Shamrock Pizzas

The Little Women went on a shamrock treasure hunt, following arrows to a special prize:  Finger Puppets!

Our apartment was only finished about two weeks ago, but there are three other buildings still under construction.  This includes our back “yard”.  It has been engaging to say the least for the Misses – and their Mom.  We think the construction workers must have finally gotten used to an audience; we know they can see us watching the action regularly.  It is kind of entertaining watching them act like they’re not seeing us.  The Misses operate under no such pretense – they are happy to gaze appreciatively at the show.

Our perspective on what is expensive has dramatically shifted since moving here as we feel extremely blessed to have found a NEW four-bedroom apartment so quickly (a few months back) and reasonably priced (OK, it costs more than twice our mortgage back home and is smaller square-footage-wise, but for what we have, it is very reasonable!).  Included is a storage room down in the cellar, along with a community bike/stroller room and a parking garage (parking is extra – about as much as a downtown Portland monthly parking pass, but who’s comparing?).  A very nice shopping center is about a 10 minute walk from us and cows in pasture – about two minutes.  And that good ol’ pasture scent?  Right in your own back yard (or house if you open the windows – they don’t show that in the postcards).  Mountains?  Just start walking past the cows and up you go.  Church is only about a 20 minute drive, which is pretty sweet considering some members drive an hour to be there for 9 am church.

And speaking of church, you can have sacrament meeting translated through some headphones you wear if you want to, as there are a number of expats (expatriates) in the ward who are English speaking.  Jenelle was able to attend about 15 minutes of Relief Society on Sunday (a first since May) and even figured out, on her own with no help, that the lesson was on repentance and that they were talking about the steps of repentance.  She was pretty proud of herself to say the least.  She is giving a talk in sacrament meeting in a week and a half.

We are slowly getting our home put together.  We found some sweet deals on used furniture from other expats returning to the States.  As with a lot of good deals, we paid for the savings in the enormous amount of time to find and get said deals from Zurich (an hour drive away) to our apartment.  This involved renting a van from a car rental company (this was no $24.95 + mileage, and for a much smaller van) and making several trips back and forth.  Now we are in process of putting furniture together and securing it to our cement walls (we have adventurous children).

• making a decision about each of your worldly possessions so that you can divide them into four piles (stuff to bring with you on the airplane, stuff to ship with the movers, stuff to place in storage, and stuff to discard);
• traveling to Switzerland a few months before the move to look at apartments (and actually being blessed to find one to live in);
• finding and hiring a mover to pack up your “for shipping” things (after you’ve inventoried them for insurance purposes);
• finding renters and hiring a management company for your new rental property (i.e., your former home) while you’re gone;
• making all of the minor repairs to your house that you’ve been putting off for years;
• buying all of the things from home that you don’t think you’ll find in Switzerland (at least not at a reasonable price), including several years’ worth of kids clothes and activities;
• obtaining or renewing passports;
• obtaining visas for each family member;
• talking a relative into coming with you to help watch the kids for the first two weeks in Switzerland (not as fun as it sounds, really);
• selling or giving away your cars in the US;
• determining how much storage space you need, finding a storage unit and then moving things into storage;
• arriving at the airport with 12 pieces of checked luggage (plus four bicycles) and a questionable number of carry-ons;
• flying for 13 hours from Portland to Amsterdam to Zurich (possibly discovering, a few hours into the trip, that you have only three diapers in your carry-on luggage);
• spending four nights in an airport hotel in Zurich recovering from the flight;
• enduring un-synchronized sleeping schedules of three children while they spend a week overcoming jet lag;
• spending a month in a vacation apartment in a small Swiss town;
• registering with the government;
• opening a bank account in Switzerland and learning how to transfer funds into it from your US account;
• arranging for a wide array of insurances;
• learning your way around town so you can carry out your daily activities;
• renting four different vehicles in Switzerland over a month to move your family and their stuff around the country;
• buying a car in Switzerland;
• shopping for furniture;
• moving into your permanent apartment (still working on that one);
• carting three kids in a stroller thru a small town while attempting to understand a dialect that many native German speakers consider incomprehensible;
• finding a German class;
• other details, big and small, that Jonathan won’t bore you with.

Jonathan and Jenelle are grateful that they didn’t have to do all of these things by themselves.  They would like to thank, among others: Jenelle’s sister, Lisa, for coming along; the Gibby family, for watching the kids, loaning the Vances their cars (yes, both of them), bringing luggage to the airport, and doing so many things that Jenelle and Jonathan didn’t have time for; Jenelle’s parents for helping with packing and preparing the house; Jonathan’s parents for watching the babies during the house-hunting trip; Tricia Batchlor for watching the kids; the Carroll family for food, transportation and a shoulder to cry on; Lisa Stott for watching the kids and being the other shoulder to cry on; Rachel Gunther and Lisa Poulsen for watching the kids; the good men of the Quatama Ward for moving stuff into storage; thoughtful neighbors for watching the house during the house-hunting trip; the German-American School of Portland for giving Jenelle a head start; Schindler Elevator for its generous support; Welcome Relocation for house-hunting and bureaucracy-navigation help; and countless others who have kept the Vances in their prayers and wished them well.

Being an accountant, Jenelle determined a monetary storage cost for each item that she scrutinized.  If the storage cost exceeded the item’s value (cost_storage > value_item, for those of you who think like that), it was off to the garbage bin, recycle bin, or the Goodwill.  Let’s say that Jenelle kept those three destinations very busy.

After many weeks of work, the result: the house looks like it’s been expanded (or robbed).

Now that the “guest bedroom” is set to become the “twins’ bedroom,” Jenelle has decided that red-orange is not a suitable wall color for little girls.  So, with the help of some generous friends, the room now sports three pale yellow walls and a lavender “accent wall.”

Hopefully this will keep our little girls from becoming agressive.

So, that probably means the house is the gingerbread equivalent of manufactured housing.  You can see more photos here.