A look back at our first year in Chile

It's coming up on our one year mark in Chile and I decided to look back through our photos from this past year.  I'm not going to lie, this year was hard.  To say we miss Thailand would be an understatement. And adjusting from an Asian country to a South American one was a lot to handle.  I have felt very alone in this country for a good part of the year.  I miss our friends, our Thai lives, and our community.  But we have made it.  Year one.  The hardest year after a move.

What have we accomplished this year?  

We managed our first international shipping container arriving safely with everything intact! We completely furnished a house.  Ben started building most of our furniture again.  We adopted a dog. We learned to drive again after relying on public transportation for the last 5 years. We started Spanish lessons. We had visitors from the United States and Thailand.  We saw the Milky Way.  We saw a city covered in amazing street art.  We tasted the best wine.  We made it to the Pacific Ocean. We experienced multiple earthquakes.  We have adjusted to seasons.  My boys saw snow for the first time.  The boys learned how to rock climb.  They went camping. We look in awe at the mountains everyday.  And we have made friends.

It's been a tough year, but things are starting to fall into place.  And I am sure that year two in Chile will bring many more frustrating moments, but hopefully more contentment to my heart.

Hope you enjoy the slideshow of our first year here.

Halloween 2016- First Holiday in Chile

 Halloween 2016

We love Halloween in this house.  Check out Halloween 2011, Halloween 2014, & Halloween 2015! This year we had another first for the boys.  You cannot find find big, orange pumpkins in Thailand. Well, you can, but they will be 3,000 Baht or $100 for one.  We never splurged on one, so we came up with other things to carve or paint.  One year I found little orange pumpkins and the kids painted those.  Another year we just decorated Thai pumpkins.  Last year we carved watermelon.  But this year, we found out that Chile does get orange pumpkins and they are affordable!!  Britton had never even seen a large orange pumpkin before and was very excited to carve his own pumpkin. 

 Not quite sure about the "guts' of the pumpkin.  It took a while before they actually started clearing the insides out.

Britton made a Lego face pumpkin. 

 Lincoln made a Jack Skellington pumpkin. 

Greyson made a Batman pumpkin. 

Halloween morning started out with orange pancakes with chocolate syrup spiderwebs. 

 Time to dress up and play games.  Britton wanted to dress like his dad for Halloween.  Greyson was TapeFace and Lincoln was Slappy from the R.L. Stine books.

 Next, they played Ghost bowling. 

 We played Halloween Bingo. 

And they went on a scavenger hunt for a bag of candy.

Snack time was hot chocolate and donuts. 

Halloween Lunch

We had no idea that Chileans actually celebrate Halloween.  We didn't find out that kids go Trick-or-Treating until an hour or so before it started.  The boys were so excited.  They finally got to really Trick-or-Treat.  In Thailand, a few expat families would pass out candy, but this was the first year the boys got to walk around a whole neighborhood.  They loved it.

And then back home to finger hot dogs, deviled eggs, spider web dip, and monster cupcakes for dinner.

We had a fantastic time celebrating our first Halloween in Chile. It was even more special because Ben had the day off from work and was able to celebrate all day with us.  

Here is my Pinterest Page with all of the ideas I used.

6 Month Update: Things Are Looking Up

It has been a long time since I last posted, but there is good reason.  I just couldn't find anything to post about.  Sure, we were doing things and celebrating holidays, but I was depressed.  I didn't want to get off of the couch, leave the house, or really see anyone.  This is not where I wanted to be.  Here is an unpublished post I wrote back at our 3 month mark.

Oh friends, I must sound like a complete basket case.  I am on an emotional roller coaster.  I go from fine to grumpy in a matter of minutes.  I know we chose this lifestyle, but it doesn't make the move any easier, even if I knew what to expect.

We have been living in Chile for 3 months now and to be honest not much has changed since we first got here.  I still don't drive.  I have an irrational fear of driving in another country.  This makes it difficult for me and the boys because we are stuck at home everyday.  I still don't know too many people.  This is mostly my fault as I'm not really putting myself out there. The boys don't really have any friends.  Again, this is my fault as I should be working harder to find connections for them.  I am still grieving for my life in Thailand and hoping the pain of leaving there will start to lessen. I'm realizing I'm  now 5 years removed from the life I had in the United States and that makes it difficult for me to feel like I fit in there. So talking to anyone from back home about my feelings is really out of the question.  It's all confusing and frustrating.

Things that have changed in the past 3 months:

Our house is feeling more like a home.  I will have to post photos of our house once I actually have it picked up and presentable.  I really like our house and I love the views from every window of our house.  We have made our first connection with a few homeschoolers in the area.  There are not many older homeschooling kids in Santiago, so we are just hoping to find a few great families around the boy's ages.  It's warming up, so we are able to be outside and enjoy our beautiful back patio.  The boys have even had school outside a couples days this week.  I can order my groceries and have them delivered, which has been a huge time saver and really just makes us all happier. We visited the weekend market to get our produce and really liked it.  I finally have a phone number!  We had our security system installed.  I can leave my back door open (we don't have screens) and the dog doesn't come running in.

