…phew!
That’s all I can say about the past five days. After a fairly seamless flight from Victoria to Basel (16 hours later), it’s been a crazy time-warped adventure with frequent middle-of-the-night cartoons/snacking followed by somewhat groggy daytime trips through the beautiful city of Basel.
The pictures of our home didn’t really do it justice and I was blown away when I walked through for the first time. The place was bright, spotless, and already decked out with plants, some furniture/decor and all of the essentials. From the windex to the boys’ bathroom stepping stool, Tim didn’t forget a thing! I seriously had to wipe a tear when I walked outside to find a beautiful large deck off the master bedroom and then saw the flowers on the kitchen counter. What a guy. And after spending two hours in my own personal hell yesterday (aka IKEA), I am now even more thankful for all his hard work in getting the home ready for our arrival.
It will certainly take some time to replace all the furniture and decor we sold back in Canada but for now, we’re living with the basics and will slowly find pieces we like to add to our big open spaces! As I type this, the boys are watching The Last Unicorn in German while lounging on our only piece of furniture in the livingroom — a queen-sized mattress! I still find it amusing that the boys want to watch movies in German. It started with the movie Cars, one of their all-time faves. Our friends Martin and Anne (who lent us the TV and DVD player…oh, and the mattress) hooked us up with a few kids movies, one of them Disney’s Cars. It has three language options in the first menu and I was selecting English when Jack asked me to pick “the down part” (as in the German one at the bottom…yeah apparently we still need to learn some English, too). So I did…and waited for one of them to say something but they didn’t! The next day, Tim came over as they were both glued to the movie and asked them if they understood anything…”nope!”. Alright then! Let the immersion begin!
There is so much I want to comment on that I think I need to start carrying my writing journal! Or a voice recorder. Wait! I have an iPhone! Oh blessed iPhone, how I love you. Especially when you tell me how to get home. Or when you help me translate the gibberish on the washer and dryer so that I don’t have sopping wet clothes after every wash cycle (note to self: “ohne schleudern” = “without spin”). Too bad I didn’t think of using you on my first solo grocery outing as I stood there perplexed by the myriad of cooking oils, desperately trying to find the sesame oil. I am going to blame the fact that I came home with sunflower oil (complete with pictures of sunflower seeds on the label) on the jet-lag. Yes, definitely the jet-lag.
So after an extended weekend with us, Tim returned to work this afternoon and it feels like we’re settling into a bit more of “normal” now. I spent the afternoon cleaning, put a chicken stock on the stove, and am about to hit the bakery and grocery store for tonight’s dinner ingredients…like a real little housewife!
Of course, that’s after I search the internet for recipes that use an abundance of sunflower oil.
