Every muscle in my body hurts.  Even ones I didn’t know I had, hurt.  My respect, admiration and appreciation for the legion of packers & movers we’ve had in our lifetime has risen a thousand-fold. Despite being evicted from our home, through no fault of our own (in Germany landlords can break the rental contract if they are moving back into the home), our command left us to our own devices.  And, it turned out, moving in Germany is prohibitively expensive.  So we dusted ourselves off and tackled the job ourselves.

It’s been one week, two days, and we are on the last bits. I will be forever grateful to the friends that have dropped by to help, whether for a couple of hours or a couple of days.  Each item they moved was one less item for us to move.  I cannot imagine where we’d be without them.  We dontated most of our old furniture to needy people, or new-to-Stuttgart military families.  I also, finally but sadly, purged our home of many of the things left behind by Soren, Nicholas and Christian.  When Dane noticed what I was doing he madly scrambled for all of Christians things to hide in his boxes, to keep in his room.  Christian is his wingman, his best friend, his favorite brother, and for Dane it was saying goodbye all over again.

Despite my incredibly tired body, and the mountain of boxes needing to be unpacked, I’m overjoyed at the new home we have. It is beautiful, modern, new-to-us and truly feels like home.  A couple of days now, I’ve had my morning coffee in our “winter garten”.  A winter garten is comparable to a florida room.  Ours is 3/4 glass, all windows, and two stories.  My bedroom opens onto the second story where there is a beautiful, cushioned, bench for me to sit and watch the sunrise, listen to the rooster next door, and enjoy a cup of joe.

This makes everything in the last weeks, months, worth it.