Slow going

Haven't had a lot of time to blog and still don't but I'll post a quick update.  The trip over with the kids turned out to be a very long journey.  The first leg from Minneapolis to Amsterdam went well, the kids were very well behaved and were able to sleep a little bit maybe 2-3 hours.  It got in to Amsterdam late, however, due to the volcano in Iceland which meant we missed our connecting flight.  Unfortunately this meant that I would have a layover in Amsterdam with 3 kids that had only slept a couple hours from what to them was 2 in the morning until 9am (the next flight was 7 hours later).  We were able to get something to eat ($30 for McDonalds and a slice of Sbarro pizza) and then spent a ton of time trying to find the "red" KLM phone that I could use to call Carissa with the voucher KLM gave us.  We ended up finding it but then the number I had for Carissa didn't work (later found out because from another country I had to add 00-49 and then drop the 0 from the number Carissa gave me).  Amsterdam is a giant airport so finding this phone was not a lot of fun, Haaken was crazy, and the airport was incredibly busy.  The kids packed too much stuff in their backpacks for this kind of walking so there was quite a bit of whining although Elise was absolutely incredible the entire time - stayed calm, helped dad when he needed it without asking, etc.  We found a children's play area and I let the kids burn off some steam they didn't have for about a half hour and then went up to a "Meditation room" that we had walked by when we were trying to find something to eat.  After quite a bit of disciplining I finally got the kids settled down and they actually slept for about 2 hours.  Elise woke up first which allowed me to get maybe 15 - 20 minutes of sleep (I never was able to sleep on the plane with Haaken and Lydia basically sleeping on my lap and fidgeting during the first flight).  Then I got the kids up and we headed to our gate - we had to go through customs and the guy checking my passport was giving me a hard time because I didn't have a "blue card" or something which stated my wife was a contractor for the DoD.  His supervisor finally came over and let us through thank god.  The second flight was short, about an hour and the kids were occupied with Coca Cola and European airline snacks.  We finally touched down in Nurnburg 20 hours after we left Minneapolis and Carissa met me with a beer and a kiss.

Things have been a little stressful the first few days.  Working with the military is like working with the DMV. It is unbelievable that the US spends 3 times the amount the rest of the world combined on our military and they still are this inefficient and unhelpful.   They have all these forms for everything and once you think you have everything done and show up to turn it all in, they tell you "oh sorry, you're missing such and such form.  we can't do anything until you have that."  They always act shocked that no one told us about it the 1st or 2nd time. We are also finding that cars and housing are very limited although I think we have decided on both as of today.  We are going to purchase what the Americans around  here call a "Hoopty" - a 1999 Honda Accord with 91k miles on it.  It will be our 4th Accord and we are praying it will be just as reliable.  For housing we basically had two options, one place in a little town called Parkstein about 10 minutes away, and another here in Graf.  Both had their pros and cons with the Parkstein being a little bit of a drive (logistically we weren't sure how this would be with one car, getting Carissa and the kids to work and school), and the one in Graf has zero appliances (no fridge, oven, dishwasher, washer or dryer).  We had a bit of luck today though when we found out that Carissa's supervising Colonel is building a house and will sell us his old fridge, dishwasher and oven (plus cabinets) for a tentative 300-400 Euros, pending approval from his wife.  The only downside to this is we have to wait until the middle of June or maybe July 1st to get them.

The kids are registered for school as of today and it sounds like Elise and Lydia will have their first day Thursday.  Hopefully that all goes well.  That will give me a little more time and less stress (kids have been acting as you would probably guess, a little out of sorts - lots of fighting and tears) to try and figure out where we are going to get furniture for our house.

Carissa is seeing her first patient today, which is good to get started but challenging in that she's doing a procedure that she hasn't done in 10 years.  I feel badly for her because stress is coming both at work and at home, another reason it will be nice to get the girls started at school so I can try to take on more of the home at work.  We figure if we can get through this month things will get better, but right now it is quite the challenge.  This part of the country is beautiful though and we are hoping to have a great experience once we get settled.  That's it for now.  Need to get the kids up from nap and outside.