We went out to gawk at the ice skaters and the ice bears today!

Behold!  The first of the year's crazy shellacked eggs to hit the room-temperature shelves!  Bailey keeps asking if they're chocolate and despite several explanations to the contrary, I think she's going to be one sad kid, come breakfast.  

More moving chaos:  This is not what I would call an ideal stopping point.

 John and I drew portraits of the girls after dinner.  This is mine of Audrey.

And John drew a picture of Bailey.  I think she looks straight outta' Planet of the Apes...but beauty is in the eye of the beholder, eh?

....Then Audrey made some modifications to B's portrait.

Can you tell we're back to school this week?  Audrey has been struggling with getting the high teens in the right order and this morning she counted to twenty correctly all by herself!  Best part of it is seeing how excited she is about it.

Meanwhile, this kid continues to be the sweetest/craziest/most affectionate/funny kid around.

 

I just ordered a pizza with kiwi and marshmallows from these two.  They charged me five dollars...twice.  Once, for the pizza, and again, so I could leave.

So, the breeder we like in WA told us they're having two litters this year; one in March and one in July!  The Schweighardts have puppy fever!!  Audrey wants a girl puppy named Freya.  Bailey just wants two of anything.  

Audrey has an announcement to make:

So, basically, this (all over the flat) is what I've been doing for the last five days.  Finally getting somewhere where I feel organized instead of adrift in the chaos!

Tales from the world's laziest mother:  I actually mixed all the peanut butter and jelly together in a bowl first so I wouldn't have to spread them individually.  Lunch is served!

Ok, NOW the Superbowl can start!

We stayed up until midnight just for the start of the game, armed with a six pack of Weiden Braeu's Maerzen brew and Big Lion standing in for Bailey, sporting her Seahawks hoodie for good luck.  Watching Seahawk games up until this point had been an incredibly stressful event.  The Superbowl, though, was a genuinely enjoyable, hottin' and hollerin' event...at least up until Halftime, when I told John I was taking a nap and to wake me up for the second half.  They were so clearly the winners, John just let me sleep.  I woke up to the news that they were, unsurprisingly, the champs.  I know there's no way of comparing it to the excitement and chaos that must be going on back in Washington State, but we felt a bit of it over here too.

We are Nothing if Not Strange and Uncertain.

You guys, I am strange.  Don't get me wrong, I dig the strangeness. But, it's an odd existence, being convicted to go against cultural norms and desiring to find others who can, if not relate to me, then at least completely accept me for my eccentricities. This is probably one of the reasons the glue that keeps John and I together is so strong; we are two separate brands of odd, but we adore the oddness in each other.  

Together, we've chosen kind of an odd life, I suppose.  We feel like we're meant to be nomadic--a bit uprooted--which is fairly strange for people with small children.  Security is one of the things I assume most people want for their kids and while many seek that out in the form of setting down 'roots', we've accidentally discovered it by uprooting our children and moving to a different continent.  Right now nothing feels as solid and secure as the unconditional love in our little family unit; that's the security we're looking to maintain. So, it makes sense that challenging ourselves in new (sometimes uncomfortable) situations is the thing that will help secure our togetherness.  We're in this together and the proverbial 'home' being where one's family is has never felt so true.    

That's not to say the path we're on is easy, (nothing of real value ever is.) and intense moments tend to bring out my 'strange' like a magnifying glass.  Like, all the parts of me that have been trained to conform to general civilized culture have decided suddenly the heat is too intense and end up sprinting for the door.  Moving internationally unquestionably qualifies as intense, and it seems coming home from vacation has flipped the switch.  We are out of vacation mode and into get-your-sh*t-together mode.

I cope with this in a lot of different ways, because one of my primary goals in life is to avoid stress (Mama's adrenal glands just can't handle it...which means no one else wants to either.)  For starters, I make lists.  Mental lists as I'm falling asleep, (of which I will remember nothing) lines scribbled on the back of grocery lists (which will be forgotten in my coat pockets or casually thrown in the recycling), there are just random pieces of paper littering the house with things like: "Email Francesca" and "HOW DO I CANCEL OUR JAHRESKARTES!?" on them.  These are likely the organizational tactics of a literate monkey, but it apparently works for me and makes me think I'm being productive.  Hopefully the house elves will find these bits of paper and form one coherent, streamlined list for me soon.

Another one of my de-stressing methods is purging possessions.  This gets irritating when half of the things in your house belong to your landlady, though. So, instead, I'm irritating John by dividing our house into camps:  Things we don't own, Things we need to give away, Things we own that will be shipped, Things we own that will be mailed, and things we own that will be packed in suitcases. It's significantly more dizzying than the system we had in the States before moving that consisted of: Shove everything that's being shipped into this closet and try to stop compulsively buying things at Target so it will all fit.

So, general strangeness is ensuing, but, luckily, I've got these other three people here who seem to like me no matter what, so that's comforting.

On a really long side note: John and I tend to wax poetic about our family a lot and I think, to the casual observer, this can seem almost like idolatry at times.  The two of us constantly talk about our faith concerning our family's path, but I get the feeling it isn't perceived as such in conversation or on paper very often.  Which likely contributes to all this 'strangeness'.  When I talk about glue or togetherness or foundations or security, I'm talking about God.  When I use the word "love", I mean hesed ---> God's love. Not just mine, but all of it beautifully mashed together like the world's biggest and best wedding.  So, a lot of our faith gets lost on people who don't read into our unconventionally defined vocabulary.

**hold the phone while I recover from the epiphany that these two words--God and hesed--are what I've tattooed on my arms in Hebrew; how symbolic that I constantly bring these two concepts into conversation without people really noticing and how these Hebrew tattoos won't usually be understood until they're explained.**

Anyway, It's been a long while since I sat down and put some actual thoughts to paper instead of just documenting our family's milestones and adventures.  It felt like time. So, that's where I am and where we are.  We're moving (tentatively around mid-April) back to Washington State.  We're planning on renting a house for we-don't-know-how-long.  "Maybe a year?" is what's currently going around, but that's mostly just a number we give people because it seems to make them uncomfortable that we don't have any real plans.  It's no secret that John is keeping his heart and mind open to possible positions that might be a more ideal fit for him, and also that we'd be perfectly happy to dig some roots in the Tri-Cities if we felt John could be fulfilled by the work to be done there.  Que sera, sera.  (see what I did there? That's all God.)

We often wonder where we'll be in a year, because we don't feel we can make a conjecture with any kind of confidence. At this point, death and taxes really are the only certainty. As for the rest, your guess is as good as ours.  The most important thing is that we're thankful for our situation.  We're thankful for the time we've had here in Vienna.  We're looking forward to the future...no matter where it plays out.  We know there's someone better than us at the steering wheel and that, mostly, we just need to try to facilitate the big stuff by checking the nit-picky things off those lists laying all over the place...and by truly enjoying all the hesed around us--in our friends and family--in every nook and possible cranny of our lives.  The glue, man.  It's so good.

I told you; strange.