Soon to be Homeless

OK, so it's been a month with no posts. You guys are probably wondering what the heck is going on with us.

As you are well aware, we've been looking for new housing. We had found something that was in the same neighborhood as a classmate of Carter's. It was new construction, it was closer to work and to Carter's school. It was essentially perfect. Except for the landlord. As it turns out, after a month of negotiating, we were unable to come to an agreement on the terms of the lease. The landlord continued to change his requirements with each passing week. Today we finally called it quits. Ben and I gave our final offer and if the landlord didn't want it, then we were through. So, now with 8 weeks until we MUST be out of our current house, we have to start the house hunting exercise again. The issue isn't that we won't be able to find a house in the next 8 weeks, it's having the new house ready for us to move into by November 30. We may end up in temporary housing for a couple of months which is really not something we want.

On a happier note, a good childhood friend of mine came to visit us. She lived in Frankfurt for 2 years and so she came back to Germany to visit her friends their as well as us. This was our first real non-family visitor (not including a friend who stopped by for 12 hours while he was in Germany for work). It was really wonderful having a visitor (Hint, Hint!).

October brings us a weekend trip to Strasbourg, a visit from my parents, and Halloween. November brings a visit from my brother and sister-in-law as well as a potential Gale-Whiteson European Thanksgiving. And then mid-December we are heading back to the States for 3 weeks. It's always so amazing how this time of year just flies by. It's almost as from Labor Day it's warp speed to Christmas.

Of course none of you wanted to read any of this...you just wanted a picture of Carter. So here it is...chilling in his undies in his tv-watching chair.