Wilkommen Switzerland!!

So we can't believe we are finally here (see photo of our new doorbell)! After all the months of discussion and planning, we finally arrived here in Switzerland on April 6th. The weeks leading up to getting here were quite an adventure:


First, there was closing out the remodel on our house. Everything came down to the wire (funny how it works that way) with the final work both on the driveway (one contrator) and the interior finishing (another contractor) and refurbishing the pool (another contractor) all wrapping up in the last two weeks of our stay in California. Eric had a triple digit punch list that required daily management - at times hour by hour agendas to coordinate between people getting into the house, pick ups of various items - let's just say there was a lot to do those last two weeks just to get the house ready just to leave it.


Second, were all the festivities. Wolfe our neighbor actually characterized the last few weeks as feeling like the Christmas season - so many get togethers with friends! First, we had a going away party thrown by close friends; then Sue's brother and his clan came to visit; then there was the going-away party we threw, complete with taco truck for 140 of our closest friends; then three days later we had 20 or so people drop in for Eric's 50th birthday; then a going away dinner with the neighbors, and let's not forget Easter dinner with the Grams and Pardellas. And all of that does not include additional going away parties from the kid's friends (who will forget St. Patrick's day at Skunk Hollow with 800 gold coins hidden for the kids to find!), the kid's teachers, Sue's work... it was an amazing time to connect with friends and realize how lucky we are to have such great people in our life. A few special Thank You shouts:

- Thank you Rene and Sarah for the great going away dinner - complete with Switerland quiz!

- Thank you Jenny and Jamie for the suprise party and treasure hunt!

- Thank you Dana for the Rick Steve's book and protecting some treasures that we didn't want to move!

- Thank you Tom and Anke for feeding us our last three nights, taking the kids for a sleepover, and baby-sitting the cacti - we so appreciate all your support!



So the excitement really started on March 29th, when a random question from another coworker moving to Switzerland started a crisis: "How long will it take at the Consulate to process my visa?" What visit to the consulate? We didn't have a plan to spend time there -no one told us we had to do anything!! Logic would assume we knew this, but we had been told in December that we didn't need to do anything else. So balls were dropped, and we had to crash our schedules to get to the consulate, and through some amazing string pulling we got our visas in our passports by April 1st.

That was the day when the movers came to take everything away. We mean everything. Quick as a flash, two days later, all was gone, and we finally had the feeling that this was real, and there was no going back. We spent three nights at the Marin Suites (quite nice, actually) and tried to fit in all the last minute things: buy new school supplies for the kids (as much as is available in the US), clean the property of all final trash, install curtain rods (did not all get done), and get the kids haircuts (that didn't happen).

So our flight on Monday night was smooth as silk - and the kids must have slept at least 9 of the 11 1/2 hours (I guess when you are so small in that business class seat it really does feel like your bed at home!). We did get questioned at customs due to our cardboard boxes for luggage (any motor parts in there? anything purchased in the last 6 months?) - once we explained that we were moving here, the smiles started and all was good. Our arrival had the small hickup of no one there to pick us up, but one quick phone call remedied that, so we got to our temporary apartment in fine shape. We will be here until July when our permanent residence in Basel is available.

So Week 1 has been fine - sleeping is not so good but getting better (what fun to be up from 2 am to 5 am with Bennett who refuses to sleep and is asking questions like: why is life so long? how do you know if someone wants to be cremated or buried [and when he asked me what I want and I said cremated he started crying so I had to take it back]?), and food shopping is really expensive. But for the most part things have been really smooth - let's see what Week 2 brings as school starts for the boys...