Migrating

We are here! More about ‘here’ later. This post is about the trip itself – of which I’m so relieved to be on the other side of.  The travelers included myself, the three children and my mom and dad. There were a handful of tender mercies that made everything work out in the end and helped me feel like our Heavenly Father is mindful of us.

The morning of the 20th was extremely busy. It is hard to ever be truly completely packed when there are four people still trying to wear the clothes that need to be put in the suitcases.  Since naked travel is generally frowned upon, I was washing clothes and repacking up until the day of departure when 4 pairs of unwashed underwear was shoved, without ceremony, into outside pockets of suitcases. When the suitcases were finally packed and loaded into the car and everyone had found a seat, my dad asked me for the car keys. The keys! I knew I had had them last, but I had no idea where they were. On the way inside, I said a quick prayer and then immediately thought to look on my mom’s sewing desks. I was back to the car in under a minute, having found the keys under a pile of fallen fabric behind the sewing machine. First tender mercy of the day.

Our total number of bags for this trip was 15. 3 checked bags (15kg), 2 large carry-on, 1 guitar, 3 child-size suitcases and 6 personal items (backpacks and purses). Within seconds of leaving the car at the Salt Lake Airport, one of the child suitcases broke and couldn’t be rolled for the rest of the trip. My in-laws came see us off which was really nice.

In the cockpit with captain Dave

Checking bags and going through security in Salt Lake was painless and the first flight went off without a hitch. Nana had given my little 5 year old a pilot uniform and hat which he wore at the airport and on the plane. The pilot invited the kids into the cockpit and they got to sit in his chair.

A weird beaver statue in Canada

Vancouver Airport was great. It was very organized. It was comfortable. We had lunch we waited for our plane and got some rest while the kids played in the handy play area. Then, we were off again.

Playing Pirates in Vancouver

Pretending to chess in Vancouver

During the 9 hour flight to Manchester, our recently potty trained 3rd child had no accidents at all. There were no fits or fights,  everyone got at least a couple hours of sleep and when we landed and were asked to donate all of our spare change to Canadian children.

I refuse to stand in line… I will only wiggle!

I’m sure Manchester is a very nice place, but to me it will always be the home of 4 hot humid headachey horendous hours. Heat and long cues made for tantrums and fights and with no ramp to our last plane, I carried a sleeping toddler and 40lbs of luggage down 4 flights of stairs, onto the tarmac and up to a very narrow very full plane. The last two hours in the air were half dozing half urging children to follow suit.

I’ve forgotten how to smile mother… Is this it?

Berlin on the other hand might be the most beautiful city in the world because that is where I saw Ross again. Once we found each other I felt complete and happy and (in a purely practical note) less heavy laden.

It’s better when we’re together

We walked from the airport to the train station in the time you would expect 4 tired adults and 3 TIRED children to walk to a train station. Our train was full of exceedingly quiet German business people…and one loud American family. The bus we caught when we arrived was full of quiet Braunschweig locals…and one loud American family.

We walked the last 3 blocks (were honked at for walking in the bike lane) up a flight of stairs, and finally arrived at our new home in Braunschweig, Germany.

Goodbye

It is the night before the move and I feel like we are about to step off a cliff and hope for water at the bottom. The last few days have been so emotional for me. It has been a year full of family and friends and familiar places and now we are leaving it behind. 

I am thrilled to go on this adventure with my best friend and my sweet babies! I can’t really imagine what is in store but its going to be amazing. I’m excited to see new things and experience the world in a new way. But I’m still scared. 

I hope that most of my future posts will be full of optimism but tonight I feel like I need to spend a minute being sad for what we will miss. 

Mom hugs and dad talks. 

Games with good friends. 

Watching the kids play with their cousins. 

Kitchen conversations with women I love. 

Familiar mountains. 

Music classes. 

Friendly conversations with strangers in English. 

Popu’s scripture stories. 

Warm dinner rolls made just so. 

Sisters. 

High school plays. 

Conversations with my mom. Real conversations with touch and look and body language and sometimes tears and hugs at the end. 

Fathers blessings. 

Reading along in church and understanding what is being said. 

