One Foot Out the Door

We conquered some larger hurdles in our move today and for that I am relieved! When we first moved into our off-post German house 14 months ago we heard horror stories of Americans not getting their security deposits back from their landlords when they moved out and before they leave the country. Security deposits are big chunk of change in Germany. Ours was 2700 EURO (about 4,000 dollars). Even though we have had a good relationship with our landlord, we were still sweating the move-out inspection.

I went back to the house last night at about 6 pm and finished up the cleaning at about 11:00. I felt like the house was ready. Every appliance was cleaned out, the floors were clean, windows, etc. Charlie went today and met with our realtor (you use a realtor in Germany to rent a house or apartment), landlord, and U.S. government employee from housing to get out of our house and find out if we would be getting our deposit back. We PASSED and received our paperwork to take to the German bank to get our deposit back. A huge load was lifted! I suspected that we would get our money back... but you just never know.

Apparently our landlady (she's in her 70s) raved to our realtor about us and asked if we were sure we wanted to go. I guess she wasn't too upset with us when Ava told her that her soup tasted "a little bit yucky" the day before. Most of you know that Ava is my child with absolutely no filter when it comes to her thoughts and feelings. Very good quality to have because I know she will tell me everything, but not so good when you need her to hold her thoughts for a few seconds. The landlords invited us to lunch on Tuesday afternoon and I gave the kids the typical speech about eating whatever she served and not saying it was "yucky". We were served a traditional German soup for fasching (big celebration before Lent season). A few bites into it Ava said in her most polite tone, "Excuse me, Mom. This soup tastes just a little bit yucky." Very nice....

Charlie headed back up to Wiesbaden today for his last big work HURRAH. He has a change of command thingy tomorrow and is working on clearing up some paperwork that is still messed up from when he got injured almost 4 years ago. We'll work on our paying our final utility bills and closing out our German bank account where our house deposit is sitting on Friday when he comes back. Then all we have left is spit-shining the car and shipping it before we fly.

Time is flying by and I survived my saddest good-byes already. (sniff-sniff).