A Season of Whirlwind

I will now define a whirlwind in four words: The. Past. Three. Months.

“You kidding me??” To borrow a phrase from Hannah. No, no.. definitely not kidding.

I don’t think I could adequately describe why. Nor do I think I should try. But, I can say in all my thirty-one years (yes, yes, there are wrinkles) I cannot recall another time where I have prayed harder, cried more, slept less, ran a never-ending marathon on empty, felt more @#%!, or came completely and undoubtedly unglued. However, sun is shining, people, life is beginning to settle.

And here’s the kicker: settle where?

In the beautiful island of Sakhalin, in eastern Russia!

Yep! We are now living across the world in Russia. Many of you (oh you sweet few readers, you! Hello again! I promise not to leave you again. Really.) know Jake has been rotating over here with his job (drilling engineer) for about a year and a half. That is behind us I am GLAD to say shout. We are now one big happy family that welcomes Daddy home every night with big open arms and yelps of glee.

The preparations for this move were pretty intense, and that’s putting it lightly.  We were staying in Utah with family and the to-do-and-organize list and to-stock-up-on list and to-pack-in-certain-piles list felt endless.  I discovered how very much addicted I am to shopping on Amazon.com and oh how very much I would miss it…. Sigh. And what would you stock up on if you didn’t have a Walmart around the corner? (Oh you small-towners-without-a-Walmart I’m so impressed with you! I’m such a spoiled city girl!)

The plan would be to fly out of Texas. The company would slow-boat a 20 foot container via the ocean of all our stuff in addition to a quicker air shipment of more immediate needs.  We went from Utah to spending the holidays with Jake’s family in Colorado. More unpacking/packing things a few times from one place to another… Then it was off to Texas. Jake and his incredible helpful Dad drove down with the dogs (our dog and a friend puppy we were helping to transport) while I got to fly down with the kids. YAY for us, I know. I told you I was spoiled!!

Texas was full of fun (sarcasm times a thousand) going through more of our things we had left in storage. More piles. More packing. Or unpacking to just pack again. Have you ever wanted to inventory all your belongings? Like every single itty bity piece of paper down to the color and type of every single pair of sock? No? Well, geez I don’t know why not. It was a BLAST. No small task, honestly, I can hardly describe my gratitude to those awesome blessed people who helped us out!!!

Here’s Hannah at the storage unit, the only moment I captured. No shoes, but AT LEAST she has a coat on! So, just imagine lots of boxes and chaos filling up the hallway.

It was lovely to see Houston again–mainly the incredible friends we have there and SWEETEST people ever we stayed with who are like family.  But it felt like one thing after another kept slapping us in the face. We couldn’t escape some wretched theme song with a title like “It’s going to get worse just you wait”.

One last straw was Eli and a fever of 104 degrees the night before we were to fly out. With his history of UTIs, I was pushing for a urine sample (catheter) but that meant going to the ER. So off we went at 8pm and waited for 6 hours to be seen and another 2 hrs before we left.  This being my first ER experience, I have to say we didn’t get along very well. Guess what? We didn’t fly out the next day.

It was a UTI, or so they thought. So we treated it as such and flew out 6 days later. And he was fine. A few days on medicine, his fever was gone.  (Turns out it was not a UTI after all?? Which is great news, actually. Just a bit of a mystery.)

So, onto Russia! It was such a relief to finally make it to the airport and onto our adventure! We were allowed 3 bags/person and Eli had a ticket (hallelujah!!) so that equals 12 pieces, my friends. Twelve. Plus a stroller. Two car seats. And a bike. It was a sight, I tell you what!

This is what we think of first class (below)! AWESOME possum, baby! Super nice. (Sorry some of these pix have turned out fuzzy..) I was dreading that lengthy 14 hr flight to Tokyo (plus 3 hrs onto Sakhalin), but it was not all that bad.  I didn’t even use my whole bag of tricks. Eli needed them more than Hannah. Since his middle name is wigglemeister, I was overjoyed he had some floor space to get down and wiggle.

When we arrived in Sakhalin it was night. Blessed sleep, oh blessed sleep! Why do children not want you? Jet lag was something I was not quite prepared for. We were all exhausted, so of course the kids would just bounce right into a nice sleepy routine, right? Wrong. Poor Hannah, who will one probably be really mad I captured her very sad face at 3am in the morning. Ah well. The house we will be living in is not quite ready yet, so this was taken at the hotel we are staying at instead. I’m sorry, neighbors, I really am. I’m doing my best to keep these noisemakers calm and quiet. Can’t complain about no laundry and free breakfast, but everyone is grateful the challenging 2 & 3am mornings are a thing of the past. It took about a week and they were more in a schedule.

Snow is pretty abundant around these parts ya know, and we have had some fun breaking in our warm boots and snow suits! But don’t you just have to giggle at this cute Mr. Marshmallow below??

I could hardly get her to stop digging in the snow or eating it. She was in snow heaven.

Picture credit below: Hannah Jo photography
Such tired kiddos. He stayed alseep through the whole process of getting changed into jammies! And this little sweetie kept falling asleep in her car seat, on the way to church and then again on the way home. So we just left her there. An hour later she finally pulled herself out of such cumfy accommodations!SO, actually, if you are still with me on this essay-post…. Guess what. We got to take a break from the hotel!! Jake’s AMAZING coworker let us stay in his place while he and his wife were away. OH MY GOSH could I have just kissed them right then and there. It was such a reprieve and lovely to have a bit more leg room, to say the least. This is the view from the front door. Little people are so cute all bundled up in coats, aren’t they? Even though they scream and fight every second of putting them on. Well, at least mine do. It’s just horrible I want to keep them warm, I guess. 

Welcome to Olympia, the compound community for employees & families here. It is definitely a beautiful place and the people here are incredible. The homes/duplexes are great and the trees all around are just gorgeous. We have met many of the families here already, and everyone is super nice. It brings tears to my eyes the kindness they are willing to pour out to complete strangers!  They have truly made this adjustment so much easier.

There you go! Here is our new home! Hello Russia! We’re here! Whew. We are all in one piece and alive. It’s amazing! Now, other than making it to a few stores to pick up groceries and necessities (which is a feat all by itself I’ll tell you about later)), we haven’t done much sight seeing. Hopefully do more of that when things continue to settle, so stay tuned!

Ps, Not that it really makes sense to anyone, but the house on the left (and the left SIDE you see of the house/duplex) is where we will be in a few weeks! WOOOOT! Can hardly wait!Ta ta!