the beginning of March! That meant the short month of February was going to fly by! 

Dave was back in Iowa till February 10th so that we could be together as a family for my birthday. We cleaned out as much as we could for the upcoming pack and sold off as many of our large items as possible that we knew we weren’t taking overseas. Valentines Day came and the kids came down with sickness once again. This was not great timing but we made it through thankfully with the help of Grandma Viv and our neighbor Diane.  It lasted almost a good 2 weeks! 

March came in like a lion due to our crazy and hectic schedule. Dave flew back to Iowa only to turn around a few days later to drive our leased truck to his parents in NY to keep while we are in Germany. He flew home 2 days later and our movers came 3 days after that. 

This was by far the most chaotic move process we’ve ever had. I don’t know if it is because our last international move was quite seamless or putting two more little bodies into the mix, or just too much going on all at the same time did it or what. I’m a super organized person and for the life of me I could not get it together this move! It seemed too much of a task to separate what we were keeping vs. what was going into storage vs. what overseas items were going air shipment vs. what overseas items were going on the sea shipment!! AGH!

The week the movers were there was utter chaos, and I have to say it was not a team I would ask to have again!  We took many things down to Grandmas house because we’d be staying there during the transition and then we stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn (because of the great kiddie pool) for a couple nights before Dave headed back to Germany again. 

March 8th was a Sunday and little did we know at the time it would be the last time together as a family of 4 for two whole months!  Dave flew out on the 9th and the kids had their preschools which meant I was getting the house in ship shape to be listed that week. We moved into Grandma Viv’s on the 11th and the house was listed live on the 12th.  After 1 showing that weekend we were hit with the news of COVID-19!!

Now, for anyone who is still reading I would NOT recommend selling your house or making an international move during a global pandemic. Ugh. How would we ever have known?!   Timing of everything was completely impeccable!  This absolutely changed everything we had planned for the upcoming weeks.  The kids were not in their schools and we were basically in a quarantine at Grandmas house.  It was very surreal and weird and just emotional.  There were so many questions about our process, whether Dave would be able to come back by Easter as planned and not sure if and when we would be able to plan our trip to Germany.

All we could do was take it one day at a time.  Dave waited patiently in our empty apartment and slowly started getting furniture delivered and put together and explored our new town solo. Grandma Viv and I kept the kiddos busy with projects and schoolwork thanks to their wonderful preschools for providing it.  Dave kept pushing out his trip as the weeks went by, still uncertain of any of our plans.  All of our belongings were delivered in Germany and Dave had the super fun task of taking care of all of that by himself :) but he knew full well that I would completely rearrange it all when I got there!

Nearly two months had gone by since we moved out of the house and we watched the Covid case numbers change each day.  It always seemed like Germany was a better place to be than the US during this pandemic but there was no easy or safe way of getting there.  May finally came and I just couldn’t wait any longer, I booked the very expensive one way flights for myself and the kids to get to Germany on the 14th.  I wasn’t sure of all we needed to make the trip but I needed the date set to have a little light at the end of the tunnel.  

It was another emotional time knowing our time at Grandmas house was coming to an end.  We were so lucky to have been able to have the opportunity to stay with her during this crazy transition rather than have been stuck in a hotel or in our house with only staged furniture!  It was certainly a time that we will never forget and hopefully we made some fun memories for the kids while we were “quarantined” for so long.  While that whole time period could’ve been a series of posts in itself I just didn’t have the ambition or brain power to execute them.  As it is, I worked on this post for 4 months!

Bis nächstes mal in Deutschland!