A first good-bye

With some time to pass during a house showing this afternoon, the kids and I headed down to Cook Park.  It's one of our town’s best and biggest parks, and within walking distance of our house (note to person who looked at our house!  You know you want to buy it!  Cook Park!  Come on!).

Ehem.

As the kids ran toward the familiar play structure, I was struck with my first real and unexpected wave of sentimentality about moving.  I suddenly realized the significant role this park plays in my memories of raising our kids this far.  It is the site of countless playdates with good friends over the past 6+ years.  I’ve come with larger groups - MOPS and then MOMS Club - each significant eras for us.  Pete and I have helped run two church “Young Families” picnics here.  We’ve walked down as a family for the annual balloon festival. It’s our go-to spot for leaf-jumping in the fall.  We’ve watched the 4^th of July firework show just about every year, which we can see from our house. We’ve seen the play structure remodeled in various forms (I don't miss the sand pit a much as the kids do).  We've witnessed the kids graduate from the toddler play structure to the one for the big kids.  We've chased geese and (dodged goose poop) in the soccer fields.  We've pushed a double stroller along the bike paths to the two connecting parks – and now all four of us walk or ride bikes.

Up until now, I honestly haven’t been too sentimental about leaving.  I think I just assume we'll eventually be back - or maybe the reality just hasn't fully "hit me."  But today I realized in an intensely visceral way that even if we do come back, chances are we won’t be living in the exact same spot or in the exact same area.  As I relived all my Cook Park memories, I felt a twinge of guilt for not visiting it or savoring it as much as I could while I had the chance.  I moved a fair amount growing up, but this is the first time we are moving our own little family.  A chapter in our book is ending – in a way, the first chapter.  And a rich chapter it was.

Cook Park, thank you for providing one of the great settings.

Two moments from today....

And some moments from years past...

(same tree they were both in today)

The unexpected hazards of airplane safety

When we took our trip to England last month, the kids were absolutely enthralled with the emergency/safety pamphlets provided in the seat pockets.  For the first couple plane rides, they stared at those pamphlets for several minutes straight.  Relieved our children were so quietly occupied, Pete and I sat back in blissful naiveté.

But then came the questions.

"Why is that plane landing in the water?"
"Why are they wearing masks?"
"Why do they have life jackets?"
"Did that plane crash?"
"Is our plane going to crash?"
"But what if it DOES crash?"
"What is going to happen to us?"

Oy.

We did our best to reassure them that this situation was unlikely...so unlikely that they may as well assume it's not going to happen at all.  Mommy and Daddy will take care of you, it's not something you need to worry about.  And so forth.  We're not trying to coddle our kids, but we do attempt to discourage worries about things they can't control.

Of course, just as they seemed sufficiently satisfied with our feebly improvised explanations, a helpful flight attendant brought out a special mini life jacket, especially for James.

Yeah, thanks for that.

Still, it appeared that no long-term damage was done, and their fragile psyches stayed intact.  Until just the other day, when I found this board game Daphne had been working on...

Yes, "Lundin" = London
Yes, "Canuda" = Canada
Yes, the mom has the kid strapped to herself, just like on the safety card.  No, they are not smiling.
Yes, "Zoom."
Yes, "Boom."

When we fly to Luxembourg, I think we'll go ahead and hide those safety cards.

You know, just to be safe.

Renting vs. Selling

As I mentioned, our house is for sale.  And quite reasonably priced in a desirable location, I might add…

Despite the for sale sign in our yard, we continue to debate whether we should sell our house or rent it out.  There are so many factors, pros and cons, etc. to consider.   I’m so sick of going over them that I can’t even bring myself to type about them here.  It’s also insanely boring reading, you can just trust me on that.

Suffice it to say, we continue to waffle back and forth.  In fact, we waffle so much that it’s become a sort of code word/short-hand in our relationship.  If one of us says “waffle” out of the blue, we immediately know that means we flipped back to wanting to rent, or vice versa.  It happens pretty much daily.  Pete has been known to just email me a picture of a buttery Eggo from time to time.

The core issue seems to be a financial vs. philosophical decision.  Financially, it probably is “safer” to keep the investment, although we could walk away now with equity.   Philosophically, we’d like to make a clean break and focus fully on this new chapter.

We are trying our best to let our life philosophy guide us.  The problem with letting money guide us is that it’s really just fear disguised as money.  That’s what we believe, anyway.  Our life philosophy says, without a doubt, sell.  Let’s live this life the way we want.  Plus we’re kinda weird (you noticed?), and it’s probably overall the weirder thing to do.  So that’s always a good sign.

But we’ll see.  Right now it’s sell.  Tomorrow’s breakfast is sure to be….

The Move-age of Stuff-age

photo credit: cargocarriers

We get a 40-foot sea container to ship our furniture and anything else in our house we want to take to Luxembourg.  That container won’t arrive in Lux until 6-8 weeks after it’s packed (right before we leave).  We also get a 5-foot air container that arrives after 2-3 weeks.  This if for stuff we’ll need “sooner” I guess.  Probably whatever clothes we don’t take on the plane and some kitchen items??  I dunno, what would you put in? 

