Dreams Do Come True!

Many of you Facebookies have already heard, but it's official: Jeff has accepted a position in Vilseck, Germany! We heard the good news last night, and have spent the day ecstatic. The job begins on July 9th, we fly to Frankfurt and spend the first two weeks looking for a place to live and settling in.

We are incredibly thrilled and thankful, and really looking forward to this new adventure. The base is in a really beautiful location, and we are looking at the small town of Amberg to live in. In fact, we already have a lead on a great apartment there downtown-- a friend of a friend who will be leaving in June! Although Jeff will only have the standard four weeks off each year, we are really looking forward to weekend trips to Prague and Munich and other surrounding areas, as well as further travel in Europe during vacation times.

At this point, I have so many questions and decisions to make. First on my mind is, What do I keep, sell, or store? Of course, my first inclination is to sell everything we own and go over with just clothes and our Le Creuset cookware. But I suppose a sofa would be a handy thing to have in our new life. Should we hit the post-winter sales and stock up on winter gear, or do we buy them there in the Fall? Do we sell our three vehicles (don't ask!) and buy one used German car, or do we take our Mazda and look into mopeds? On a different note, how long do I keep my practice open for? Now that the financial pressure is off, will I enjoy working more? I am sure to have a very busy schedule once I announce my imminent departure-- do I want to be working a lot during our last couple months here?

So, our minds are still whirling quite a bit. In the meantime, Jeff will have a mountain of paperwork to fill out, Amelia will need to finally get vaccinated, and we continue showing our house to people every day. The one dark cloud in this newly sunny sky of the future is the house situation. Our bank has been messing with us lately-- they told us they would extend the foreclosure date month-to-month, that this is very routine to do, just call them on the 17th to put in the request. Well, we did, and then they told us that they would not, in fact, extend the auction date unless someone made an offer on our house. It had only been on the market for a week! So, we dropped the price to a ludicrous amount, and are just hoping hoping hoping that someone will put an offer in this week. The last thing we need is to have to move out in a few days, for three months. If someone DOES put an offer in, then we will be sailing very smoothly into our future plans-- the DoD people will come and pack us up, move whatever goes into storage, and we will be on our way without ever having to pay rent or pack ourselves up. Perfect! Every time I've driven by a "For Rent" sign, I have felt a huge wave of relief. We are not sure what to expect Over There, but we are happy and excited. Hurray!