The Truck Arrives!

I am obviously playing a little bit of "catch up." :)  Thanks for hanging in there with me!  It feels like this has been a pretty long transition getting settled, and there hardly seems to be any energy left at the end of the day to write!!  But I know many of you want to know the details of our journey (and I'm so thankful for that!)... so, I don't want to skip some of these posts. :)


The day finally arrived for the truck to come and deliver our things!!!!  SUCH anticipation leading up to this particular day! :)

The truck backed in with just enough space on either side for us to slide through.

One of the FIRST things off the truck were the kids' bikes!  They were SO excited.  Thankfully, the air pump came off right with them, so Wes was able to get air pressure into the low tires... and they were off!

It was like Christmas all over again! Oh, and I have to mention... since you can see it in this pic... the wind was SO strong that day.  We had trouble keeping the doors to the truck open.  Sometimes the guys had trouble getting things into the house because of the strength of the wind. I stood by the truck as they unloaded, directing where everything went, and I had to wear a hood all day because my ears were hurting from the wind!!  It was crazy... like nothing we had ever seen before.  No storm coming.  No rain.  Just sunshine and GUSTS of knock-down-blustery wind!

I just had to get another pic of the Sea from our street... I think even to this day, it still takes us by surprise that we live so close to such breath-taking beauty.

So the long-awaited unloading began!

This boy is SUCH an incredible helper.  He is much happier helping than playing a video game.  He amazes me sometimes.

They closed up the truck for lunch, and we all took a break.

We, of course, went to our all-time "favorite" place. HA!  We were SO tired of junk food by this point!

Putting the boys' beds together!

Even as I was packing our stuff up 8 months prior, I was anticipating this particular day.  We've moved so many times in our lives that I've learned a few things along the way... mostly from my Mom! ;)  I had packed several boxes with our "first night" in mind.  They were all marked and whenever one showed up, they were all stacked in a corner in my bedroom, so I knew where they would be.

We had no other place to stay that night, so we had told the men from the start that beds were a priority before they left.  Our move was scheduled for 2 days... one for unloading and one for setting up.  Most of our furniture is from Ikea, and they took just about everything apart when they packed it up.  We were so thankful to know that part of the moving package was "assembly." :)  So, from the moment the guys arrived, we were talking about finding and assembling beds before they left, just so they knew how to gauge their time.  Well, it didn't work so well.  They unloaded everything and wanted to leave.  It was only around 5pm (and I say "only" because this IS Spain, where the "afternoon" goes until 8:30 or 9pm!)  Wes decided he would tackle the older boys' bunk beds, and it must have inspired the men (or 'guilted' them, I'm not sure...) into putting the others together.  So we were thankful to have beds our first night!! :)

Jonathan and Carolina share a room.

Then it was time for our "First Night" boxes!  (Thanks, Mom, for teaching me that!  It saved us a WHOLE lot of work!!) Those several boxes held pillows, sheets, blankets and towels... and thankfully, the guys did what I asked and left them all accessible!!!

Before I could even make beds, Carolina was asleep on hers!  ha!  It was quite an exciting day for her, I guess. :)

We went out to eat for dinner again, and made plans with the guys to come back and put everything together the next day.  Then we all crawled into bed for our first night in our new house.  Boxes everywhere, nothing in order... but we all slept soundly in our "own" beds for the first time in about 8 months!  Every single one of us commented on how good it felt.  The kids probably slept on air mattresses for most of those months, so this was a GREAT night! ;)

Getting ready... and waiting some more

Well, we got all the painting and cleaning done, but our belongings didn't arrive from storage before my mom had to to leave to go home.  We were SO sad.  But, at least I had her help with some of it!  I don't know how we would've gone an looked at all those apartments if she hadn't been able to stay with the kids... and we got to spend lots of time with her!!  Thanks, Mom! We miss you! :)

The kids spent lots of time playing their Kindles or watching movies while we cleaned and got the house ready.

During our first several weeks, we stayed in a small apartment.  We actually found our house by our 4th day here, but then we had the hold up from the negotiations of the contract.  And then... it usually only takes several days to a week to get our stuff from storage and delivered to the new house; but for some reason, it took 2 weeks for our things to arrive. Not only did Mom not get to help us get settled in, but we also had to find another apartment to rent; because the one we had been in, was rented for the last 2 days of our wait.

On top of that, we had the stomach flu go through the house during those last several days.  It started with Weston and Nathan and then I got it.  We thought we were going to be well enough to all be able to take my mom the 3 hours to Madrid and drop her off at the airport. But the night before, Carolina got sick.  So... Wes and Weston took mom to the airport and the three younger ones and I trudged down the street with all our belongings to the new apartment.  Poor Carolina.  She was so miserable.  But, we made it, and the kids got to relax all day... although, we were sad not have been able to see "Grandmommy" off at the airport.

The picture below was taken from the 2nd apartment we stayed in; but from here, you can see the building that our first apartment was in.  We are looking directly at it.  It's the brownish orange brick pretty much in the center of the pic.  Off the the right, on the horizon, is the Mediterranean Sea.

The morning after we changed apartments, we woke up to a marathon being run right outside our windows!  It was a really amazing sight!

This was the living room/kitchen of the new apartment.  Good thing those kiddos are still small!

3 in the pull out sofa bed!

When we arrived in Madrid at the beginning of our trip, we left half of our luggage in Madrid with some friends, because we couldn't fit it all in our vehicle.  So, when Wes took Mom back to the airport to go home, he picked up the rest of our luggage.

We had been without this stuff for about a month, and we were wondering if everything had made it ok on the flight.  Carolina had gotten a large Little People castle from my parents for Christmas, and Wes carefully took it apart and we put in in here!  Praise the Lord, it made it ok! (along with my Mint M&M's and our chocolate chips!)