What just happened?

So my head is spinning and I can't help but wonder, "what just happened?" Here we were celebrating karneval enjoying our time here and next thing I know we are evicted out of our house and forced to move some place new. This has been a nightmare! We have been living in a temporary location for 2 weeks now and it seems that we are no further to finding a solution. The construction on the fire doors is being completed today and the house will cleaned Friday and Saturday. But we still don't know if that is enough to let us move back in. There is something wrong with our bedroom but no one knows what the problem is. How can that be? Everyone we ask says they have to check with someone and then they don't get back with us. How hard is it to find out this answer?

As for our house hunting it is a daunting experience. You have no idea how blessed and fortunate we are in the US when is comes to housing size and ammenities. I guess if you lived in a big city it would be similar, but to me I just don't know how people do it. So far we have been shown shoe boxes for houses. i can understand why Ikea is so succesful. Problem is we have our furniture here and can't afford to buy new Ikea creative furniture. Then it becomes a problem of the drive. The main highway here has been under construction for 3+ years and the sign says it will be completed in the end of 2012. When we first arrived it said 2011. As you can imagine it becomes a parking lot during rush hour and so we need to avoid it for Larry's commute (not easy). Then there is the problem of both kids going to different schools about 15 minutes apart. One house we looked at yesterday would have worked out, but I would be in my car from 1:45 to 5:00 everyday picking up and shuttling around the kids. And Larry would need to take the construction route of the highway. Next we looked at a place out in the country. It was nice but the people have lived there for 30 years and have so much stuff it will take them until June 1 to move out. Plus there is a pool. Nice idea, but with Landon impossible. And we would be isolated from everything. After that we saw a nice place if we only had one kid. There were 2 bedrooms total. The age difference between the kids makes it too hard for them to share. Landon gets into Ali's things and does great damage. Plus it would be difficult when we have visitors. Much of our furniture would need to go into storage.

So that is the scoop. The only places left to see are in the city with no yards for the kids, spiral staircases and parking issues. Larry is still trying to negotiate with the owner of the original house we wanted, so I will try to stay hopeful. With each passing day it becomes more difficult.

Here are a few pictures of what used to be our comfy living room.

Enjoying Karneval!

 

Alianna's Class performance of Cinderella

Landon playing one of his favorite games

Christmas morning

Some more pictures

So here are some picture of Christmas...

Happy 2010!

I haven't posted anything in 2 months! Sorry! Let's catch you up to speed...
We celebrated Thanksgiving at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Cologne with a few other American families. The turkey was pretty good, but the pumpkin pie was something I can't even describe other then, YUCK!

December was off to a good start with St. Nikolaus Day. The kids enjoyed their little gifts and Landon had a fun visit at school from St. Nikolaus himself. Then my poor little girl became very sick. For two weeks she was down and out. The Christmas market at the Junkerburg was very nice, but Alianna could not enjoy it. We actually had a house call from the doctor to check up on her because her 104 degree fever would not go down. So she could only watch out the window and it was pretty sad. Thankfully she recovered in time for Christmas and no one else in the family became ill! I love Purell!

On Christmas Eve I gave the family my special gift! I bought them a little fire kit for outside so we could make smore's! With my prayers being answered, a work friend of Larry's was coming to Cologne and he agreed to bring marshmellows, Hershey's chocolate and graham crackers! I was so excited to be able to surprise all three of them with this gift and a surprise it was. We even introduced Frau Schumacher to smore's. After a fun day of smore's and playing the kids were off to sleep to wait for Santa's arrival! He came and our presents was that the kids slept until 7:00! We spent the morning opening gifts and playing with toys. Alianna's favorite was the Wii Sing it with Hannah Montana songs. Landon loves his kitchen and Handy Mandy pj's. Larry got a terrific watch and I love my tall, brown leather boots.

Christmas dinner was also a huge success! We ordered a fresh turkey from the butcher and it turned out great! Fresh cranberry sauce, green beans and finally a great pumpkin pie! We were all fat and happy!

The next day we packed up our gear to head out to Austria for a week of skiing. We left at 6:20 am for a 6 hour drive and less then one hour into it we were at a stand-still on the Autobahn. A large accident ahead shut down the road. And German's don't believe in routing people off. No, we just sat with the car in park for another hour. In the end it took us 8.5 hours to get to Lofer. And as our usual luck when it comes to vacations... there was no snow! End of December in the Alps and NO SNOW! We skiied a little, by going up as high as we could, but it was icy and way too many people. We enjoyed the time away, but not quite the ski vacation we were hoping for. Maybe next year. We think maybe we will try the Italian Alps.

Ok, I think we are up to date. The kids are back in school, my german lessons resume tomorrow and the Christmas decorations have been replaced with karneval ones. We are hoping to escape karneval this year, but not sure yet where to go that is affordable. Landon will participate in his schools karnevalzug on the 7th of Feb. so the kids will still get some candy and get to dress up.

I have included some photos and once my computer is working properly again I will try to upload a new photoshow. Until then Happy New Year!