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Head Above Water

When you get a sunny day in a Pacific Northwest Fall, you drop everything, go play outside and laugh at your good fortune!

 We moved into Canada just under a month ago, and I still have the residual feeling of anxiety over what still needs to happen within our family to fully be "here". I haven't blogged nearly at all in that time (boxes were priority, spending time with friends, and our laptop crashing were a few of the reasons) and I realized although I was thinking about blog posts, I wasn't actually writing them.

Ahem.

We just had a three-day weekend to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving and it was so needed. Just that one extra day made a lot of difference. I unpacked the rest of the boxes while Stefan and the kids went out exploring in the canoe, caught up on some of my TV addictions (Nashville, New Girl), and just felt like I had a few hours to catch up and get my head screwed back on straight, or what my grandpa might have said, 'slowed down those BBs in the boxcar'. That is a pretty accurate description of how my brain has felt this past month.

We still have a lot of work to do. Moving one's lives internationally has been a bit more of a hassle than I thought. The banking here is about 10 years slower than I'm used to. Our car situation is like a Seinfeld episode (more on that in another post). We have so many different governmental applications to still fill out (6, to be exact) in the  next two weeks. Along with adjusting to a new home school system (it's brilliant, that's a total bonus) and keeping up with the kids' schoolwork, our families, and our bills, and timelines for everything from license plates to American bills due, the lungs have been filling up quick if you get what I'm saying!

But. Today, after a 24 hour downpour, the sun came out, the clouds parted, and it was a gorgeous fall day. We went to the library, found a nearby and new-to-us jungle gym park, and went outside to de-stress and just enjoy the day. I'm slowly acclimatizing. Solutions to problems are being worked out. Friends are helping (oh! the friends!) and more importantly, praying. Even though I'm often waking up at night and giving myself a headache with my non-stop internal Rolodex of lists, I'm feeling like my head is resurfacing above the water. I'm here again.
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