So, while it feels like we are all sitting in limbo, hoping to have a happier life, I guess when I see the changes on paper I realize that it will just take time.  Things are changing, just not as quickly as I would like them to.  We will find our happy place.  I'm hoping we find our happy place this weekend on our first trip to the beach.  We need a change of scenery and need to start exploring our new home. I think that will help us feel a little more at peace and not feel so stir crazy.  Hopefully, next week I will have a whole new happy post about the beach.

Thank you to my friends and family all over the world, who support us and continue to send love our way.  As I have said before, you really are the best!

Well, we never made it on that beach trip due to sick kids and I kept on hating it here until just a few weeks ago.  We had friends come and spend a week with us over Christmas and it was so good for all of us.  Being good hosts, we had to get out of the house and show them around Santiago and other parts of Chile.  And while we were showing them Chile, we started to see what this country has to offer.

After they left, the older two boy went to summer camp for a week and started making friends. Happiness has started so seep back into our lives and we are getting out of the funk we had been living in for the past 6 months.  I plan to start sharing what our first three holidays were like in Chile and also some of the great places we have been visiting.  I am already planning our trip for next summer!  This country really is beautiful.  While we still have a long way to go, I am glad we can finally say some positive things about Chile.

(Oh, and I still don't drive!!)

Week in Review: September 26-October 7, Weeks 3 & 4

Two more weeks have passed by and we have been trying to get projects done around the house. Soon, I'll be posting photos of the house of all the updates we have done with it.  It has been a ton of work, but I am happy with how it is all falling into place.  Here are a few things we have done around the house.   I put up a friend wall for the boys going upstairs to their rooms.  It's so nice seeing all these smiling faces.  We miss them all so much! 

 Ben built two benches for our kitchen table and the tv stand, so I started painting them this week.

 I finally figured out how to order my groceries online. It took forever because I had to translate every.single.word!  But, it was so nice to not have to go to the grocery store.  And we received this huge box of free goodies.

We also decorated for Halloween.  

Cooking Club

I started going to a cooking club and this week we made Thai food.  It was so comforting to have cashew chicken, fried rice, pad Thai, and curry.  It felt like "home".

 I wasn't able to go to cooking club this past week and the other women were so sweet and dropped me off the delicious Indian food they made.  It came just at the right time.  I didn't even have a clean dish, so it was a wonderful surprise and it was so appreciated.

School Time

Five in a Row

I was so disappointed last week because I took all of these great photos of Britton during his Five in a Row story and then my camera disc somehow deleted all of them.  I was so upset, but two weeks ago Britton started A Giraffe Goes to Paris.   It is such a wonderful story about the first giraffe to live in Paris, France.  Britton could not believe that this was a true story.  We studied giraffe and looked at all of our gifts from Egypt.

Britton had to draw a made up animal.  We talked about what it would be like to draw an animal you have never seen before.  He drew a bearaffe.

We talked about the four seasons and Britton painted a fall tree.

 This week, we started When I was Young in the Mountains.  I love this story.  And now we live in the mountains and we talked about what Britton's life will be like in the mountains.  We only made it through a couple days of this story and we will finish it next week.

Beyond Five in a Row

Greyson and Lincoln started Beyond Five in the Row this year and we are reading Sarah Plain and Tall. This is the first year we have worked through a chapter book, so this is a different set up for us. We have been working on a chapter every couple days and going in depth on each chapter.   We have talked about prairies and oceans.  We worked on setting up notebook to use during our book.  We will be working through this book for the next couple of months.

Story for the World

Britton has just started Story of the World Vol. 1 this year.  We have been talking about nomads and and how nomads moved to setting up villages.  Britton did a cave painting like the first nomads did.  

 Vol. 2

Greyson and Lincoln are learning about English Knights and the feudal system.  The boys worked on a knight lapbook and created their own coat of arms.

We also had a medieval meal.   We did this a few years ago and the boys still bring it up.  Our plates were thick pieces of bread, just like during medieval times.  We had chicken legs, bacon, cheese, asparagus, baked pears, and loaves of bread.  The boys also had coke only because last time I gave them root beer to represent ale. I couldn't find root beer her, so coke it was.  They loved this meal.

50 States

We learned about Texas and California this week.  So, we had a Texas and Californian meal.  For California we had California Club sandwiches and Cobb salads.  For Texas, we had Texas ranch Chicken casserole and a Texas sheet cake.  So good!

Tea on Tuesday

We had our first Tea on Tuesday this week and we made scones and enjoyed tea out of our new tea cups from Thailand.  We even had our first piece of mail for our teatime this week from a friend from Thailand.  It was so fun to do this again.  

Other Fun: 

Lots of silent reading this week.  We started IEW writing program this year and the boys wrote their first paragraph from this program.  I hear angels singing!!  This has always been a struggle for us and I am so happy to be using a program that is working.  We also did a couple art projects this week.  

These past few weeks have been tough.  I expected this, but it still doesn't make it any easier.  We are still trying to find a group that the boys fit in.  It always takes time.  We are working to make some homeschool connections.  We did meet a homeschooling family this week that will be moving from Santiago soon.  I am so sad because I think it would have been so fun to get to know them.  We did buy a great load of books that I am so excited about.  We are trying to take it day by day and trying to see that this was a good move for us.  Hoping that this coming week will be better for all of us and we will start to find our groove.  Thank you for all of the encouraging words over the past few weeks. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it.