Year of Learning

Being a substitute teacher for the last 5 years has been such a GREAT experience for me. I've learned so much and I've been able to watch some wonderful teachers in action. What I didn't know was how this job would prepare me to become a world school teacher to our two precious girls. Jason and I are anxiously excited for what lies ahead this coming school year. I've been researching and asking every teacher I pretty much know, about as many teaching questions as I can. Thankfully, I've had some great support with helping me choose the type of "world school style" we want to use. We are doing a "mixed method" type of curriculum this year while in Europe. We have some books we will be using, some online resources, and a lot of unit studies type of curriculum. Here are some pics of the books we will use. Alia is looking forward to reading "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" as we will be visiting a concentration camp along the way. Jada is excited about her Spanish book and her multiplication flashcards too.

We also have some art sets that we are bringing (I think all of us are MOST thrilled about Art this year). There will be so much to draw, it's Europe for crying out loud! Jason and I keep joking that we are headed back to 3rd and 8th grade. It's gonna be a year of learning, that's for sure. 

My Weekend Plans

We leave ONE WEEK from tonight! AHHHHH!!! We have been so busy the last few weeks (well, months really). I can't believe how much it takes to plan a move abroad for a year. All the travel blogs we read said to give it at least ONE year of planning, but we did it in about 6. Here was our master monthly list of things to accomplish here at home before we go. Happily, I can say we took care of almost everything on our list. We still have to sell our truck, but hopefully that will be a done deal soon enough.

And here is my exciting list of weekend plans! :) 

PS- If you're annoyed by these boring posts (Sorry, we are still in HI... the good stuff is coming soon), I apologize. This blog is mainly for journaling purposes so I'm trying to blog the entire process, boring cleaning lists and all. ;) 

Busy Busy!

Things are really moving over here, literally. We spent most of the day this past Saturday getting some things moved over to the storage unit. Our good friend, Ed was a HUGE help. He provided us with a 16 foot container and with his help, we hauled over most all of our business stuff (massage chairs) and a few personal items. We will forever be grateful to this man. He is the most kind, selfless and generous person I think I know. Thanks, Ed. We love you and hope you enjoy your new massage chair this year. You deserve it!

Here we are watching these wonderful men get the container into Ed's work yard. They had to tow it to the yard and then move it inside the yard with this giant machine. I was a nervous wreck watching it all go down. 

Ed is the master. I was practically biting my nails off watching the storage unit sway back and forth as they placed it perfectly on the ground. Whew! Once it was down, we breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. Next, we took Ed's flatbed and drove to our house to get a load. He saved us so much time by letting us use his truck. It would have taken us forever in the Tacoma to haul this much stuff! 

Now that we have the garage cleared, we are working on the rest of the house. Luckily we are renting our place furnished, so that's making our job a lot easier than what it could be. For now, we just have clothes and personal items left to stash. We will be busy, busy for the next few days. We have one week to be out of the house! Crazy. 

Bon Voyage!

We have the best friends! Our good friends, Dan and Lisa Scroggins decided to throw us a "Bon Voyage" party this past weekend and boy was it FUN! Lisa went all out and made such cool decorations. They had a huge world map hanging on the wall with some cute drawings and commentary to go along with it. So creative!

We also enjoyed a delish taco bar with all the fixins and this yummy cake with haupia cream filling. So ono!

This was at the end of the party as we were cleaning up. Wish I would have taken a pic when everyone was still there, but at least I got a snapshot with these beauties. We have such a great ward! We're gonna miss these guys. 

And they even left us with a thoughtful homemade card! 

We feel so blessed to have such great friends and supporters. Thanks again, everybody. We are gonna miss our Hawaii Ohana! 

License To Drive

Well, it's official... we are now licensed to drive in Europe. All it took was $15, an application, a passport size photo and a copy of our current driver's license. Ready to roll. Wish us luck! 

Meet Bertie!

So, we bought our RV this week. Hooray! We have transportation! We've been looking online on Marktplaats (kind of like a Craigslist equivalent in Holland) and for the last few weeks we've been narrowing it down to a few select that we like. Jason really liked this one, so he decided to call the owner to ask him a few questions. I had a good laugh when he told me about how the conversation went down. Apparently, Jason googled a few Dutch phrases, enough to be able to say, "Hello, my name is Jason. Do you speak English?" So with some shaky confidence, he dialed the number and Bertie picked up. Luckily, Bertie's reply was "Yes" (huge sigh of relief). I later joked with Jason asking him what he would have done had Bertie said "No." Haha. His response... "I don't know." Apparently, he hadn't thought that far ahead yet! ;)

Anyhow, we really liked the price and the low miles on this baby, so we found an RV company that would go out and inspect it (with a mechanic) and take more detailed pics for us (Thankfully companies like this exist for people purchasing high price items from across the world). Donna, our trusted 3rd party, sent us out a full report and gave us her sign of approval and we were good to go. So, we finally closed the deal! Meet Bertie (we decided to name him after his late owner)...  our new home away from home!

LWS Academy

Loder World School Academy isn't officially in session until June 3, but we figured we might as well make ourselves some handy dandy ID cards to make it "official." After all, if they get us a discount into a museum in Europe, then all the better, right? Jason spent the afternoon creating these bad boys. They look great, huh?

Now we just have to get them cut and laminated and we are good to go. Tonight at dinner we had a fun discussion about how Mom and Dad are not only the teachers, but the school administration as well. We asked them what kind of rules we should have next year at LWS Academy and what kind of punishments should be enforced when the rules are broken (or someone refuses to do a school assignment). Ahem, Jada! ;) We got some cute responses out of them. Alia said maybe they should do wall sits and Jada said maybe they could just sit in a corner and point a thumbs down sign at themselves. Ha! What kind of school do they think this is? I suggested perhaps writing 100 sentences of "I will do my assignment when I am told." Needless to say, they didn't like that idea very much.

We are getting ready and excited for our crazy adventure to begin. The countdown is on. We leave one month from today! Ready or not... here we come, world!