Good Times Before COVID-19 - Part 1

Between our move back to Boston in early January and the beginning of our lockdown on March 13, we had a few fun times as we were getting readjusted to living in America.



First, Grant finally got to have his Christmas.  We had mailed all of his gifts to Plymouth so you might recall he opened up a bunch of pictures of gifts on Christmas Day in Amsterdam.  He was happy, I guess!



Meanwhile, Todd got a ticket to the Patriots wildcard playoff game against Tennessee, which was Tom Brady's LAST game as a Patriot.



Unfortunately for Todd, big Tom (there on the sidelines) lost his last home game here.  Todd was funny... he didn't really want to go because I think he felt kind of bad that his friend only had one ticket and I couldn't go.  And it's never a cheap ticket.  So I had to actually CONVINCE him to go to this game!



We had a little late Christmas with Todd's family too. Natalie got some new wall art for her room!  The cute boys of BTS on the cover of Time Magazine!



Todd and I had to get the kids registered for school in Holliston, so naturally we stopped by Dah Mee in Natick for some yummy Thai food.



The kids and I also visited Auntie KK's 1st grade class where we did a little meteorology lesson!



I don't know who this is, but they're my new best friend.  Love the Bavarian flag sticker on the back window, too!



Little did we know this would be Grant's last haircut for a super long time.  Grammi always gives him a big boy special!



One of the things we did a few times was drive by our old house on Speen Street in Natick, especially after we moved to Holliston because it wasn't too far away.

Once we were in Holliston, we would randomly get Amazon packages that were being sent to a similar address in Hopkinton (which as we all know is different than Holliston.)  I contacted Amazon about it and they said to "just keep them or throw them away." I got some seriously weird stuff!

I also got to see my Massachusetts besties!  This is pretty much one of the biggest reasons why I love living here!

We also went down to Grammi and Bean's house for a little birthday party for KK (who is hiding behind Madison on the far left!)

While we were there, we had to borrow some tools to fix a wire that had broken on Natalie's braces. Boo.  Good news... I fixed it with the needle nose pliers!



If the weather was good, which it pretty much was this winter, we went on walks on the Holliston Rail Trail.  A LOT of walks.

Natalie was freaking out when BTS was on the Grammy's.  Namjoon did all of the speaking of course as he learned to speak English by watching the show Friends!

And on this day, I felt like I was back in Germany when I took Natalie to the orthodontist and I ran into Heather when I was there!  (We would run into people we knew all over the place in Europe!)

Grant also had four teeth pulled as the orthodontist recommended it because other teeth were right behind the baby teeth that he had to have taken out.  Poor kiddo.

The last time we really saw Todd's family was when we had a bon voyage party for Madison (on the right with GoGo and his girlfriend Anna) who was heading to South Korea to teach English.  This was, of course, right when Covid-19 was peaking over there, so we were all really worried for her. But she is loving it there!



THEN there was that time that Todd thought he had Grant's trainer EpiPen and was showing his mother how to use it (as we were going out on a date and they were watching the kids.)  I had the EpiPen in my hand and was showing her what to do with it when he took it from me and stabbed it into his own leg (which he was reenacting here.)  I looked at him totally horrified and said, "That's not the trainer pen, that's the REAL PEN!!!"



The only "trip" I got to take since we've been back in America was on the train down to New York City and then on the commuter rail down to Edison, New Jersey to pick up George Jetta!



When you ship your car, you are supposed to leave it with under a quarter of a tank of gas, which I did.  When I picked the car up, I literally had 0 miles left.  They completely emptied my tank!  The guy that was at the vehicle pick up building was nice enough to try to give me a TINY amount of gas so that I could make it to the gas station which was 3 miles away.  Phew!



Thankfully the rest of the drive back was uneventful!  Finally George was in Massachusetts and he's already been honking at the questionable drivers here!



While unable to really leave our 2 bedroom AirBnB, we let Natalie put up some posters so that it gave some resemblance of home.



We also took a much anticipated trip to Bill's Pizzeria in Natick - the kids were SO happy!



And of course, we had a nice Valentine's Day.  Well, I did... anyway!

Moving Back to America

This is the day I wished would NEVER come.  I never wanted to leave Germany.  I honestly could have lived there forever.  But Todd was able to get a GREAT job as the Army base he was at prior to this, and the opportunity was too great to turn down.  So, it was back to America we went.  Moving is something I dread, so I knew that when we moved back and found a place to live (permanently), that's where we were going to be until Grant went to college.  I just wish it could have been this house!