Knowing my children are confident and happy.

Recent goodbyes have left me feeling the loss of what we are leaving and I am forever grateful for the time we had in Utah (and before that in Indiana). It has been a remarkable year with wonderful people; one that I will not soon forget. 

What to Keep?

Our game plan to move back to Utah at the beginning of May is well underway. Because we are hoping to move overseas next year, this seems like the perfect time to downsize in a dramatic way. We are selling or donating all of our furniture, many personal items, clothes, lots of books, kitchen items, picture frames, bathroom items, home decorations, and so on. We are digitizing our letters, pictures, yearbooks, financial papers, medical records, and yearbooks and then tossing the originals. We are backing all of this up on an external hard drive and on the cloud.

Sometimes it is easy to focus on the things we are giving up, but what are we keeping? Which items are so important that we feel compelled to make room for them?

Yesterday, the whole family got into the spirit of things and we filled 5 suitcases with the bare minimum. We figured that 5 suitcases are about as much space as we’ll have in a minivan. Here’s what we chose:

Vital Information. Birth certificates, passports, immunization records, social security cards, and other vital documents are currently in a safe, but before we move we will put them in something more portable.

Clothes. We have already picked our closets clean and we only own clothes that we wear often. Ross and I each have a suitcase and we were pleased to find that the entire contents of our wardrobes including accessories and shoes fit into one suitcase with room to spare. The children’s clothes all fit into one suitcase.

Memorabilia. We included a few items that hold sentimental value.

• Baby blessing outfits
• The first outfits we brought our children home in as infants
• A bit of hair from their first haircuts
• My young women medallion
• Ross’s baptism bag
• Our diplomas
• A book written for us by a mutual friend
• A couple of paintings I did in high school
• A commemorative plate from Ross’s mission
• A conductors baton made by Ross’s grandpa
• The shirt I wore when Ross proposed, and the ring box.
• A cross stitch made for me by my mom

All of that fits into a small cardboard box that takes up half a suitcase.

Books. We each included a few books that are very meaningful to us.

• The Book of Mormon
• The Bible
• Moby Dick
• Three Cormac Mcarthy books
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Several children’s books

This was pretty difficult! We have lots of books that we love. We chose books that have sentimental value. Many of our other books are available in ebook form and eventually we will invest in a kindle and rebuild our library digitally.

Christmas. Holiday items may not seem like a big deal with this type of downsizing, but with three small children we both felt the need for some continuity with our family traditions. We got rid of our Christmas tree, stockings, lights, garlands, bows, and wrapping paper, but we kept some of the most special parts of Christmas.

We are keeping our Christmas tree ornaments. Ross’s grandma sent Ross a new ornament every year until he was 18, and now his mom sends our kids a new ornament each year as well. It is a great tradition! We just had to keep all of those special ornaments! My favorite ornament is the Christmas corsage that I wore in my high school choir and we kept that as well. We also have a lovely hand crocheted angel tree topper from Ross’s aunt.

We are keeping our Nativity hats. This year, we created several fleece animal hats including donkeys, sheep, goats and cows. We also have gold garland halos for the angels. We want to keep these for each year’s nativity scene.

Kitchen. We will try to fit our cast iron skillet and our Bosch mixer.

Decor. Although we are getting rid of all of our picture frames, we are keeping all of the photographs and cuttings.

Personal Items. Ross will take his cologne, cuff links and a few other small items. I will take my favorite pieces of jewelry, a small makeup bag (cleanser, moisturizer, powder, mascara), thermal spray, and my straightener. We will take my cutting scalpel, our phones and chargers, and our external hard drive. We will also take our baseball mits and a ball.

Toys. Each of our kids has a very small backpack. They can choose whatever they want that will fit in their backpack. We will take out the stuffing of all any stuffed animals they want to take and then re-stuff them in Utah.

There you have it! That is what we are planning on taking to Utah with us. Some of it is more important than others, but I think we’ve narrowed all of our belongings down to a reasonable level. With this amount of things we can move freely about the country and our journey overseas will be much simpler. Whatever we aren’t bringing we will either replace when we get there, or learn to live without.