Timmy's Baptism

We are proud of Timmy for choosing to be baptized this month.

We are so happy that our family joined with us to celebrate.  He felt really special and good about his decision.  We really enjoyed seeing him make this big step and have been happy to see him highlighting his scriptures this week and remembering his day with excitement.

Cool Ice Formations

Took these pictures of the roof of my car Sunday morning on my way to an early morning church meeting.  I guess there are good things that come out of early morning church meetings:)

Beautiful Fall

Park close to the house.  The leaves make the whole area look so beautiful, like an orange carpet wherever you walk.

These were growing right by the bus stop

Louisa May Alcott

So simple:  transcendental

 I love that Henry David Thoroux is just "Henry"

 I told Mike what a fortune this place is making.  His stuff is even better!  

He needs to open a shop in Boston. :)

The North Church

In the booth where Teddy Roosevelt sat when he visited in 1912

 The North Bridge  (Site in Concord at the Start of the Revolutionary War)

Following the Freedom Trail in Boston

"Mom - if you are off the trail you are at WAR!"

Walking to the USS Constitution

Phone Pics

Cora today by Will's Hole by our place:

Aaron eating a crazy-big marshmellow with blue sugar all over it.  My stomach gets sour just thinking about it...

The New Apartment

Our favorite places to play are on the bed and in the closet. :)

 I have been hesitant to take photos, let alone POST photos of our new apartment, because it's been so challenging to get it in order.   We like it a lot, and are happy with everything, but just have too many books, trinkets, memorabilia, photos and pictures to really make it how we want it yet.

But it's close, so I'll give you a tour/update on our current living situation.

Walking in the front door, to the left, you see this hallway towards the children's room.

 The kids sleep here together.

They have a small closet filled to capacity with storage.  

Most of their clothes are in the front hallway so that they can dressed for bed and get ready in the morning without waking the baby.

The kids' bathroom.

 Here's our front door with mondo IKEA shelf om the entry that has all the kids' current seasonal clothing, a drawer for each day of the week + PJs.  Cora just has hers separated shirts, pants, dresses and pjs, because she only gets 4 drawers.  Everyone has a shoe cubby underneath, and up high we have a cubbie for Legos and winter stuff (hats, gloves, scarfs, etc.)

This is the kitchen/dining area with a little section in the back of the kitchen for laundry.

 Moving into the apartment in America was a LOT easier than moving-in in Germany.  Kitchen (complete with cupboards, fridge, oven, range and microwave), lights, carpet, closets, washer and drier.....all included and installed!  So convenient!

 One thing I love is that is so easy to keep up on laundry with the washer and drier by the kitchen.  I used to have to go to the basement in Germany.  Two flights of stairs up and down, and my machines took 3 hours to completely wash and dry ONE small load.

The washer takes only 30 Minutes  (as opposed to the speed cycle on my last machine, 1 hr 20 min)

The drier only takes 45 minutes to an hour.  (My last drier would run 70 Minutes maximum, and the clothes would be wet, and i'd have to start it again and run it another 45 Minutes.)

 Hopefully the photos of living room will be "before" pictures, because I'd really like it to be much more welcoming and simple looking than it does currently.  It's a jumble of stuff that is up out of the way on bookshelves for now, but a complete chaotic mess.

Once I think out the stuff on the bookshelf, it will look nicer, and I may get doors for the white bookshelves too perhaps.  Any other suggestions my decoration experts?

 The Master bedroom

 Just enough room for our King bed and dresser, and to walk around it.  

 The walk-in closet is really nice.  We were so happy to move into this apartment and have closets, shelves, some lights, a kitchen, a washer and drier......such a huge difference to the bare apartments rented in Germany.

And the smaller bathroom (master).

The kids have LOVED having a bathtub.  Cora loves to take a bath, just for fun.

Having two is unnecessary, but nice!

We miss many things about our wonderful apartment in Germany (The garden views, charming old building, high ceilings, large rooms and the best neighbors ever), but we are enjoying some new conveniences as well (easy move-in, appliances readily installed, new washing machine, ground floor living, and bathtubs)

All in all, very happy with our situation, glad that Scott is enjoying work, that the kids LOVE their school and classes, and all the wonderful people we are meeting in the neighborhood, church and community.

Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!   Love, the Stapletons

School Pictures

Timmy - 2nd grade

Aaron - 1st grade

Cora - age 20 Months

School

The boys are loving their school.   Aaron's class has a "tide pool" right in the classroom.  This is one of their sea urchins.  Their teacher sent us this photo, and said you can see that it has 5 teeth!

