WITH LOVE

We’re settling back into our daily routine after a couple of seriously up and down weeks. The girls both started ballet, I had my first midwife appointment, we’ve been enjoying lots of drizzly days at home, and sunny days at the local park and digging up worms in the backyard. I’ve been baking lots of banana bread, roasting chicken, making stock and soup, and experimenting with all things that can be cooked in a cast iron skillet. I’ve taken tips from two of my favorite ladies, Amanda and Bethany, and am working on making our house a cozy semblance of a home. Amanda has great posts about keeping your house tidy, cozy, and wonderfully inviting. Bethany has great tips about establishing routines, and for homeschooling. Their blogs have been monumentally helpful for me these past few weeks as I attempt to create a little life here.

PINPINPINPINPINWe wrapped up September with a trip to the emergency room, which really rattled me. Lulu fell and hit her eyebrow on the coffee table when Kyle was out of town. I was on my own with the girls and had no idea what to do… I mean, I knew what we needed to do (not our first adventure with sutures), but had no idea how to do it. After some fumbling, we called a taxi and the three of us made our way to the closest ER (A&E here in England) where we spent the next four hours amongst equally sad and sorry folks waiting to be patched up and treated.

PINThe thing that buoyed me up through the anxiety and desperate aloneness of the experience was our taxi driver. He made the evening so much better by offering his advice on where to go, drastically undercharging us for his services, coming all the way back to the hospital to pick us up hours later, and giving me a big hug when he dropped us back at home. His kindness made all the difference in the world that evening; it didn’t, however, prevent Lulu’s cut from opening back up overnight.

Rather than going back to the ER, I opted to do a little DIY patching up. Honestly, I couldn’t stand the thought, both logistically and emotionally, of going back for another round at the ER. I had a good cry, gave the kids a good bath, and then headed to the local pharmacy and store to buy supplies to glue Lulu back together myself. I didn’t feel very strong or capable throughout the ordeal, but looking back I can see that the girls and I did a pretty damn good job getting through it together as a little band of brave musketeers.

PINKyle returned home to a much wearier and more worried wife than he’d left, but we rallied to celebrate his 35th birthday with a quiet family dinner that included brownies from a box, the season six finale of The Great British Bake Off, and putting together our plans for a trip to Sweden the following weekend. After the trials getting utilities set up, having Lulu patched up, and wading our way through the homesickness, we were ready to bust out of England for an adventure.

So, off we jetted to Stockholm to properly celebrate Kyle’s birthday, visit with my brother who’s been living there, meet up with Swedish friends, and wander through the city for a few days. This is our second trip to Stockholm, and it was just as magical the second time around. Stockholm is such a beautiful, inviting, magical city – it’s quickly coming to rival Paris for my favorite European city.

PINPINPINPINThat our opportunity to explore Stockholm meant three days with my brother which included warm, much needed hugs, and his offer to babysit the girls for a few hours so Kyle and I could go on a date to walk through Galma stan and grab dinner, was just the cherry on top of a wonderful weekend. We mostly just wandered around without too much of an agenda, which is my favorite way to travel, but we did spent a whole day playing at Skansen and Rosendals Trädgård.

PINPINPINPINPINPINPINAfter Stockholm we hopped on a cross-country train to Gothenburg where Kyle was slated to make a collaboration brew with a Swedish brewery. Kyle worked one full day, and the girls and I ventured out of the city to explore Styrsö, one of the islands that makes up the Gothenburg Archipeligo. We had a wonderful day and I seriously impressed myself. Normally it’s Kyle who navigates the trams, buses, subways, ferries, maps, and schedules – especially in foreign countries! But I got the kids down the hill from our airbnb rental (which, given that I was 28 weeks pregnant and there were a lot of stairs, a loaded stroller, and two freezing cold kids, is worth noting), onto the tram, then into H&M to buy warm hats and mittens for the girls, then onto the next tram, then onto the bus, then off of the bus (which, given that Lulu chose that moment to have an epic tantrum, is worth noting), then onto the ferry!

We had no objective other than to wander around the island, enjoying the sun and changing leaves. Our first stop was a small cafe where I got myself a steaming mug of Earl Grey tea, and double scoop ice creams for the girls (offered up for free by the cafe owner – no doubt in order to both please the gals, and to dwindle their ice cream supply before the even chillier Swedish weather kicks in). Kids will eat ice cream with gusto in any weather! Or at least kids will eat half of their ice cream with gusto in any weather until their lips go numb. Then they’ll abandon their ice cream to play at the park. Which is what we did for the next two hours.

PINPINPINI just let them play while I watched the water, the wind in the trees, and let that lovely Swedish red of the houses fill my vision. I felt so grateful for getting to be there on that little island, on a beautiful fall day, with my wonderful ice-cream-enthusiast-tantrum-throwing-adventurous girls, and a babe hiccuping away in my belly. We walked around a bit before making our way back to the ferry, back onto the bus, the tram, to the grocery store, to the next tram, back up the path and the huge flight of stairs, where we took a quick shower and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner.

