Moving to Germany

It has been a long time since I have posted on this blog.  Our family, being in the Army, moved once again, this time to Germany in January 2014.  Our move here was not as spectacular as the trip to Texas, which we posted in detail earlier in this blog; however, we did visit my mom, Leslie, and Granny and Papa in Texas and Jenny's parents, Lizzie and her friends in Georgia before visiting Washington D.C. on our way to the airport in Baltimore.

In Mineola, Texas, we visited Granny and Papa before heading east to Atlanta.
Here is a picture of Rebekah with Granny at the Pizza Hut where Uncle Richard is the manager.

Daniel poses for a picture with Heather at the Rhodes Jordan Park
in Lawrenceville, where David proposed to Jenny in 1999

Kimberly meets Picaso with Phil and Myra Price in High Point, NC

The Snethen Seven visit the nation's capitol in January
before departing from the Baltimore airport

Our first several months in Germany were very difficult, getting our car from the shipping, finding a place to live and getting settled after moving around the world.  Getting our dogs here was especially difficult and expensive.  We were, however, able to visit a few places in the first year.  Our favorite place is probably Trier, where we see new things each time we visit.

The Snethen Sieben pose for a picture inside the Roman Bath House in Trier.
(Ben is not in this picture.  He must have been behind the camera.)

Kimi and Daniel play in a fountain outside of Constantine's Basilica in Trier.

Rebekah, Daniel and JJ stop for a picture at the
Lohnsfeld sign, in our village

We live in a beautiful town near Kaiserslautern amidst fields and rolling hills.  We enjoy walking our dogs in the fields and going on runs and the kids like to play at the fussballplatz, in the older part of town.  There is also a castle ruin (Falkenstein) just ten kilometers from our house.

Daniel poses in front of Kimi, Ben and JJ
at the Burgruin Falkenstein

My plan is to continue to backdate some posts.  I have posted a lot of pictures to Facebook, but while the blogging on that site is limited, I will blog about some of the more amazing trips we have been on and continue from here.  I hope that you continue to enjoy the stories we share as I continue to post about the Many Adventures of the Snethen Sieben.

An eventful departure....

Day 1:

First day on our grand adventure.  I started by finishing up all the out-processing still left on Fort Wainwright, signing out at my unit at about 10:15.  A few errands later (there always seems to be something left to do) and we were on the road shortly after noon. 

 

Ben and Beka are cataloging our stops in their notebooks I gave them at Holiday, where we topped off the gas tank, our last stop in Fairbanks.  They are recording the number of gallons/liters we get when we fill up with gas, the odometer reading at every stop and the location.  So far, they've written the following locations:  Fairbanks, The Knotty Shop, Delta Junction, Delta Meats, Lisa Lake Trail, Tok, Tanana River Bridge, and Border City. 

Of course, this is all a ploy giving them various computations, mileage between destinations and fuel efficiency. We've already developed some good math problems out of the mileage and gas usage on the trip.

 

The Snethen-Seven motor-home next to the American flag at Delta Meats.

At Delta Meats, we stopped and got some yummy meats to try and a few postcards.  For the next several miles, the kids began writing in the postcards to their friends in Fairbanks.  A couple hours later, we stopped in Tok, eating dinner at Fast Eddy's Restaurant, where we met a man from Colorado Springs who was more than complimentary of the Army and the Army bands.  We also created a number of quotes from inside the store which I instantly posted on Facebook from my cell-phone:

Stopping to eat, after driving four hours from home (and in the middle-of-nowhere, Alaska), Ben (9): "We should have come here more often."

Me: "Where's your chicken?"
Daniel (3): "I put it in my belly button."

Me: Daniel, you can't take your shirt off in a restauant!
Person at another table: when you turn eighty and do that, they put you in a home.

These posts have gotten a lot of positive feedback on Facebook, and I decided to share them here.  After leaving Fast Eddy's, which was a delicious meal and not too expensive for what we ate with excellent service, we thought about staying the night in Tok, but decided to pull on for another stop.  When we got to the Tanana River Bridge, we got out for a short hike to the old bridge, an excellent place for viewing the magnificent sunset that God created--apparently just for us because no one else was stopping, just speeding by as fast as possible down the Alaska Highway.

When we got back to the RV, Jenny set the laptop up so the kids could watch Rio and we kept driving.  It kept getting darker and darker, yet I kept driving.  By the time we got to Northway, it was completely dark outside, but we didn't see anywhere open that I could stop, so we kept going.  Finally, we pulled over in a pullout and couldn't start the generator.  The Milepost said there was another stop before the border, so I just decided to keep going.  

Jonathan and Belle playing in the bed at the back of the motor-home.  Jonathan began cutting his first tooth on Day 1 of our great adventure....

Finally, we stopped at Border City in the dark, crossing a wooden bridge and parking in the campground.  The water was turned off, but the electricity worked.  According to the kids' logs, we had come 289.2 miles on our first day of driving....

First Night

So the movers have finally come and gone.  Our home is completely empty, except the few things we still have to either pack, throw away or give away.  We are staying our first night in a nice hotel in Fairbanks, close to many of the fun things we like to do.  After doing a little preliminary cleaning at our old home, we drove over in both vehicles, Jenny driving the van with all the bikes in the back, and me driving the motor home.  We first stopped at Ben's friend Gabriel's house.  He had gone with him to run errands while we finished up at the house.

I drove Beka and Ben in the RV, stopping to fill up 42 gallons of gasoline at Fred Meyer while Jenny checked in at the hotel.  Apparently, they hadn't saved two rooms with a conjoining door as we had requested, but they only had two options with conjoining doors available, both in handicapped rooms.  The attendant got permission from his manager and finally was able to place us in two rooms connected, a single king and one with two queens.  The ironic thins is that it is actually perfect for us, setting Jonathan's crib in the room with just a king bed.  The extra space afforded by the handicapped rooms is nice for us as well.

After Beka, Ben and I finished unloading the supplies we will be needing for the next ten nights (involving filling the hotel dolly once for the van and once for the motor home), Jenny stayed upstairs with Jonathan while the rest of us went downstairs to try out the swimming pool.  The pool was not too cool and not too hot, and we were the only ones in the pool for the next hour, allowing the kids to make some noise and play.  Next time we go, we should bring a beach ball the kids received from the Big Apple Adventure VBS they attended this summer.

Rebekah and Kimberly watch television in their hotel room in Fairbanks.

Then, we came back upstairs to our hotel room suite, where Papa John's came first with the wrong room's order and later with our correct order.  Everyone ate too much pizza and we had more to spare.  Then, the kids watched the end of the Princess Bride and later a documentary about the history of Manhattan, designed to be boring and put them to sleep.  Rebekah was the only one able to last too the end, nonetheless it succeeded in its purpose.

Moving Day!!

The movers are here today, actually they've been packing up our things for the past two days and are picking it all up in a big semi-trailer. Well, it might actually take a whole fleet of box trucks. I'll let you know what the running total is at the end of the day. I think they actually judge its size by the number of crates that we fill.

But my weight-allowance is 9,000 lbs because I'm an E-5 in the Army. The inspector who was here (a government employee who works with transportation) told me I should get an exception to policy, signed by my commander, and hope for some leniency because I have such a large family. He told me to turn it into finance at Fort Hood, which is where they will bill me if I exceed my wight allowance.  (The weight allowance is determined by the actual weight, when measured, of the crates minus 10% for packaging minus my professional gear, which unfortunately stands at only between 300-500 pounds.)

The older kids have been at school while just Daniel and Jonathan have been here to watch our home transform into a pile of boxes.