What do you not need for 3 weeks, but would be desperate for in 7?

The other day a man from the relocation company came to our house to take a basic inventory what will be packed in these containers.  He concluded that our house contains less than half of a half-size sea container.  He seemed a bit taken aback, actually. 

Woo hoo!  Big fat minimalist geek-out moment for us!

We’re going to sell or give away almost everything that plugs in before we leave, since the voltage is different there.  So far we’ve heard that the adapters/converters are a bit unreliable, so we might as well just get rid of our lamps, small appliances, etc. and start over, adding back only what we really need (oooh, geeking-out again!).  We can bring our higher-tech electronics such as our laptop—those should work fine.  We are hoping our precious digital piano will work with a converter.  We’re going to give it a try.

But really, the piece of information you should take from all this is that we definitely have room for stowaways if anyone’s interested in camping out in the sea container for a few weeks.   Heck, we might even just live in ours once we get there.

photo credit: busyboo

So, you want to learn Luxembourgish

I had a feeling you might.  All the cool kids are doing it.

Here’s just a little intro to the Luxembourgish language from my new best buddy, Paul.  You’ll see it borrows a lot of German, French, and English-sounding words.  Or they borrowed from Luxembourgish?  I’ll just stay out of the middle of that one.

What are your favorite Luxembourgish words so far?

Our Relocation – The Nuts and Bolts

(Yeah, uh, take a moment to note the scale of this map at the top left. If a country could be "cute" I think Lux would qualify.)

First, some quick definitions:

Expat (expatriate) – a person who has taken up residence in a foreign country.
Immigrant – a person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another.

We quickly learned while negotiating Pete’s contract that our situation is a bit different than that of the typical American expat in Europe. Most Americans (or at least those with families/kids) end up in Europe on a within-company, temporary transfer assignment, often 2-5 years duration. It is understood that the family will repatriate when the assignment is over, and so the company covers some temporary expenses such as English-speaking private school for the children (a.k.a. International School).

However, Pete is joining the company as a new employee, and his job is considered "permanent" and indefinite. As such, they will help get us there and navigate the initial transition, but after that we are pretty much “on our own.” Although it’s still safe to say we intend to return to the United States at some point, we just have no clue when that might be. So functionally, we are treated more like immigrants, whether or not that is our ultimate intention. I won’t get into too many specifics here, but things like International School and annual trips “back home” are not covered.

Now, please don’t mistake this as complaining—I’m just explaining. If you know an expat family who’s done this sort of move, it’s likely you know the transfer type. A lot of people have been asking us, “But don’t you get…XYZ?” And the answer has frequently been “no.”

Anyway, the only tricky part is school. We can’t reasonably afford private school for both kids (except on a very temporary basis as a back up plan), but we still want them to learn to read and write in English. So we will just put our kids in the local school, and they will learn the local language in addition to working on English at home, right? Well, in Luxembourg there are 3 official languages: Luxembourgish, German, and French. And at school, Luxembourgish comes first.

Beginning this fall, James (age 4) will be taught in Luxembourgish for two years in compulsory pre-primary school (like a pre-k and kindergarten lumped together). They don’t learn to read and write until the equivalent of “1st grade” in the states. Daphne (age 6) will begin “1st grade” and will learn to read and write in German, and the language of instruction will gradually switch from Luxembourgish to German as well. In 2nd grade she will gradually begin to learn French alongside German. Apparently Luxembourgish will still be the common “playground” language throughout, so by the end of elementary school they should be fluent-ish (at least speaking) four languages, if you add English at home. Awesome—if we stay there that long. Potentially awkward and confusing if we move sooner and they’re suddenly back in English language school.

At this point, we’re just counting on the resiliency and adaptability of young kids, wherever the future takes us. Even if we move somewhere else relatively soon, we’re hoping that their exposure to not-so-widely-applicable Luxembourgish will just mean they have had some good practice learning foreign language in general, and that they will have honed some solid empathy for ESL kids in the process!

Meanwhile, we have resolved to think of ourselves more as immigrants than expats for now, since the kids will be taking the “immersion” route. Pete will be speaking exclusively English at work at his American company. I will be…somewhere in the middle, I guess.

But this is why we call it an “adventure.” ☺

By the way, here’s a helpful (or terrifying?) post about the different languages and when/where they’re used.

In Passionate Defense of Our Garage

Who knew? We certainly didn’t.

We are attempting to sell our house at the moment. Everyone who comes to see it really likes it. Loves it, even.

Except for the mere one-car garage.

Really? That’s the deal breaker for you?

Grrr…..I will refrain from further comment.

This is me refraining. See. It’s hard.

Actually, I typed a bunch of real snarky ones and then erased them. Ha.

It never occurred to us even once that this would be THE issue for people looking at our house.

Very disappointing, house shoppers. We are deeply offended on behalf of our little house.