PINEven though this move has been less than smooth, and even though the transition into this new life has been so much more challenging than we anticipated, and even though there’s been (many) moments when I’ve wanted to scramble backwards to our old, familiar life, I’m grateful for it. Every time something is hard I try to remember how much we are learning from it, and every time something feels easy I have extra gratitude for that ease.

Moving to a foreign country, even an English speaking foreign country, is full of challenges and is… uncomfortable. There are so many reasons that we made this move, but one of the main ones for me was that I felt the need to get out of my comfort zone, to hit the refresh button, and to challenge myself. That doesn’t mean that I’m necessary handling all the challenges and discomfort with grace and composure, or anything closely resembling grace, or composure. But I am navigating it, and that’s something. I’m learning to celebrate my capabilities, and to recognize when I need to ask (or beg) for help.

One thing we discovered from our trip to Sweden, is that one of the main benefits of this move is our freedom and the ability to travel to so many wonderful places. We came back from Sweden with the realization that getting up, out of the house, and into Great Britain and Europe is our main M.O. during this time abroad. This weekend we spent a day in London, touring around, and eating a lot. Next up, a trip to Oxford to stay with new friends, and we’re planning our first (of many) trips to visit family in France! My Amazon cart is loaded with travel guides, and everything we need for a top notch first aid kit, we are armed with UK healthcare cards that cover us for emergency room visits abroad, and our passports are ready to be filled with stamps.

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PINPINWe’ve been here in England for just over a week now, and we are slowly settling in. It feels very fall-like this morning; drizzling and chilly. Kyle headed off for his second week of work at his new job as a head brewer for a smallish brewery close by the house, and the girls and I are finding our footing in our new house, on our new street, in our new town, in this new country. We’re spending the day the way we’ve spent most of our days here so far: eagerly awaiting orders from Amazon and IKEA. We are about an hour outside of London, and where we live feels very similar to the Pacific Northwest. It’s nice and familiar-feeling: lots of trees, and green, and rain, and grey, and coffee. We don’t have a car yet, so most of what we’ve seen and explored so far has been by foot or bus. There are lots of parks and paths, and everyone we’ve interacted with has been incredibly warm and welcoming.

The story of this move is still taking it’s time to catch up to us… there was no way that if you’d asked me six months ago I could have seen this on the horizon. In the beginning of March, Kyle came home one day and declared that he needed a job change. As soon as he said it, it completely made sense. We’d been not entirely happy for a while, having a hard time in general, and when he said that it all seemed to click into place. He was just wrapping up a long stretch of school to finish his Masters’ degree, and even though his job was great and steady and wonderful, we needed a change. Fast forward through several interviews with a number of breweries in different areas of the US, and a few abroad, and we found ourselves committing to this particular brewery here in England.

We’ve always wanted to move abroad. We’ve always wanted to travel with the kids. We used to sit in our one bedroom apartment and scheme and dream about selling all of our belongings and moving to Europe. But then we got a kitty, and then we had Gigi, and then Lulu, and we bought a house, and we slowly became a part of our community, and we loved where we lived, and we made wonderful friends, and we had a garden, and furniture that we liked, and a routine, and health insurance, and family within driving distance. We had everything we wanted, but our last, challenging year, Kyle’s need for a job change, and that deep-seated longing to see more and taste more and experience more pulled us out of our life and into this one.

PINPINPINPINPINPINIt has been exciting, but also incredibly hard. I underestimated the physical and emotional challenges of this kind of move – especially while pregnant! It is absolutely an adventure, but it’s not been easy. The process was slow and stressful, and Kyle spent three months without working before we got here. As I sit this morning in our new house, that doesn’t yet in any way feel like or resemble a home, waiting for our orders of things like: a mop bucket, a pair of scissors, a baking sheet, bath mats, garbage cans (or bins, as they’re called here), pots and pans, and laundry baskets, I can’t help but feel set right between feeling excited, and feeling homesick. Letting go, it turns out, is equally liberating and heartbreaking. Embracing change is equally thrilling and scary. I’m equally happy that we’re here, and wondering, “What the $!@£ have we done?”

PINPINIt feels great to be wrapping up the “Moving To England” to do list that we chipped away at for the past few months, and to be settling in here even as everything feels… well, foreign. As we settle in, get utilities installed, furniture delivered, rooms deep cleaned, and laundry done, I feel like we’re slowly embracing this space as ours – maybe it won’t ever feel like “our” home, but it will certainly work as a good, cozy, home-base for the adventures and experiences we’re going to have while we’re here. This move is, at the very least, an opportunity to wake up and engage, to be open where I’ve been rigid, to be brave, and to say yes to as many new experiences as I can. That will include exciting things like trips to Paris to visit family, weekends in Sweden, and taking the kids to the zoo in Amsterdam, as well as simple day to day things like making our house feel like a home with cheap IKEA furniture and candles, and dedicating myself to being a home-educator.

PINPINI’m not sure what all of this change will mean for this little space I’ve dedicated to writing in for the past several years; there will still be plenty of recipes (once I figure out the grocery store, Celsius, grams, and those pots and pans and baking sheets arrive), but I imagine there will be more about travel and exploration. I’m looking forward to sharing about our journey here. Most of these photos are copied over from Instagram, where I’ve been sharing quite a bit.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

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