Unfortunately on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving our furniture shipment arrived from the States. I mean that we were glad it arrived but not right then. We had been using furniture borrowed from the base and now had two sets of everything including beds, couches, dressers, everything. A sofa was standing on end in the entranceway and other furniture all the way down the hallway. Can you imagine their reaction when they entered our house. To further make matters worse we had prepared a typical American Thanksgiving banquet with all the trimmings including corn-on-the-cob only to find out that most Germans don't eat corn on the cob because that is animal feed. To save us embarrassment they tried everything and thoroughly enjoyed it. To me the exchange visit was one of the reasons we went to Germany and an experience of a lifetime. By the time of their visit I was able to at least make conversation in their language without the use of the dictionary.
Rhaunen was approximately six miles from the base and one day my wife called and said I better stay on the base overnight. I said "Why, what's the problem?" She said "We've gotten over a foot of snow since you left for work this morning." On base we didn't even have a flurry.
It seemed that once we moved to Rhaunen I was gone a lot on various TDY deployments (I can remember at least six in less than two years and I'll get into them shortly). Every time I was TDY Liz would have car troubles, other times the car ran perfectly. Another problem that surfaced while I was away concerned our two daughters Susan and Debi. Sometime in Georgia they both developed a case of the "light-fingers" and liked to shoplift. This time at a local German store they were caught. The proprietor wanted to prosecute them but my wife convinced her that she would handle the problem and assured her it would never happen again. My wife drove straight from the market to the Air Police Desk Sergeant and told him what the problem was. He immediately placed the two delinquents in a cell, slammed and locked the door. That hour spent in a jail cell gave them plenty of time to think and to our knowledge was their last shoplifting experience.