Kanigan Family: Made it to Brussels!

Time for an update! I'm sitting on my un-made bed, going over the last two months and shaking my freshly cut head-of-hair over the craziness of it all. Crazy, yet, normal. That about sums it up.

So, I guess the big news is that we have arrived in Brussels. We are still in temp housing, but hope to be in a permanent place by the first of June. We shall see. :)

The month before we left we had three sets of visitors in DC. My parents, my awesome niece, Rachel and then Dan's parents. We had fun showing them all the sites and just spending time together. We are hoping for more visitors in Belgium soon! We arrived here on April 2, 2018. Wait, scratch that, we left on the 2nd from DC at about 5:00 pm, and arrived six hours later in Brussels on the 3rd at 7:00 am. After our kind sponsor picked us up (frazzled dog included) from the airport and deposited us at our temp home, the entire family slept and slept and didn't feel normal again for about a week. Poor Dan had to go to work the day after we arrived so he didn't haven't time to recover, but that's okay, he caught up on sleep that weekend.
We arrived just in time for spring break, which was two weeks long. It was nice, but the kids had just finished Virginia's week-long spring break. Needless to say, after three weeks of being together constantly, we were all very excited when on the 16th of April, an over-sized "school bus" stopped in front of our tall, skinny townhome to carry us all to the new school.

I feel like the kids are adjusting really well. The school is fantastic and very welcoming. It's a bit smaller than they are used to, but I think that will be a good thing. I'm constantly in awe of how brave and accepting these kids are. They switch from school to school and friend group to friend group so easily. I use the word "easily" when I know that really, it is hard for them. That only makes me appreciate them even more. I'm a very lucky mom.

So, in Brussels, we have already seen a few things, and are excited to see so many more. We went down to the Grand-Place a few weekends ago, the Parc du Cinquantenaire, and of course, we have found a great place for waffles and frites. The waffles are only available to us on Saturdays (good thing for me, honestly!) at the Stokkel Market. It's not a long walk from our home, so we've taken the kids there a few times. I'll have to grab some pictures, because it really is a beautiful market and the waffle vender there is incredible. Just make sure you go early, they ran out of waffles on us our first time. It was tragic.

A great place for Le frites (fancy, French lingo for "fries", thank you) is downtown in a little shack called, La Maison Antoine. They were everything we'd heard about and more. I'm glad the place is a bit out of our way!

Belgian life is going to be an adjustment, for sure, but I think it will be an easier one than we've experienced in the past. Spring here is so pretty. I'm trying to force myself out everyday at least for a little while with my camera. Our clothes dryer is interesting. It sucks all the water out of the clothes and into a little container than needs to be emptied after every load. I actually kind of enjoy dumping the pan. It's strangely satisfying. Recycling in Belgium is INSANE. But good, yeah, definitely good to recycle ... if ... you can figure out which of the five bags to use for each of the different recyclable materials. I think I've finally got it down. It's funny because the kids won't throw anything away now without running it past me first to make sure they are putting it in the correct bin. We would be fined big time too if we didn't recycle properly.

Lola is loving the yard. She escaped once, but luckily we found her pretty quickly and have reinforced our fence. She spends a lot of time out in the yard. It makes me happy for her.
I guess that is about all for now. I'll update more later and leave you all with a few pics!

Spring in DC, Family Pic!