The Joys of Apartment Living

    Including, but not limited to…  

• Toting Blaine and the stroller up and down two flights of stairs at least twice a day 
•  Possible knocks on our door at whatever time might seem appropriate to our neighbors.
• The monotomus sound of the “musician” right above us practicing his “drum skills”.  In some ways I pray he is a beginner because it would then explain the lack of any variation in beat.  If he is more than a beginner I pray that someone who is close to him will tell him that it is not a talent that God blessed him with.  I was also beginning to wonder if he couldn’t afford a whole drum set, because I’ve only heard him beat on one single drum.  Finally, today, I heard a cymbal.  Not sure if that’s good or bad, yet.   More than once he has started practicing, either his drums or his trumpet, at the beginning of nap time or right in the middle of it and it makes me wonder if he is oblivious to the amount of sound that travels through the floors since he is on the top floor.  I’m thinking electric drums with headphones should be a requirement for apartment living!  Oh, and let’s just pretend he doesn’t sing from time to time.  It’s not pretty either.  (Sometimes, I also pray that they are toward the end of their 3 year tour.  :) )
• Hearing the hard times and good times of other people’s marriage relationship. (If you know what I mean.)
• Waiting on a washer or dryer.
• Going down to the basement to switch the laundry from the washer to dryer only to find out that you accidently hit the knob that turns the washer off while loading your clothes.  (I’ve done this MULTIPLE times so far.)
• Occasionally getting to hear the news when we don’t even have any channels!  (Sometimes at 5:30 AM!)
• Hearing a huge “boom” vibrate through the house anytime someone goes in or out the main door of the building.  (It makes me want to go buy an actuator and install it myself!)

  

Housing: Part 2

We were issued a 4 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom, 2^nd floor apartment.  It’s right about 1200 sq. ft.  We are very grateful for that 4^th bedroom.  We weren’t sure we’d get it since we have 3 boys and they are all pretty young so they can be roomed together.  But…the sizes of the bedrooms are extremely small and there is really no way you could technically fit more than one bed in a room. 

The building behind the boys is ours.  We are the 2nd balcony up on the very right.

   

This is a view from our balcony to the left, out onto post. The second picture is off our balcony to the right.

The kitchen and bathrooms are tile.  And not just on the floor.  They are pretty much floor to ceiling tile.  The rest of the house has hardwood floors.  The wood in each bedroom is different too.  We had an extra rug that fit in Blaine's room and  I was able to locate a rug for Ryan and Colin's room, but I would still like one for our bedroom and the 4th bedroom if possible.

Living Room/Dining/Kitchen:  All of these rooms are very comparable to the size in our last house.  The dining area might even be a tad bigger.  The kitchen is about the same space, but it's just the different configuration that makes it difficult to figure out where to place everything.  Our stove is like nothing we've ever seen.  It's electric, but it's not a flat top, nor coils.  We also have a dishwasher and a lazy susan!  (For those of you who have/have had a lazy susan items seemed to fit there best?)

 Notice our awesome loaner furniture in the next few pics!!

 Daddy coming home from work!!!!

Bedrooms: We decided to keep Ryan and Colin in a room together and are taking full advantage of our bunk beds so we can use that 4^th bedroom as a craft room and hopefully next semester an area for homeschooling.  Blaine is currently in a room of his own and his room also has the only dresser that we brought.  His bunk bed is set up but mattress-less, so he's still in his pack and play.  Hopefully I can get a mattress ordered through our PX before Tim gets home from the field.  That way it will give us a few months to bed train him before Tim leaves again.  A majority of the toys are in Ryan and Colin's room with a few of the more baby toys in Blaine's.  Our bedroom fits our King size bed and two nightstands with a little room to spare.  If I squeeze everything tight I could fit our standing mirror, but I think we are going to put some hangers on it and hang it from the wall for now.

 

Storage: There is one closet as you enter the house which I'm trying to keep as a coat closet.  Thankfully, in our full bathroom we have two sinks surrounded by cabinets.  From what I was told, it is not normal for there to be any type of storage in the bathroom.  We have plenty though.  The two smaller bedrooms have decent closet space in them.  The one in Blaine's room is currently holding extra diapers and wipes in part and the rest will be for excess ARMY gear, regulations, etc.  

The closet space in the 4th bedroom is a little larger than Blaine's and should hold all of our games, puzzles, our more constructive play items, craft items and any other homeschool items.  The other half is currently our cleaning closet and more of my craft stuff.  

