Luxembourg: The Arrival {November 15-21}

The first few days after our arrival in Luxembourg were definitely not glorious traveling-through-Europe days :) The flight over was fairly miserable – the boys did awesome, but Eliza screamed for several hours and we took turns standing in the back of the plane with her, hanging out with the flight attendants. It’s one thing to have a screaming baby who won’t sleep when you’re at home, but being on a plane with a couple hundred other people adds another whole level of stress. A few days after we arrived, in a moment of frustration, I told Nate that if it weren’t for the thought of enduring that flight again, I might just turn around and go home.

We had a warm welcome at the airport from some ward members, who took all the luggage that wouldn’t fit in our rental car and met us at our hotel, and later brought us dinner. We went for a short walk to try and keep everyone awake (and sane!), then went to bed early. We were all up for a few hours in the middle of the night (the joys of jet lag + hotel rooms!) but the second night was better. The first couple of days were filled with declaring our arrival, legal paperwork, tuberculosis tests, attempting to grocery shop, and trying to find our way around. It took us about 10 days to get our internet set up at home, and our cell phones weren’t working, so those 10 days were pretty hard. I couldn’t look up any of the things I needed to (like addresses for errands I needed to run, info about cell phone plans, translating words I needed to know, etc) and felt very disconnected from friends and family. We had 2 nephews born in the first 3 days we were here – Nate’s sister and my sister each had a baby, and I would impatiently wait until Nate would get home from work at the end of each day (since he had internet access at work) to get updates. We survived though, and managed to get through it.

The boys were supposed to start school 1 week after we arrived, but they somehow contracted hand, foot, and mouth disease 2 days before they were supposed to start (which made things even more difficult). We made it through the first week and even managed to venture out a little bit that Saturday.

Highs from the week:

Ryan’s backpack was almost as big as he is; trying out the tire swing and zipline at the park by our house.

The view from our terrace, Eliza sound asleep, and our air shipment arrived! It came faster than we expected so we were pretty excited.

Eliza sleeping; Ryan was a bridge for the cars

  

Going for a walk in the Grund area

Bennett and Ryan trying out the outdoor exercise equipment

The snowman at the Christmas market, and introducing the boys to Gelato

Eliza: 11 Months {Nov 8}

This cute girl turned 11 months shortly before we left for Luxembourg. The pictures were a little late (as usual), but I eventually got around to it. She’s quite mobile – crawling everywhere, opening doors and drawers, and walking everywhere as long as she’s holding on. She claps, waves and plays peek-a-boo, and says “nana” for food (bananas are one of her favorites – she started saying nana for banana but expanded to all food). She was anything but cooperative for pictures, but I still love her cute little smiles.

    

Seattle: Wrapping Up

(Note: we’ve been without internet for our first 10 days here in Luxembourg. Since I can’t do anything online, I decided to get our blog all updated. Lots of new blog posts below if you scroll down!)

The first two weeks of November were pretty crazy as we tried to take care of everything before we moved. My mom came up for a few days and was a great help in getting organized, taking multiple loads of garage sale leftovers to Goodwill, playing with the kids, and packing. I just looked through and I didn’t take a single picture with her!! I can’t believe I didn’t take any.

The day after she left was Bennett’s last day of US Kindergarten. He would have had a couple more days, but the following Monday and Tuesday were the school’s Veteran’s Day holiday. He had a great experience even though it was only a month and a half. I wasn’t able to get a picture with his teacher, but did take a couple in front of the school.

Bennett’s “All About Me” poster from his last week at school. Favorite animal: lion and giraffe. Favorite color: Gold. Favorite Food: pizza and spqide (spaghetti). My friend’s house is my favorite place. When I grow up, I want to be an artist. My favorite thing to do is play soccer and draw. If I had one wish, I would wish for 6 gramos (grandmas).

The first weekend in November, my brother & sister-in-law were in town for a recruiting trip, so we got to hang out with Jake and Stacey and baby Annie for a short time before they headed back to Utah. Camille & Avery came with us, and we all walked through Pike Place (where Nate snuck back for some Daily Dozen Doughnuts – yum!), past the gum wall (Nate was the only one who hadn’t been there) and down to the waterfront. It was a warm-ish evening, and we saw a beautiful sunset as we came over the hill at the top of Pike Market.

After the craziness of packing, movers coming, cleaning, etc. we were going to try to go down to visit my parents for a couple of days before flying out, but decided at the last minute that it just wouldn’t work out very well. We still hadn’t sold our van and had a lot of other details to take care of, so we invaded Camille & Bryce’s couch for a couple more days. We tried to take advantage of being there and in between phone calls, errands, and van test drives made it on a ferry ride and on the Seattle ferris wheel, which Bennett and Ryan had been begging to go on for at least a year (‘when it’s my birthday, can I save all my monies and go on the ferris wheel?’). They were so excited to finally go!

 

By the time we left, I think Camille & Bryce were so glad to have us not staying with them anymore that they weren’t sad we were moving away from them :) A few random pics from our last few days. Avery started to really like Eliza. She would start smiling and say “Iza” over and over when she saw Eliza. They were mostly cute together, but had their moments of fighting over the same toys.

Eliza filling the pumpkin bucket with her brothers’ Halloween candy; “helping” pack

 

Eliza & Avery sharing a snack; Ryan getting ready for the day; Eliza’s fight with her oatmeal

 

A rare moment of quiet at Camille & Bryce’s while the boys learned about snakes; all packed up and ready to go!

Bennett the Soccer Player

Bennett was SO excited that we had signed him up for soccer this fall. I tried to sign him up last year but couldn’t find a league (at least at the time) that was for kids his age. He was asking all summer when his soccer would start. We were fortunate to be on the same team as his friend Tommy from church. Bennett LOVED it! The first few weeks, he was so excited when he was out there playing that he would just dance around and couldn’t hold still if he wasn’t in on the action. It was fun to see him progress throughout the season – the first few games, he would just kick the ball once and not follow up if it went to – or close to – the other team. By the end of the season, he would follow up and keep kicking it past the other players until he made it to the goal. I opted out of the posed soccer pics. Mine definitely aren’t as professional, but show more of his personality :)

  

Halloween 2014

In the weeks leading up to Halloween, we went through several ideas of costumes for the boys. Bennett would decide he wanted to be something, then Ryan would want to be the same thing, and Bennett would switch because he didn’t want Ryan to be the same thing. We finally (a few days before Halloween) decided on a robot for Bennett and an astronaut for Ryan (which they both seemed happy with). Things were pretty crazy since we were getting ready to move overseas and planning a garage sale for the next day. Unfortunately, that meant that the shiny silver pants didn’t happen for either one of them, but I thought they still turned out pretty cute. Bennett kept needing help when we were trick-or-treating because he held his bucket in one hand and candy in the other, and couldn’t reach to put the candy in the bucket with his robot box on :)

We had some fun Halloween celebrations – a ward Halloween party / trick or treat, we carved pumpkins with some friends, and we had a little pre-trick or treating dinner with friends and Camille, Bryce, and Avery. I forgot to take individual pictures of the boys :(

Carving pumpkins: Bennett; Eliza pushing her friend Grey around in his walker; Ryan and his buddy Holland; and the pumpkins: Ryan’s and Bennett’s on the right.