Last week his class took a field trip to Good Harbor beach.  They were able to collect some creatures in the tide pools to add to theirs in the classroom.

Timmy's 2nd grade class is also fantastic.  They have been drawing pictures and making a huge book with their own illustrations called "Click, clack, moo: Cows that type"

We are grateful that they are loving school so much, and that they have such engaged teachers!
Some of their favorite things are art class with Heidi, music class with Jillian, gym, eating at the cafeteria, 2nd recess "where they can break rocks", and quiet time (where they can do anything quiet that they want....like reading or looking at the tide pool)

The bus has been a challenge lately. Some boys were fighting on the bus one day, and afterward said my boys had egged them on to do it!  Then, one of those boys hurt Aaron while they were playing last week, and Aaron hit him in the face and gave him a bloody nose!

The children met right away with their mommies and established 2 rules themselves
1. they cannot sit next to each other and
2.have to keep their hands to themselves.

Aaron said he "forgot the rule" the next day and hurt someone because he was making fun of Timmy's name.  Timmy said he ignored it, but Aaron felt like he should make him stop.   So....we are working on that this week.  Bus behavior is no joke.  Get 50 kids on a bus and the only adult to supervise is actually driving the bus.....it's a hectic bunch!

At least I know the kid can and will defend himself.

Long-time-a-comin-camping-trip

After over 3 years, I finally got to go camping again!!!!  Friday night we were having dinner at 6, when I said, "Let's go camping."  30 min later we were out, and about an hour later we were in our tent.  Matches were still good (and luckily still in our cooking bag).  Stove still worked, there was still fuel, and there were holes in only 2 out of 3 of the pads. 

We saw some cool beaver ponds and a bunch of broken bridges.  Our little hike turned in to a death-march, Janice Stapleton-style:)

A highlight was definitely the fire.  What boys don't like fire?  None that live at my house!

Whew! What a ride!

The move was a monumental feat.  Now that we are mostly settled, we are starting to breath.

HOW TO MOVE ACROSS THE WORLD (Stapleton style)

We decided to get rid of 95% of our things in Germany, and instead move what we had in Utah to Boston with ABF Pods.  To ship both and visit the family would have doubled the move cost, but this way would allow us to have everything under one roof that we owned and stay within our moving budget, while also getting to see the family.

We decided to take as much time as possible (2 weeks) to visit in Utah before moving out to Massachusetts, because it had been over 3 years since I (Katie) said goodbye to everyone in January 2012, and hadn't been back to the states at all.  Due to interviewing, Scott had had several opportunities to visit home, but it had been a really long time for me.

Lucky for us, we have an awesome family and had many able to make the trip across the world to visit us.  Still anxious to see everyone and be together, we made the trip home.   It was so nice to be together with everyone again!

Once we arrived in MA on a Tuesday, we planned to stay two nights in a hotel, buy a car at a dealership on Wednesday, and then move into our apartment on Thursday.  We planned 10 days to get settled, and then Scott would start working pretty much full-time.

THE GREAT CLEAR OUT:
You might think that shipping 2 %, selling 8%, giving away 90%  of your possessions would be a piece of cake.  It's not.

We were able to sell our kitchen (to the next renters, luckily), car, sofa, computer, TV and a few items of furniture and other household goods (for a screaming deal).  Everything else we gave away. We just needed it gone, but at the right time.  Not too soon, but definitely not too late.   It was very time consuming to sort through, find homes for, organize pick up times for, and generally get the entire apartment empty.

We managed this whole thing only because we started really early and because we had help at the end.  3 months before we left, I was taking paintings off the wall and giving them to people to take home.  Anything we could live without was given away or sold as soon as we could arrange it.  This required us to then sort and par down on whatever was in that cupboard or shelf or drawer that was going every week, a bit at a time.

This proved to be VITAL.   At first, it was annoying to have to empty something, and I would wonder if I should have set the pick up date for a later week.  But, it would end up taking a whole day or evening to have someone pick up a closet or bed or whatever, because we had to break it down, sometimes clean it off, then decide what to do with the bedding, or stuff inside of it.   Starting early didn't really make it easy, it made it possible.   Every time we had a "pick up night" and it took the whole evening, we thought "Man!  I am SO glad we are not moving still for 7 more weeks, because that took WAY more time that I would have thought, and we still have a, b, c, d....

We shipped 12 boxes home to the US for keepsakes, items we just liked or thought were useful. 11 of them arrived. One was lost.  Not bad odds.

