What is up…

Man it’s been a long time since we last posted. Crazy how fast time goes by. When we last updated, we had gotten the keys to our place. After we arrived, we realized that there was actually more work to do than we’d thought. Over the past few weeks, we have been cleaning, painting, tearing down a wall, going to Ikea, returning things to Ikea, painting some more, cleaning again, making lists, checking things off, going to Ikea, returning things to Ikea…are you getting a picture of all of this :-). But…we are home now! HOME Last Saturday was our first night in our new place and we were all grinning from ear to ear to just be…ahhhh. There’s been lots of hard work for sure, but it’s been worth every bit of it to unpack all of our suitcases and take shirts out of actual closets (actually Kliedershranks as they are called here not really closets at all more like huge wardrobes). We are incredibly thankful for so many simple things like putting our kids in beds each night and handling temper tantrums in private.

So…Sorry that we’ve kept you out of the loop on all the ins and outs, but we will share some of our top surprises from the move.

1. If you’ve watched House Hunter’s international, you know that renters here bring their entire kitchens. Cabinets and all. What we didn’t know is that lighting is also something that moves with the renters. On the second night that Ian came to paint, his plans where thwarted with the surprise of no lights.

2. Mattresses here are sold by actual measurement. So, there is no “twin” size mattress, for example. There’s 80×200, 90×200 and 100×200. We ended up having to return one mattress and buy some foam to stuff another to make it all work.

3. Ian can tear down a wall! The owner of this house had put up a wall 10 years ago to accommodate the last renters. This left the house with no family room and he gave us permission to tear it down. Ian and a friend spent 4 hours one day working on it and a few days later he moved all of the debris outside in the rain.

4. Painting a room means walls and ceilings. That’s a lot of paint and a lot of neck work.

5. One actually can grow tired of going to Ikea. Especially when every trip home requires building on your husband’s part. Bonus though, our kids love the play area there! They actually look forward to going.

It’s been an awesome 3 weeks setting up and adjusting to living on our own again. Tomorrow our shipment from the  States arrives and we are looking forward to unpacking things from home. Thanks for following along, and thanks for grace in the gaps.