Well, we made it. We are finally here. For better or worse, all four of us - plus the cat - made it here alive.

We arrived at around 9am on Tuesday?…I’ve lost track of time…after a verrrry long flight. Fortunately, the kids slept most of the flight but B and I couldn’t sneak in more than 5 minutes here and there (that’s being generous). We got in and met our sponsor who was so incredibly helpful. We got our room at the Navy Lodge and then checked in with Personnel and then Housing. We also got a rental car, which is just great: A Chevrolet - a Matiz! Never heard of it? Neither had I. The greatest part? It’s a “mid-sized” car. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I think of “mid-sized”, I think more along the lines of an Accord or a Camry. Here, “mid-sized” is too small to put a single piece of luggage in the “trunk”. Now, we drive a Scion xA, which is tiny, I’ll admit. But that is a COMPACT CAR, not a “MID-SIZED VEHICLE”! And it’s got a manual transmission, quite possibly even worse than our old Lada’s crappy transmission, but it’s cheap, and it’s red, and so there you go.

We applied for housing and we will be moving in tomorrow. After looking at about 15 homes that were available, we found one that had a fabulously large (though crabgrass-ridden) backyard and neighbors that DO NOT HAVE LARGE OR SMALL DOGS. They do, however, appear to have children, children with trampolines no less, so I have the feeling the kids will be happy with where we are. We got to tour the inside, which is small but nice. It’s going to be hard to get used to having all tile floors and zero carpeting, but I’m sure we can just hop on over to the Ikea in Sevilla (I never thought I would say such a thing!) and get a couple more area rugs.

We slept for 15 hours last night. That’s right, FIFTEEN HOURS. We woke up at 10:45 and have had a lazy but nice day, ended with seeing a movie with a friend who is stationed here, and the kids were in bed by 8:30 local time. What a feat! Isak was having a bit of trouble falling asleep but Anja went right down. Let’s hope their bodies are acclimated to the time change here already.

The weather is nice, warm and scattered showers and already a big, giant, beautiful rainbow right across the street from our new home. I really can’t wait to take pictures!

Our phones will be hooked up in about 3 days; internet won’t be for another 4-5 WEEKS. The price of phone and internet is ridiculous - for DSL, 512kbps is $50/mo. If we wanted 4mbps (which is what we had before with cable), we’d have to pay over $150/mo!

This weekend, maybe we’ll venture away from the base and go see some of the local countryside, maybe even get all the way to Seville. Hopefully I’ll get to take lots of pictures, but the question is, how will I post them all?!

Pictures from Christmas Eve!

My adorable nephew, Jacob:

All the grandkids and Gigi:

My gorgeous sister-in-law, Beth:

We love the USO….a quiet place with lots of little goodies to eat, a big screen TV with the packers/bears game, free wireless internet, hot dogs for the kids, and a playroom with toys and books.

Everything went so smoothly, AGAIN. It’s so nice when things work out well. ALL of our stuff fit in our luggage, although there’s not enough room to fit a hairpin in any of it, but it’s all done. The kitty cried all the way to the airport, but she seems a little more comfortable this time around. We got our car dropped off way easier than we’d expected, and we took the bus to our airline and checked in relatively quickly - no lines this time! Yay.

Now we’re at the USO where I’ve gotten to chat with a friend I met online. We’ll be leaving shortly, but I wanted to get online to post a few pictures from Christmas (that’s next!) and give a quick update.

Merry Christmas to all our family and friends - thank you to those of you in Wisconsin who made this such a wonderful Christmas. We love you and will miss you. And to our distant friends, thank you all for your love and support - we miss you, too.

So we got pictures taken with the Mall Santa. We paid a ridiculous amount of money for a 5×7 print of my kids and Santa, because, after all, memories are priceless and $12.99 for a sweet memory of my kids with the big guy in the red suit, well, that’s not so much. And I will even pay the extra $5.99 for the $0.10 CD with the priceless picture of my kids and their adorable smiles, because $18.98 for a 5×7 and a CD with a really cute picture of MY KIDS WITH SANTA is OK just this once.

The print was cute, their beaming faces displaying all the excitement of having just told Santa their secret wishes for Christmas. And I was so happy to have a CD with that cutest picture ever, which I could use the picture for sharing on our website with all our family and friends. And so, we share with you a very Merry Christmas, from the Southridge Santa and my adorable, sweet, awe-stricken children this kid.

That’d be “Random Anja Thought of the Day” for those of you who couldn’t figure out that easy, easy acronym.

To preface this, we have never talked about the forthcoming subject, never even mentioned the word that I can recall. But today, while at the checkout line at Kohl’s and anxious to just get the heck out of dodge, Anja looks up at me and says,

“Mamma? Why do we have laws?”

The clerk looked at me and said, “That is one random kid.”

Yep, that she is.

Wowza - time is flying, soon we will be too!

That must be the rationale for people still living in Wisconsin, where it gets to such temperatures as “two degrees”. Human beings are touted as being superior in intelligence - you’d think they’d be smart enough to not live in places where it gets into single-digit temperatures.

With the FREAKING FREEZING comes FREAKING DRY. Your hands and face chap, your clothes stick to your body like static cling was fashionable, and your hair, if longer than 4 inches in length, starts doing some weird things.