I will miss our sweet landlord, Dietmar who always used to park his Jeep across the driveway from our house when he would visit.  We truly loved living in this house.

Of course, when you move, you always do a big clean out.  We found this Cookie Monster ice pack in the refrigerator, and it had cracked open so we had to throw it away.  But remember when the kids were babies and we would make their boo boos all better with Cookie? 

Don't mind us... just ready to go back to America with 11 suitcases.

And of course, we had to say goodbye to our favorite restaurant in Auerbach, Da Teo, with it's wonderful owner and it's amazing waitress, Arzu.  The kids were sad that this was our last time here.

We've eaten here countless times, and seen the big renovations that they had done not long after we moved in.  We had our favorite tables - usually in this room, sometimes in the room behind the doors.



We always liked this big picture that sat above one of our favorite tables.  We found out it's the city of Ostuni, in the Puglia region (where the owners are from.)

Had to get in one more delicious spaghetti carbonara!  Theirs was DIE BESTE!

And my favorite local lager of course.  I'm carbing up like I'm about to run a marathon!

If you ask me what the thing I miss most about Germany is, I will probably tell you it was the little free dessert at Da Teo.  Yes, all of the above was free!



I had to take this picture to remember what they looked like on the inside.  So good.  They were soft and dense, and definitely had amaretto in them.

When we first moved to Germany, the wood fire stove was on the left in this picture (right out where everyone eats!)  But they renovated not long after we moved in and moved the stove to the back and out of sight.  Thanks for all of the great memories, Da Teo! We will certainly miss Italian nights in the Biergarten during the summer.



Todd got Harry Highlander ready to go, and we paid to have it shipped back to the US.  The Army will only pay to ship one car overseas, so they shipped George Jetta and we paid to have Harry shipped.



Little did I know that I would actually MISS the trash and recycling in Germany.  After all we went through there, I will definitely admit it is the MOST efficient and they take absolutely everything.  Back here in America, almost everything goes in the trash which is really disappointing.  If everyone had to do what we did in Germany (their own sorting, so you don't have to pay people to do it in a big warehouse) then we would be a much greener country.



It's funny- whenever I would see the big green Gosselin trucks on the road, I would feel sad for whoever was going to have their household goods loaded onto those trucks.  Now it was our turn.

Todd had to get the bikes in tip top shape because they will not ship anything that has dirt on it.  And there's a guy who comes from the Ag department to inspect everything, so we had to have the bikes in the living room for that.

The room we called, "Nana's Room" (or the Arts and Crafts Room) was all packed up.

We ate so many meals in this room in our four and a half years here.

Our bedroom, meanwhile, remained a mess.  What is with those American Girl dolls???  Also, when I look at this photo, I really miss my Miele vacuum cleaner (it's in the distance, next to the temporary mattress that's up against the wall.)  If anyone wants to get me a nice birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day gift... I'm in the market for a Miele canister vacuum!



This was the truck all packed up at the end of day one.  It took them two days to pack all of our stuff.

In the end, we visited 40 countries.  We didn't go to Belgium and the Netherlands until after our household goods were packed, so they weren't scratched off when we had to pack this.  How did we never get to Portugal or Scotland??



I will weirdly miss my ficus Pflanze.  It might be the only thing I haven't killed!  I gave Esther, who works at the high school all of my other plants.



At the end of the second day, they had us all packed out and Todd signed our lives away.  At this point, you just start praying the ship your stuff is on doesn't hit a big Nor'Easter and sink.

Goodbye household goods.  See ya on the flip side.  (Little did we know how long that would be!)

I really, really wanted to take this piece with me, but it was Dietmar's.  It's just so beautiful!

Natalie was showing us JUST how comfy Army temp furniture can be!

As Todd and I prepared to send George Jetta off the next day, we stopped into the Kantine for one more awesome, cheap German meal.  Where am I going to get my currywurst now????

Meanwhile, Todd had the Jägerschnitzel - which was equally delicious.

After they packed our goods and we sent our cars off, we rented a car and took one more trip to Cologne, Amsterdam and Bruges.  Once we got back, we had to finish outprocessing before we could fly to Boston. We didn't leave our home until about 5 days before we flew back, but Natalie was very sad to leave her room and was trying to hug her floor here.

Panorama of Natalie's amazing room. We tried to tell her that she was spoiled and would never have a room this big in America!