Even with the best of preparation, the last couple of weeks were intense, and proved to be impossible without the help of our dear friends. Scott had to work right up until the NIGHT before we flew out!  Baerbel was keeping the kids happy downstairs many afternoons, while I tried to make dinners out of what was left in the cupboards, or get a piece of furniture ready for someone to pick up, etc.

We had such wonderful friends helping us the last few days to make sure we got everything together in time.  Heidi & Achim, Dipanchu, Christa, Baerbel, Mike, Mark, Elizabeth, Svenja, Tina, Steffi, Peter, the young men, & Mari......so many great people helping take our kids for hours and hours, getting stuff out, & wiping out cupboards or floors.  We felt so blessed to have people who would take their time to make our burden lighter.

  

We owe Lucia and Antonio a huge debt for letting us sleep in their home for the last few nights upstairs while they were on vacation.  This was the absolute best arrangement we could have dreamed of!  This allowed us to completely empty the apartment, and clean, stay all together as a family, have our packed suitcases out of the apartment, sleep in a real bed, and leave in the morning without any worries or having to bus/taxi/walk to and from a hotel.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!!  I want to cry when I think of how wonderful that was for us!

THE FLIGHT:
We had a Taxi van pick us up at 5:40 am the morning we left.  We had a teary goodbye with Mike and Baerbel, who met us outside and helped us pack everything in, gave us big hugs and good wishes, and waved handkerchiefs as we pulled out.   We miss them SO much.  They were like substitute parents and grandparents to us these last 3 years.

The flights went very well.  The boys were so entertained by their TV screens that they had no problem sitting still the entire 11 hour flight from Frankfurt to Portland.  We had to remind them to eat and get up to use the restroom every few hours.

Cora slept the first hour, then we played happily for about an hour in our seats.  Then, we were looking at our watches, getting fidgety, and realizing "We have NINE more HOURS on this flight!"  20 month old.  9 more hours.  No more sleeping.  You can imagine.  It was no cake-walk, we'll just say that.

By the second flight, we were all exhausted and slept for the whole 2 hours to SLC.

Janice and Debbie were there to meet us with her Suburban and a car for us to borrow with our 7 large suitcases and 5 carryons and 5 personal items!  Thank you!  Thank you, again!

We headed straight up to the cabin for the Parker Family Reunion, which I will write about in the next post, followed by a week with the Stapletons for Family Reunion #2, which I will also post about.

THE LOADING:
We loaded our storage items into 2 ABF Pods during the first week, and got it shipped off ahead of us, so that it would be there when we got the keys to our apartment.  (Yes, all of our worldly possessions fit into 2 5x7x8  containers.)

HUGE thank you to everyone who helped us load the PODS: Kyle, Kent, Dad, Scott, Wes & Megan, and Mike Kunkel.  We were lucky to have such strong movers - seriously.  SO kind to take the time to help us and to come say hello.  We appreciated it SO much! and it was SO nice to see you all.

And thank you to our generous family for donating us a kitchen table, bunkbeds, bookshelf, toys, clothing, an Amoire, a stroller, crib, carseat, and other useful items!  You are the BEST!

AND thanks to Mom, Mel, & Christa for watching our kids, and Nancy, Brooklyn and Jack-Jack for waiting while their dad helped pack our Pod like a Tetrix game.  He was good!

ARRIVING IN MASS:
Papa Stapleton drove us EARLY to the SL Airport (Thank you for that!), and we had great flights over to Manchester, NH.

Everything happened as planned, except that it took us 6 days to decide on a car, so we had to extend our car rental.  We also realized I needed a car for sure, and 5 days later picked up a mini-van.    That felt like a really big choice, but we are happy with our choices of a 2011 Honda Fit for Scott and a 2008 Honda Odyssey for the family.   We had a budget to get 2 cars for under $20,000.   Scott's car was $10,800, and the Odyssey was 6500 + 2500 for repairs = $19,800.   It took some work, but worked out well.

Burgundy Odyssey on the left is ours.

We had 8 Elders(men) and one young man come from our new LDS Congregation and help us move our POD items into the apartment the evening we got our apartment keys.  They got the beds put up, and everything from the PODS into the apartment.  It was excellent!   We appreciated their sacrifice so much to help us, and also that they would come and meet us, which helped us right away get to know each of them and feel a part of a new "ward family."   We found out that there were 3 families who moved in the same weekend, so we were even more amazed to have so many come and help!

That was all 44 days ago.   Basically, ever since then, we have dedicated every spare moment to getting the apartment and our lives in order. We're almost there.   The "survival mode" is starting to subside.

 We feel so blessed to have so many wonderful people in our lives who have helped us make this big "jump across the pond."