After a sweet and emotional goodbye at Austin airport and a very exhausting, but smooth travel we have safely arrived in the Netherlands.
For the next few months we’ll life in Ede from were we’ll look for a more permanent place to live life.

This morning when we woke I ask Sophie if she still knew where we were. After I explained we are staying with my sister in the Netherlands her first response was: “Ah, so it’s cold here…” Yep, it’s cold. Today the streets are covered in ice. Boaz and I walked-slided to the grocery store to sniff some Dutch air and culture.

The next few days we’ll take the time to get some paperwork done, get over our jet lag and move into our house which will be home for the first few months. That time we’ll life from our suitcases. The house we rent till the begin of April is furnished. By that time we hope to have found a place were we can stay longer and to which we can move our stuff which is shipped and will have arrived by then (it left our house in Austin at the end of December and will take at least 6 weeks to be here).

In a conversation today we compared our our time now with the first few weeks of marriage (witte broodsweken) or having a new baby (kraamweken). So yes, we do read our emails and texts, but might be slow in response and it might take a while before we are ready to be up to all kinds of social interaction again. After the last three weeks in the States which were draining and totally crazy and the huge change (especially for the kids) it will take a while before we are totally up and running again. We hope we are able to slowly roll into life here. We are excited about it and looking forward to meeting with all our family and friends, make new friends and building up our lives. But also realize it will take a long time, hard work and very intentional effort. For which we need a few more nights -understatement- of good sleep (and some coffee and lots of prayer).

This afternoon we watched the little video messages from several of our friends from Austin. How sweet and at the same time confronting! Thank you for all who took the time to speak a word of love and encouragement to us! For a certain five-year-old person in our family it was very hard to watch it (and had to have the laptop and time to herself to watch it) while another three-year-old person talked back to almost all of them and a seven-year-old couldn’t stop smiling at seeing his fr-amily and friends from overseas. Thank you so much for sharing all your memories and loving words!

Over six years ago I wrote a blog post with the same title. Arrived. Right after we arrived in Austin. What I wrote then, what was true then, is so true and appropriate today, all that time later.

arrived: past participle, past tense of ar·rive (Verb)
Reach a place at the end of a journey or a stage in a journey: “we arrived at his house and knocked at the door”.

“Arrived…
But we didn’t reach the place at the end of a journey. This is just a station somewhere along the line. We travel on, calmly, but steadily. Hoping that on that journey we find a new house and a new home.”

But first I’ll go back to my Dutch treats and food (so far berenklauw sate, kroket, nasi with kroepoek, borrelnoten, bruine boterhammen with ‘real cheese’, vla, beschuitjes, snert and roggebrood) and hope to share some pics of our kids in their koude kikkerlandje (literal translation: cold little-frog-land) soon!