In the two bigger bedrooms one entire wall is floor to ceiling closet/storage space.  I don't think we are lacking in closet space at all...it's just different than we are used to.  We are used to hanging everything.  There are three closets in our room and the middle one is for hanging and the other two have shelves.  I would love to find a tension rod that is sturdy enough so I could convert more of those closets to a hanging closet.

We also have a storage room in the basement of our building that is about 9 feet by 7 feet.  I was able to locate some shelves that I need to assemble that will help with vertical storage down there.

Laundry:  We have a joint laundry room downstairs in the basement.  I don't mind it so much.  I never liked doing laundry everyday of the week and I always tried my best to wash, dry, fold, and put away all my laundry in one day.  So six washers and dryers only aid me in that!  I normally do between 6 and 10 loads of laundry a week and I can get it all done before nap time.  I learned quickly though to not even attempt to do laundry on the weekends...unless there is an absolute need. ie Colin's leaked through his pullup onto his sheets.  I needed to do one load of laundry on a Saturday because of the above and I went and checked at 9:30, 11:30, and around 1 PM and all the washers were full and nothing had moved since 9:30that morning.  Thankfully, my brave husband started knocking on doors to figure out whose laundry it was. 

Overall, I'd say the space is good, it's just trying to arrange everything to make it fit the best and the most useful.  I really am just thankful that we got on post housing.  The hardest part is being patient in getting in all put together.  It's a slow process.  

Book Review {The Help}

I know this book was “all the rave” at some point last year.  I didn’t do a lot of reading last year.  I also heard great things about the movie, which I have yet to see as well, but I wanted to read the book first.  When Tim bought me the Kindle before we left it was the first book I downloaded.

 

(amazon.com)

Just as everyone else who has already read it, I loved it!  I love that it was based on real history.  It was an easy read and always left me wanting to read more.  If, for whatever reason, you haven’t read it yet, it’s worth it!

I also really enjoyed reading the author’s own story at the end of the book.  In reference to writing the book she says…

I am afraid I have told too little.  Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes in Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or the time to portray.

I personally loved that part because it made me ponder all the dynamic relationships that must have been.   It must have been hard for her to choose which relationships to portray.  I think that that time in our history is not one that we are proud of and one that is sensitive.  It seems to reach deeply into some hearts.  We tend to sweep it under the rug and avoid discussing it afraid to offend anyone.  I can’t think a better way to talk about it then how Kathryn Stockett did in her book.

Now I just need to find the movie!!

I would love any other suggestions for great, clean, non-super-romantic, non-super-“dark” novels!  They don’t have to be new either.  I would love to add some classics to my reading!  I do love to read, but it seems to get put on the back burner to all the other things I love to do as well. I'm hoping to make it more of a routine.

The Basics

Quick version on what has happened and what we’ve learned so far: 

1.  Tim passed his driver’s test (Yeah!!)
2. The German’s tax is 19%.
3. They don’t sell DP on the German Economy.  We've been told that we could buy a case of DP for $4.00 walk off post, stand on the corner, and probably sell it for double. (Although I’m sure that’s not kosher.)
4. Although a lot of people walk around post, few make eye contact and say hello.  I did a little experiment one day and out of the 10 people I passed and tried making eye contact with to say hello, only two did the same.  It was mainly the younger soldiers who avoided any type of greeting/eye contact. 
5. No right turns on red.
6. Useless piece of info….the rugs in the children’s part of the library cost around $500 a piece!  We were scolded and offered this piece of information when we entered for the first time with our shoes on.  There was apparently one sign, among the fifteen, hung on the door asking you to remove your shoes.  We won’t miss that one again! 
7.  Do not trust the hours written in the phone book of any office on post.  I went to Self Help three days in a row, at different times, based upon what the phone book said only to find he was closed every time I went.
8. We received our unaccompanied goods on January 31^st!  Having real sheets/blankets on the bed make them look 10x more comfortable than they really are. 
9. Ryan started Kindergarten at the school on post on February 1^st.  It’s a few blocks away; about a 10/15 minute walk…depending on how far behind Colin chooses to lag.
10. Ordering pizza in Germany, but at an Italian restaurant, turns out nothing like you thought it would.  This is very disappointing when you thought that it was going to be the redeemer to a pretty failed attempt at a day.  
11. There are about five different bus drivers.  They all drive different.  There’s one that’s really hard on the brakes.  A few will just roll by a stop if no one is waiting, so make sure you press the button if you want to get off!  One likes to whistle, and he’s also more gentlemen-ly than the rest.  I like him.  He always helps the moms off and on the bus with their strollers that are loaded with kids/groceries and he occasionally stops to pick up a random walker in between the bus stops.
12. I passed my drivers’ test!  (YEAH!!)
13. Most stores (including on post) open up around 10 or 11 AM and close at 6 PM.  A majority of stores are closed on Sundays.
14. Our van arrived on/arround February 15th.
15. The remainder of our household goods surprised us by being here early, and they were delivered on February 24^th.  We could have gone longer without many of our other items, but it is SO, SO, SO, SO, SO, SO, SO, SO amazingly wonderful to have our bed!  It makes you want to cry when you get in it, it feels that good. 
16. Although I'm far from fluent in Spanish...there have been a few times that Spanish has naturally flowed out of my mouth instead of German. Oh...and on that note....Ryan takes Spanish twice a week in school.  Does anyone else find that odd?
17. Tim for the field on March 2^nd and is there till the last week in March.  (Sadly, he is not getting to enjoy our bed for the next few weeks.)
18. Recent discovery:  Most of the stores downtown have escalators in them.  You can take your strollers on most of them, but a friend and I did find one in particular this past weekend that does NOT.  As my friend moved her stroller forward the entire thing shut down.  The gentlemen behind us and the fifteen people behind him all starred at us as the gentlemen pointed to the sign on the side of the escalator that apparently said no strollers.  Oooops.  We successfully found an elevator and took it to the next floor up.  As we walked around the corner we felt horrible, but were still laughing, seeing an 80 year old woman walking off the top of the broken escalator.

