Most difficult thing ever....

So this is going to be the most difficult blog post I have ever written, or probably will ever write. We are going home. We leave a week from today. We are not leaving because we hate Romania, or because we are homesick or anything like that. We are leaving because I am having some health problems that can't be addressed here in Romania. And it breaks our hearts to leave.

I don't know if anyone besides Ray understands what this is like. To go from disliking some place to calling it home all in the span of 6 months and then you pack up to leave. We have grown to love it here and we have made some wonderful friends. It truly is a bitter sweet time. I never really understood what that meant until this situation. I am so excited to go home and see my family and my friends, but at the same time how do I leave people that I love that I will probably never see again?

I have cried about this lots of times and I will cry about it lots more times. Romanians are some of the warmest people you will ever meet. We have been welcomed and loved by these people and it is so hard to go. But in the end we both think it is what is the right thing to do.

18 carolers caroling!

Tonight we got to hear something special....we had carolers at our house! I guess in Romania, this is something that people do, and this is the night they go on. My language teacher told me some stuff about it, like it is mostly children and they sing for money! But traditionally what you would give is apples and oranges and nuts. But since I am not Romanian I gave something that i think is traditional to me....baked goods!

Our wonderful babysitter Angela who I talk about all the time was the one who asked me if she could carol at our house and I said yes of course! She told me she would be coming with her family and a few other people....here is who came to my house tonight....


This is more then I was expecting, but I was so happy to see all of them! Most of these people are people I have meet before. I don't remember everyone's name, but they all go to church with Angela. And yes, there were two guys playing guitars! The one with the black guitar is Marius, and Parker loves him! He speaks wonderful English and every time we are with him he always plays with Parker. The little girl in front is one of Angela's daughters, her name is Sara. And then the couple right in the middle is Dan and Ana, they just got married! Okay there are lots more people and lots of names I don't know!

Here are some pictures of them in action..

Here is my sweet friend Angela!

This so neat, and we really enjoyed these people coming to our house and singing for us! We only understood a little of what they sang, but I enjoyed every minute of it!

reflections....

It has been awhile since last blogged and I tonight I have been thinking about our time here in Romania. We have almost been here for 6 months, some times it seems like we have been here longer and sometimes the time seems to fly by. There are days that I am surprised we are still here! When we first got here I was in such a state of shock that I just knew we were not going to make it! I remember riding in the car after we left the airport and seeing Romania for the first time and thinking okay, this is nice but we won't be here for very long! In fact when I unpacked all our boxes I put them in the attic because I thought I would need them again to re-pack to go home!

But we have made it to the almost 6 month mark. This has been such a unique experience for our family. It has changed our family in so many ways and really pushed us to our limits. I have done stuff that I never thought I could do before, and that is sometimes surprising. We have become so close as a family here that it has made it all worth it. All the ups and downs here, all the tears and wanting to go home have been worth it to see where my family is today. There are not the regular distractions here like there would be at home. We are spending so much time together, the kids have really enjoyed having us home more, especially Ray. Speaking of Ray, I have enjoyed having him here too. We are not used to being around each other so much, and I was a little worried about it in the beginning, but it has turned out to be so much fun!

We have also made some super great friends. People I would have never met before and I have been affected and changed by each one, my new American friends and my new Romanian friends! My kids have made some great friends too, and that has been wonderful.

The last 6 months have been a roller coaster of ups and downs, super highs and super lows, but life our life has changed and our family has changed for the better!

New floors, new floors!!

Have you ever moved somewhere and it just didn't feel like your house? You moved all your stuff in and you decorate every thing and your kids colored on the wall, but it still just isn't home? That is what I was feeling in our new house in Romania. It just didn't feel like home.

Let me back track a bit. The IMB has provided us with a wonderful place to live. Most of the housing here is block apartments. They are really not bad, but for the size of our family it would have been difficult. So we live in a nice house that even has a yard for the kids to play in. But it just didn't feel like "my place".

Something had to change. We talked about changing the wall colors and stuff like that but in the end we thought we would wait. And I don't think the paint would make me feel more at home. Our living room is pink and our kitchen is green. That may sound strange, but having those colors are better then having white...anyway!

