A Crazy Two Months

These last two months have been insane. All things seemed to converge at once. Just as one thing was starting to settle such as the paperwork for our new house (coordinating deposits, payments to the Rental Agent Company, getting registered with the city, etc.), the paperwork and documents for our new car ramped up it's intensity. As these storm began to ebb slightly a three week ordeal with port authorities in the Netherlands began, which is an entire story unto itself. I will only mention here that authorities searched our goods for about 7 hours and only by the grace of God did they stop searching and release our goods with no duties and in time for our move-in date. The authorities found some new clothes for Ian and some boxes of "unopened" cereal at about 4 hours in and decided to continue the search on another day.

This hectic time was naturally followed by moving in. Moving in is always a bit insane and after the third or fourth day of way too many boxes you always want to pull your hair out. For us, this normal mess was further complicated by three items: 1) the long time between packing our goods (May, June) and our move in date --> November 30th, 2) my work schedule which went from about 9 hours away from home to about 11 or 12 hours away from home just after our move-in, and 3) Christmas.

Christmas deserves an explanation. I love Christmas, but with the other two items, having three different Christmas parties for the kids on three different days, a congregation Christmas party on a fourth day, along with all of the usual preparations around the house, I felt like a bit of a scrooge. All events were amazing, but since I generally just wanted to fall over and even missed two of the kids Christmas parties due to work, it seemed only to add to the stress for me.

This brings me to my main point of this entry. I don't think we would have made it as a family if it weren't for our little Ian. You might think that a baby would add so much stress to the move that it would have been unbearable, but just the opposite was the case with Ian. When everything else was falling apart there was Ian needing some cereal in a bottle or needing to feed from mom. Those quiet moments brought a peace that we couldn't find all around us and brought us back to the core of why we are here on earth at all - to care for each other.

On top of that blessing, Ian is an amazingly happy child. He is always glad to see people. The nice moms and Grandmothers in our congregation who naturally say Hi to babies including Ian each Sunday, always stay and talk to Ian because he is so friendly. He lights up and smiles almost every time someone talks to him. He has done the same for our other children and for us. Everyone enjoys taking care of Ian. It is relaxing and enjoyable to be around him. Naturally he cries when he is hungry or uncomfortable, and the nursing is very hard on Tamara, but on the whole he has been a huge blessing during this move.

I will keep this short and wish all a happy new year. Thank you for your support and prayers.

For more details regarding the day to day events of our lives here in Germany, i.e., the real story, please check out Tamara's Blog. She has some great stuff, including photos, posted at this site: http://tamaraingermany.blogspot.com/