Merry Christmas and a happy New year to all of our family and friends! I think you all know by now that I am a little late on getting my christmas cards out. They are still sitting on my desk and most of them are even addressed! December has been a whirlwind of a month for us!

After we found out we will be moving back to the states, I immediately started looking for jobs in the area. The cost of living in DC is incredible and in order for us to afford a house, etc., I will need to work out of the home. It will definitely be an adjustment as I’ve been able to be home for the last 3.5 years, but you do what you’ve got to do! In some ways, I am looking forward to it!

So, what’s the plan for us? Well, Drew wants me to be the “advance party” which is fine with me. That means that by the end of February, I will be moving out there for sure to start visiting schools and figuring out the best place for us to live. The ideal situation, however, is that I will be able to secure a job BEFORE our move and will move out as determined by the employer. This will at least pay for a hotel (or furnished apartment) and rental car that I will need before the rest of the family arrives. The whole family will be out no later than the end of April.

I’ll try to keep everyone updated from here! I’ll leave you with a picture of the snow we had last week. It was really pretty!

That’s right, we got an offer on the house. Thank God. We have had an offer before but everything fell through. The house has been on the market for about 9 months now so it is about time that something happened. We are pretty tired of paying two house payments!

If everything goes well, we will close on March 2nd. Yay.

The dogs made it to Belgium yesterday and after a 6 hour wait, Drew was finally able to take them home. The plane was late for starters and then they had to go through customs and the authorities demanded that they be examined by a belgian vet. What a process. But they are there now and in their new house which is great.

In other news, with a little help from my friend Joe, I sold my truck. I will hold onto it until Monday so I an arrange a rental car and finish off some stuff, but otherwise, it is sold. We sold it to a nice couple here in town who banks at the same bank as us so it was very easy to just transfer the funds etc!

So that is one less thing for me to worry about. Now if only I could sell my house!

Tomorrow I will drive the dogs down to Jacksonville to have them board the plane. Their flight leaves at 12:35 pm and I have to have them there at 10:35am. They will get into Belgium at 8:30 am local time. I will certainly miss them, but it will be nice to not have to go and check them late at night and then first thing in the morning. I’m getting worn out!

Just another step; almost there.

Well, we’ve got ourselves a new house. It’s ready to move into and Drew is first on the list. So tomorrow he will go into the office and start the process.

I showed a few pics of this house in a previous post so some of these are repeats. But hopefully it will give you a general idea. It looks like it will suit us just fine.

The first pics are of the outside:

The next few shots are the living room, sunroom, and view from the sunroom:

Then we’ve got pictures of the kitchen. It has a built-in bench but we can take it off if we want.

The foyer/entrance:

The “toilet closet”:

The office nook:

The full bathroom:

Master Bedroom:

The office:

this is a kid room. There are two like these so they will each have their own room.

Well, the movers came today and have packed my stuff. I have boxes everywhere. Grace (the 7-month old australian shepherd) is a little weirded out by it all and is lying at my feet. It’s nothing new for Gabe and Yuri. So here I sit and I am surrounded by boxes. I’ve got my pile of wires that is posing as my network right now and I am camping out at the dining toom table.

Abe and I will be staying at the Lodging on Base. I went and checked in already and am going to get abe in a few minutes. The people were nice enough, the rooms are fine and most importantly clean. They leave a lot to be desired for appearance-wise. But hey.. It’s only $40/night versus 70-100 and its two bedroom with a kitchen and bath. I’ll take it!

I will update later about the house and the lack of progress. it really is depressing!

-Sara

Drew found a house there that he really likes. It is a restored barn. Before I get you too excited there is a catch to this house. Apparently, the owner would like to sell it. What that means is lets say we got this house.. in 3 months he sold it. We would have to move. This doesn’t sound very good to me. Drew is going to see what he can do about this. The landlord said he would like to rent it out for one more year. We could handle that. If we lived in it for a year, and then had to move, it’s nothing we haven’t done before. Heck, maybe we would buy it if we could afford it.

That being said, let’s get on with the show. The first three pictures are of the outside of the barnhouse (that is how I will refer to it from now on).

The next series of pictures are from the inside of the house.

The Living Room I think:

A peek into the kitchen:

Bathroom 1:

Bathroom 2:

Master bedroom:

Garage:

And then that day Ian and drew went to a zoo which sounded pretty cool. It was kind of expensive (30 Euro for both of them), but apparently they have a year-long family pass for $200 Euro. It sounds like something to invest in. The zoo has a Kilometer long rope bridge/jungle gym that is apparently pretty damn cool.

Related Item: House Insurance free quotes

Drew and Ian have had some trouble getting online this weekend, so I’ll give yyou the gist of whats been going on and let him fill you in on the rest. Ian started camp on Friday. Apparently he won’t start school until the 28th which is weird because they told us he would start the 2nd week in August. I guess it is working out okay though and now that he is in camp he won’t have to count on Drew to keep him entertained. Plus I will get to be there when he starts Kindergarten! yay. He can either go to a Belgian school or an American school. We have opted for the American school because i think it will be an easier adjustment for him. They will teah him french though for 1.5 hours a day. He will probably know more than us! Speaking of that, we really need to get on the ball.

Below are pics of the Child Development center on post.

Apparently he is friends with this little french boy named Louis. Neither of them speak the other’s language but they get along just fine.

Here are some more pictures of the house that we kind of like. Below is supposed to be a shot of the kitchen; Drew swears it is really big, but it’s really good he doesn’t take pictures for people selling their houses. The cabinet that is open is the fridge.

Here is the cellar/garage. there is a big work bench and a storage room. There is also a wine cellar. Too bad I don’t drink wine.

This is the bathroom. It leaves a little to be desired for taste-wise, but it’s workable. The downside is that it is the ONLY bathroom in the house

Finally, here is a picture of a bedroom. There are 3 others just like it. Drew thinks that 2 of them could fit our furniture. I told him to get a tape measure!

And that’s it. His camera died so he will go back another time with fresh batteries.

Drew and Ian have started the house hunting! They’ve been looking at leads from the housing office. Apparently the system is complicated out there. We can’t just go out in town and rent a house. We HAVE to do it through the housing office or we wont get money for housing. If we find a house offpost that we like that isn’t registered through the post, we have to get the landlord to agree to a very thorough inspection and also agree to a 3-year lease.

So Drew has been looking at the houses provided by the housing agency right now. Figured I’d show some pictures so people can see what it looks like over there. This house below is a pretty big house (3000 sq feet). Apparently it’s okay on the outside, but the inside has holes in the walls and is just not very nice overall.

The next house was off a busy road where it was extremely loud and also no fence:

The next house apaprently is nice from the outside, but the layout is strange from the inside. It also has a tiny backyard.

The next house is really nice. It has a fenced in yard and looks good from the windows. Drew really liked it. The only thing is the information sheet says there is no telephone jack which would suck since I need DSL. We could get it, we would just have to pay a lot. Here are some pictures of it: