Home Sweet Home (German version)

I know we've been MIA from this blog over the past few weeks. 

You might have been wondering, "Well, they're in Europe.  They must be strolling the streets of Paris.  Or hiking the mountains of Austria.  Or frolicking in the Black Forest sporting their lederhosen."  But 'tis not so.  The only "exciting" places we've frequented are OBI (European version of Home Depot) and Momax (small version of IKEA) and IKEA (Germans' version of fun, my version of hell.  But that's for another post). 

We've been setting up house.  

We've been transforming this:

Into this:

And it's been a lot of work.  I decided to paint. 

 I have a rule of thumb... staying somewhere under two years, not worth painting, more than that, then alright. 

 Although my better half would disagree.  

 He thinks eggshell white is a perfectly acceptable color for a home.  

He keeps saying, "You should have seen where we lived in Iraq!" 

 That's his decorating standard to judge by.  

I've heard my father-in-law refer to very uninteresting activities as being "about as fun as watching paint dry." 

But, my daughters seemed to truly enjoy it.  They loved to sit and watch me paint... they thought I was so cool, which led me to momentarily think I was cool too.   

And when their attention spans began to wane, they found alternative versions of fun.

And we have photographic evidence... Ben painted too!  Yes, it's true.  Props to Ben.  He wasn't exactly in the mood to get his picture taken here, but he proved to be a very effective and efficient painter.  

Nothing brings a couple closer together than painting, right?  Except maybe hanging pictures.

And the arrival of our household goods, after being separated from them for three months.  That might as well be Santa with his sleigh.  It was that exciting.  

The moving crew consisted of five Romanians and one Turk.  Here they are delivering the piano.  I would have gotten a pic of them carrying it up the stairwell, but I couldn't stand to watch.  Never can.  

The girls at IKEA, after we had already spent about four hours there.  Like I said, another post for another time.  Notice how Caroline is always the one pinning Em, despite being half her size.

And Ben hanging pictures.  He holds them up, I tell him "a little to the right... a little to the left"  I mark it, and then he drills.  Like I said, nothing that strengthens a marriage more, right?  I think he was about to spit in my eye in this pic.

But  you see that ginormous painting behind his legs?  We have hung that bad boy SEVEN times in our short 6.5 years of marriage.  Yes, I counted.   

 And the finished project...   plus much more, but you have to come see us in Germany to see for yourself!  Now let the fun begin!