Neighborly

Yay! We made it. 33 boxed items shipped from Tucson should arrive in 2 months, last of the going aways, painful goodbyes, a last dip in Sabino with my sister. God bless all of our sweet loved ones in Tucson!
Leaving has been an amazing experience. We were showered with love and homemade salsas. It is a unique moment to reflect on what I love about Tucson, what I love about my life there.

So we did a lot of that and then got us, Babette, the boys, our 10 giant bags and 2 mongo car seats and boarded a flight for London via Dallas. The flights went incredibly well. The boys were super excited to fly as it had been a very long time since their last flying experience. Dominic was only 7 months. We had a good layover in Dallas and spent a long time wildly playing at the play area. By the time we boarded for London it was about 8 pm and Michael promptly fell asleep, missed the in flight movie of "How to train your dragon" and did not wake up until 1 hour before we landed. Dominic caught the first hour of the movie and then passed out. We landed, somehow wrangled our baggage onto 4 trolleys and dragged ourselves to the car rental. Mike is a spacial genius and managed to shove all of our baggage and ourselves into a minivan. Since that moment we have spent nearly every second at IKEA. The hardest part of this entire deal: moving out of our house, living for 2 months out of suit cases, getting our shipment sent, saying goodbye to William, Anna, the Fennies, Jim, Barb and other favorite loved ones - has been finding the parking lot of IKEA. Honestly, I do not get it. It is CRAZINESS!!

To explain, briefly, we have rented an unfurnished house here, and we rented our house furnished. So we need to get the basics to live in a house, and try not to spend more than we have.
It is beautiful here. Green, wooded, black berries growing wild. We have 2 apple trees in our front yard and a plum tree. We went for a walk today. Behind our house is a wooded path, the boys ran ahead bearing shields and swords, chattering a complicated scenario of good knights and bad knights. It was cool, windy, cloudy. Our walk took us around to Heath Lake where we communed with ducks, geese, and 2 perfect swans with what appeared to be a tweenage swan in tow.

It is very exciting!

And now we have a very chatty Lithuanian helping us put our IKEA furniture together. It is 10 pm at night, and he has been here since 5 pm, doing everything one armed as he is using his other arm to hold his cell phone. I imagine this constitutes some form of language immersion for all of us non-Lithuanian speakers. He just asked Mike if he has a charger for his cell phone.

That would be a no.

This area is amzingly culturally diverse. It is quite thrilling. We met an adorable neighbor named Marta who is Slovenian. She was out picking black berries with her 2 small children and we asked her to suggest a nearby grocery store. As we became barely acquainted and explained our presence in the neighborhood she exclaimed, "Why you move here?? It is horrible here, rainy, cold, awful!! You could be having barbeque in Tucson right now, 40 degrees centigrade! This is worst mistake of you whole life!"