Month: January 2013

Our weeks stay pretty full here. With school, homework, language school, Zumba, basketball, kids activities, meeting with speaking partners, church meetings and so on we find ourselves completely spent when Friday comes around. It’s not just the activities, it’s the language and the culture and the position of always being a student of something whether or not you want to be. Being here is indeed one big adventure and with every adventure there are pros and cons. So when Friday rolls in and everyone has returned to the nest, we. shut. down.

It’s the time where we shut our ears and our lives off to the culture around us and we take in our own culture-Chadwick culture- which has become a blend of where we currently live and where we came from. On most Fridays we eat pizza. We either order it from a local place, make it from scratch, or doctor up some frozen ones. We then make a big salad and we have some sort of yummy dessert afterwards. We all head in to our living room and we settle in for a movie together. We’ve tried to mix it up every now and then with a game or something else, but honestly the most relaxing thing is to sit and watch TV.

Family night has really become sacred to us. It’s special and essential to our existence as a family. We’ve found that we need a designated night to turn it all off and just relax. We need time to be together. Just laugh and unwind from the week so that when we go back out into the world, we are filled.

I really do Thank God It’s Friday. It’s my favorite night of the week.

What about you guys, does anyone have special weekend traditions? Is it Friday night or some other night? 

I still remember that Christmas. The Christmas where I got everything on my list. The Walking Wendy Doll, Lester the Ventriloquist Dummy (yep) and an easy bake oven. I think I was 8 or 9 years old at the time. It truly was the best Christmas Ever.

Fast forward twenty-something years 🙂 and I’m the parent of an 8 year old. A pretty awesome one I must say! Early in the month, we started asking Ellison what she wanted for Christmas and she couldn’t really think of anything that she wanted. But then one night, as I was putting her to bed she said I know what I’d really like…a hamster. Now this was like just over a week before Christmas and the thought of finding a pet store and figuring out how to care for such animal did not sound like something that either Ian or I wanted to do. Blame it on being overwhelmed foreigners but our plan was to get everything at the one toy store we know of and call it a wrap.  But then it happened. I remembered. I remembered  that Christmas. The one where my parents got everything that I asked for and after some discussion, we decided to go through the work and stress and actually get the hamster for our girl. A big part of the decision was because it’s been a crazy year on this little one. In 2012 she had 3 different educational experiences- 2 of which were here in Germany and 1 in which her teacher was a stressed out mom. She moved away from everything familiar-her friends, her small group, favorite foods and candies and at the end of our packing she had to leave the large majority of her toys behind.  Really hard stuff for a little girl. And.. she has endured every single thing and done so well with each and every change. We wanted to see her smile and be really excited on her first Christmas in Germany.

Well Daddy Chadwick decided to start looking into hamsters on the internet and he felt that a guinea pig was much less rat like (thanks Honey!) and a bit more of an interesting pet. So he and his accomplice Marcel (our friend from the States) were off on the journey to find a guinea pig. After visiting a few stores they found one!! As we hoped, she was so excited about it, as were Jude and Asher. She later on said that it was the best Christmas ever.

So it’s official we now have 2 new members of our family (after some research we found out that they do better with another in the cage with them). So we have warmly welcomed Rhino and Buttons to the Chadwick Craziness! I am still….adjusting and they are growing on me. I’m trying to work my way up to holding them. I can’t deny that they have brought lots of joy to our home and they are definitely keepers.

 

 

We’ve been blessed to have friends visiting from the States for the past 2 weeks. It’s been pretty funny to hear and see ways that we’ve changed and adapted to our new culture here. It’s also been a gift to just be with friends and to have community and to be known in our own language….Ahhhhh.

We want to wish you a very Happy New Year. We hope that you’ve had a good time celebrating with friends and family and that you are ready for a New Year!