Settling In

After we got the keys, the boys got to explore our new house.  They liked their new bedrooms and upstairs play room.  We unpacked some bedding and took a much needed nap.

Liam and Kaleb adjusted quite easily to the 6 hour time change.  Alex and Carter had a much more challenging time with it.  It didn't help that they didn't sleep much on the plane so they were VERY tired at the wrong time of day and then WIDE awake when it was bedtime.  It took them several days, but they are adjusted now.  Carter thinks this house is too quiet as he's used to sleeping next to the maintenance room in Michigan and hearing the furnace and sump pump going on and off all night.  It is pretty quiet here, but that's a good thing!

We arrived on a Sunday and in Germany most things are closed on Sundays.  ST's wife, Jen, thankfully had picked up a few groceries for us earlier in the week so we had a few things to eat.  It's been interesting finding things for our boys to eat.  They've had lots of salami sandwiches.  Liam still loves yogurt here:)  We'll see what other exciting things I can find to cook for us.  So far it hasn't been anything too native except some sausages and gnocchi.  We haven't found just plain Cheerios but I have a few more grocery stores to check.

We spent our first days keeping busy and running various errands:  shopping for a phone, new curtains, television, groceries, picking up a long-term rental van, getting biometric photos taken, registering with the German government (We're officially German residents now with a special page and picture in our passports.), riding scooters, playing Ticket to Ride German edition (fun game!!), teaching mama to drive a manual transmission vehicle (Greg is a good teacher, and the boys were great encouragers!!...keeping track of how many times I had stalled and being excited when I finally could do it:).

We were patient and did pretty well while we were waiting for our shipment to go through customs.  This house has tile and wood floors with concrete walls and lots of open rooms.  You can imagine how the noise of little boys echoes!  Getting the house filled with all of our stuff would hopefully help with the volume!  We were excited when we found that our shipment had made it through and would be arriving the next day (Thursday)...so we had went about 4 days with just the stuff in the suitcases.  Not too bad.  And the noise level did improve when everything was in the house!