OUT OF THE BOX!

Let me just start this blog out with a brief explanation as to why we have not blogged before now and then we'll proceed to our first OFFICIAL entry. Ok, so, from the first night we got here up until about 2 weeks into our journey, I had been blogging, but I was not writing my blog on here, it was in a program on this little lap top because initially we did not have internet in our first hotel. Okay, so fast forward to our desperate desire to talk to some family and we decide to get an I Phone that has free (included) calls to the USA because we have finally accepted the fact that the whole first month over here is going to be in a hotel and we can't wait to get a land line to talk to family. This little computer does not have some of the programming needed to register our I Phone. This of course does not surprise us because very little has been easy on us since we got here. Brent, in trying desperately to get this done for us, ends up erasing our ENTIRE blog! I am so mad, I really do think I may have been producing some smoke out of my ears! He offers to re create the blog which I find completely and utterly hilarious because he was offering to write 9 or more pages of script that had taken me almost 2 weeks to create! Hilarious. As you all can see, the blog has not been re created. I do hope to go back in my free time (ha ha ha) and try to get some of our thoughts down here in the next few weeks. Here we are today, though, so let's move on and start anew!

Let's first start today's blog off by noting that Brent and I aren't really outside of the box people. I really like to have my schedule pretty typical from day to day and Brent just flat out dislikes change, so this whole move has been HUGE for us! I mean, I rarely order anything but chicken fingers at a restaurant, so to rarely have that option, I've just about been beside myself!

Okay, so our morning started off pretty typical of how it has been going lately. We all got up, ate breakfast, Brent went in to get a few things done, and then he comes back to get us from the hotel. From here, we go to post to eat at the DFAC (dining facility) and from there, the launderette. These two things are also VERY typical of us lately. I first really knew that I was homesick when I started craving the DFAC every day and got thoroughly upset at Brent when it looked like we might miss it (it's only open certain hours for each meal). The food is not the greatest, but man it sure seems like it when you have sat down at many a table with either mystery meats, cheeses, and a half cooked "boiled" egg (during breakfast) or tried to stumble your way through a german menu with no dictionary! Anyways, after completing the laundry, we head back to the hotel to get Mason ready for his first soccer practice! He's so excited and so are we! It's at this point, though, that the tides begin to change (about like they do at least once a day). We show up with Mason at the soccer fields and lots of other kids are there, too. We, however, talk to the 2 coaches that are there and neither one has Mason on their roster, so we talk to the Sports coordinator which is also there and she calls his coach. He has apparently decided to cancel the first practice and we never were notified of this. This is ALWAYS our luck! They quickly put Mason into one of the other practices and all is well. We're hungry after his practice and decide to go to the mall. Keep in mind that Sadie has been fussy all day long and right after practice Mason somehow gets turned around backwards in one of the MASSIVE slides at the playground and comes out backwards hurting himself, so he is whiny, too. We get to the mall and almost immediately have to take Sadie out to calm her down. As we walk into the mall, Mason already has his food from Burger King so Brent and I don't have to worry about trying to find something kid friendly. We decide to pass our old faithful Italian restaurant and go down a bit further to see what we can find. Once we get down there, we're stopped in front of one restaurant and Mason stands up out of the stroller and in doing so, his ENTIRE drink spills all over the floor. We get that somewhat cleaned up and head back one restaurant, decide to get something to eat there, and Sadie loses it! Brent can't settle her down, so we swap places: he in line and me with the baby. Next, Brent goes fumbling through my wallet because he can't find the money, the lady is laughing at him (knowing we already spilled our drink one store down), I get up with a screaming baby to show him the money, he gets our meal in turn, and as he reaches the table, one of our GLASS cups falls and bursts into about a million pieces. Not long after that I sit down to discover that I don't even like the sandwich that I ordered. That's what we get for going outside of our little box! The bad news is that most days, something overwhelms us or is discouraging, but the good thing is we're learning a lot and each day is new and we have high hopes for a better day with each new day! This whole moving out of the country has by far been one of the most physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting experience we have ever had, but at the same time, we have already experienced that which most people will never have the opportunity to do and we're enjoying every minute knowing that someday soon things will settle down and that someday we'll look back on this with so many fond memories, we wont be able to count them!

Mason's all ready for his "first" soccer practice!


Even though his coach had cancelled their practice, some of the other kids in his age bracket still had practice, so they let him play with them. I'm glad this lady is not his coach because she just threw them into a mock game and although they all ran around and loved it, not many really knew the concept of soccer and she did not explain it very well!