Goodbye to Berlin

Hello. It's been a while. We've been a bit busy. The movers came, packed a gazillion boxes, and then flung them out the window on a little lift. During all this Stevie and I set up office in the shower room and planned our attack on the crayon marks and flooring scuffs armed with baby wipes and Cif. 

Instead of painting the walls at considerable expense, we spent probably around 60 cents more on baby wipes and around 73 times more man hours scrubbing them clean. It was fun... sort of. At least my finger nails were bleachy clean. Then once the boxes were packed up we moved into a lovely hotel near the Ku'damm which we all thought was utterly excellent due to the single fact that we managed to pocket 17 very nice biros from a glass that they kindly replenished daily. By day we cleaned (and the kids continued to go to school) and by night, well, we pretty much dropped into bed and fell fast asleep stinking of bleach.

We did a bit of wandering around Berlin, caught the Christmas markets before the snow and the real festive feeling arrived, and visited the KaDeWe with the kids and saw their kind of Dumbledore Santa. I liked him for being so different, and also for sneaking me some chocolate from his pocket. Is it just me, or does that look like the beginnings of a "Santa? Yeah, whatever..." face on Orla? Ah, no, you're right, it's just her "God I'm sick of my mother taking photos" face. Phew!

And then, on the 4th of December, it was time to go. So that was a bit rubbish. Exciting, I'll give you that, but rubbish. The kids were over the moon to move into another hotel for a few days, us grown ups less so. And then! And then! after a few days we got to move into our new house! Boy were we ready for it! We were chomping at the bit. We dropped the kids off at their new school and raced to the letting agents to sign the papers and collect the keys. Woo-hoo!

Now, what could possibly go wrong.........................................................................???