Our kitchen floor was tile. It was actually tile that was for a wall, not for the floor. The tile was cracking and the grout was coming up. That was a huge problem because there were pieces if grout all over the floor and when I would try to sweep my floors food would get stuck in the places where the grout was supposed to be....so gross!

So we were told we could get new floors!! I didn't really want tile again so we started looking at the laminate wood floors and I fell in love! But I wasn't sure of the cost and if it would work in the kitchen and all that stuff.

I was so happy when I found out it would be okay. Ray went and bought all the stuff and he picked out the best color, I loved it as soon as I saw it....here is all the boxes of flooring for our kitchen and living room....

And here are some before and after pictures of the kitchen and living room...

Here is the kitchen with the sink and some cabinets taken out. See how gross the floor is? You probably can't tell by this picture, but the floor was pretty bad.



Now the living room floor wasn't coming up, and it wasn't bad at all. It was just ugly! But since we were not spending very much on the floors we were able to do both rooms. Here is the living room before...
Yes, that is pink tile on the floor!


Timothy and Benjamin were so excited to have the furniture in the middle of the room! I have to say our poor babysitter really worked hard trying to watch those little boys while the guys were here doing the floor. Benjamin and Timothy wanted to get into everything and be right in the way of the 2 guys working on the floor. Okay so now on to the good part, the after pictures...



How good does that look!!!




Isn't it wonderful! It really has changed the entire look of our house and it has changed my attitude as well! I think it feels warmer now, more like a home and less like a place we are just staying! Plus it is warmer, like heat warmer! Our tile floors were so cold and with winter here that was no fun. Now Angela our babysitter and Cristina my language teacher are no longer giving me a hard time for not wearing socks! It is almost a crime here to go barefoot, and I do not like to wear socks very much! Anyway, this is my new house and I love it!

small victories!

So today is a day all about small victories....big deal right....umm right! Let me start at the beginning so you all can understand why today was about victories! I hate Saturdays, kinda harsh I know, but I really do. I figured out why today when Ray I were talking about it, when we were in Oklahoma we always spent Saturday with our families. We always saw my parents, Rays grandparents, and sometimes his mom and one of his brothers.(The other brother doesn't live in the same town as we did!) That was the great thing about staying where we grew up, our families were there too. So being here on Saturdays sucks. We miss our families most on Saturdays. So I am counting all my small victories today and my first one was making it through today!

I also went to the store by our house and bought something, like I do most days. There is a nice young man there...I sound really old saying that, anyway, he speaks English but he only talks to me in Romanian unless I need help and I can't figure out what something is. Well he speaks super fast. I am super fast. Most of the time I have to ask him what he said because I can't understand him. Well today when he told me how much I owed him I gave him the right amount! When I handed it to him I looked at him and said..."That's right, right?" He smiled and said yes, and then he probably thought I was crazy. I kinda did this Napoleon Dynamite thing and said YES!

And then Ray and I went Christmas shopping with out the kids! The stores were so crowded. That is one thing Americans and Romanians have in common! People were everywhere grabbing toys and hitting me with their shopping carts. But I can't blame them for that one, because shopping carts here a nuts. All four wheels move and they can go sideways and all kinds of crazy things. So someone running into me wasn't a shocker. Anyway the victory in this was that Ray I went to two different places, Carrefour and a store kind of like Sams didn't fight about anything the entire time. Not that we fight a lot, but shopping for 4 kids on a busy Saturday night in the rain when we had no umbrella can be a little stressful, but we sailed through it with flying colors and we bought all the kids presents in one night....go team Foreman!

And my last victory is that my family is excited about going to church tomorrow. I guess this is a family victory but I write the blog so I am calling it mine! Most of you know that church here has been a huge source of stress for me. But about a month ago we found a church that we love and the kids love. They have Sunday school for all the kids. Parker wasn't so happy about it the first few times we went, but then tonight he said to me, Mom, are we going to go to church tomorrow. I said yes. And he said...good, because I if we are planning on going there from now on, then I want to go every Sunday so I can make friends! And when I was tucking Timothy into bed he asked me if we were going to church because he loved it and he needed to play with his teachers!

So today ended up being a good day. Sometimes it was hard and I missed home, but in the end I am still sitting here in Romania, so I guess it was a good day!