Meanwhile, Grant was in his room doing what he does best.

One more dab under the airplane light.  Hard to believe he was only a little 5-year-old boy who loved airplanes when we moved into this house. He's literally spent half of his life here.

One of my favorite memories about our house was the time there was a fly in Grant's room and we were throwing balled up socks at it to try and kill it.  But the ceilings are very high, so Todd threw a ball of socks that went screaming into the rafters and got stuck!  There they will stay, so the next renters can find them.

Todd ran some of our suitcases to the hotel we would be staying at in Vilseck and he snapped some nice pictures of the sunset.

Here's another shot, with the moon rising on the left.



Meanwhile, I was back at our house for ONE FINAL AUERBACH SUNSET.  This could be the only thing that I might miss more than those Da Teo desserts.

We couldn't take our hiking sticks with us, so we left them for the next renters.

Goodbye, home!

I want to get one of these with all of our addresses.

I will miss pulling into my tiny garage, with the Veedol oil thermometer there to greet me everyday.

We stayed at the Hotel Angerer through New Year's and one of the walls in their breakfast room dated back to 1580.  The inn itself dates back to 1557 and it's been run by the same family since the mid 1600s!  (Side note: I never let Grant on his tablet at the table, but it was just the two of us and he finished his breakfast fast, so I said he could run back to the room to get it!)

This is just... so German. I love it.

Grant and I went for a walk down to the Edeka in Vilseck one day and on our way back, we passed this sign on a building that read, "Facade with Renaissance and Baroque stucco, family crest of Rosner family with stylized rose.  Overnight stay of Gustav Adolf, the King of Sweden on June 24th of 1632, Birthplace of Elias Peissner, born on September 5th of 1825.  Lola Montez is said to have lodged at the Peissner family's home in 1848."  What?  This is the craziest place ever!  You find stuff like this all over Germany, in the most random of places.  Elias Peissner was a German man who moved to America and became a professor at Union College. He fought and died in the Civil War.  Lola Montez had been an actress and was a former mistress of King Ludwig I.

What a mess!  We had the junior suite at the Hotel Angerer - little did we know this would be the start of many months of living out of our 11 suitcases.

This is what we saw when we went down the stairwell to get to the lobby of the hotel.  So many roofs! 

When you PCS, it involves LOTS of appointments and running around.  On our second-to-last day there, we had a lot to do. But of course, Grant wanted to take one last selfie at the Graf food court, a place where he tore up many Taco Bell tacos.

Kiddos were not pleased that the line at the housing office was VERY long.  It's the price you've gotta pay if you want tacos though.

Natalie and I also had ONE more orthodontist appointment down in Amberg the DAY BEFORE we flew back to America.  Talk about cutting it close!  We really loved Dr. Angermann and Dr. Rechl!

Alas, we finished our outprocessing and finally it was time to leave the Hotel Angerer and head for the Movenpick Hotel at the Nuremberg Airport.  Todd had to make TWO trips - one to take us and a few bags, and another to get the rest of the bags, since they didn't all fit in the car.  While he did this, the kids and I went downstairs and had some dinner and one final German happy hour!

And, much like that night in the Logan Airport Hilton before we moved to Germany four and a half years ago, Natalie sang her brother to sleep.  (This time, trying not to laugh of course.)

Oh my goodness, they were so little back then.

The big day had finally arrived and I do not look amused to be moving back to America.

The Bailey's are ready to fly to Frankfurt before the long flight to Boston.

Biergartens and dirndls... some of our favorite Bavarian things!

Will all of my bags make it?  Time would tell.

Taking the bus out to the Embraer that we flew to Frankfurt.

Goodbye, Bavaria!  I promise I will come back!  Natalie and I both cried as we took off out of Nuremberg.

Meanwhile, these guys didn't seem sad at all!

But it really did hit us as we prepared for takeoff out of Frankfurt - this was it.  The last time we would be in Germany as residents.  The last silly airplane selfie we would take before taking off and  visiting a new country. And little did we know, it would be the last adventures we would have for a long time.

Goodbye, Germany.

Hello, Massachusetts.

Ok, now that we've landed, let's turn around and go home.

Incredibly, all of our bags made it!  We rented a big, big car to get all of our suitcases down to Plymouth in one trip, stopping by the Marketplace to grab some food and drinks on our way.  And of course, some lady drives right up, parks like this, and strolls on into the Marketplace like nothing was wrong.  Oh America... some things never change.

Yep, the Griswold's are back!