Housing: Part 1

Hello Dear Family & Friends!

Yes, we are still alive!  We just got internet two days ago!!!!  

About a week after we got here we were eating breakfast at guest housing on a Thursday morning when Tim received a phone call informing him that they had a house for us!  It was MUCH sooner than we had expected (we had even bought a hot plate the night before so we could cook a few hot meals in the hotel).  Tim did the walk-thru inspection on the house around 1 PM on Thursday and we were supposed to be checked out of the hotel by 11 AM on Friday.  It created a huge frenzy!  

The ARMY provides some of the basic furniture which was already in the house.  We have a kitchen table with six chairs, a couch, two chairs, three single beds, and one double bed.  What they don’t provide are any of the sheets/blankets/pillows/etc…for the beds.  No towels either.  We still were about a week and a half shy from receiving our unaccomapined goods, which had these items in it, so we had to make a trip to the PX Thursday evening to purchase all of the basics.

The other problem we ran into was trying to figure out how we were going to get everything over to the house.  It was on the other side of post.  Normally, this would be where Tim’s Sponsor would come in and help take everything over, but the unit just left two days earlier to go to the field for a month.  The only people that were left were all the new guys who either had no driver’s license or no vehicle…or neither.  While the bus works for getting to and from the Commissary/PX it wouldn’t have been very helpful due to it’s route.

After we made our trip to the PX for linens, we got back to our guest room, ate dinner, then decided we would go ahead and walk over to the house and take a few suitcases with us.  (I REALLY wanted to see it and we figured the boys could use the time out of the guest room.)  We planned on dropping off the suitcases, looking at the house real quick then catching the last bus back to guest housing for the night.  Tim said he would maybe walk one or two more loads over Thursday night, and then get the rest Friday morning.  No sooner had we started walking then it started raining.  I guess we should have checked the weather first.  It was only a light mist but still enough to get everyone pretty wet.  It’s probably about three-quarters of a mile from the guest housing to our house.  The boys were troopers and we kept a good pace but by the time we got to the house the boys were pretty wet.  Tim said, “I’ve got good news and bad news.  Good news, we made it!  Bad news, you’re staying here.”  I didn’t really argue although I knew what that meant for him.  Tim made four more trips by himself to get everything out of guest housing.  Then he made one more trip, about half the distance to the Shoppette to get us food for the morning since we hadn’t planned on being there. 

On Friday I made two more trips to the Commissary/PX to try and get some more basic items to get us started.  Tim also had to make another trip to the Loan Closet to pick up a playpen for Blaine to sleep in and a few basic dishes to use.  I think over our first weekend here we made another three trips to the Commissary/PX as well.  You can only buy as much as you can carry, so it means A LOT of trips.

We got housing a lot quicker than we anticipated but we are very thankful that we even got on post housing.  We’ve been in the house about two months now and we finally got our internet hooked up, so check for updates as I will be posting something semi-regularly to try and answer the many questions I know you have.  :)