Wwwwweeeekend

We watched our first session of conference Saturday morning. Watching conference with my family makes me so happy and then weepy, it’s just so beautiful and good. And even though we’re a week late, we still participated in the solemn assembly and sustained our new first presidency. 

Cannot wait to mug on those cheeks this week!

So on Friday we saved money by an at home haircut and on Saturday we saved money by having Matt change the oil in the Space Car. 

Delaney and I got to meet up with our friendies for Emma’s escape room birthday. We totally rocked that escape room in one of my personal best ever showings. I think the room was kind of easy, but we also worked well together and our skills complemented each other. Girl power!

They started us off by handcuffing us and locking us in 6 different cells and it was a little creepy, tbh. 

We were riding high on our victory!

We went to Crumbl and everyone picked a cookie and everyone but Delaney shared and taste tested everything. 

We visited outside at Crumbl because it was a lovely day and then went back to Darrow’s for presents and visiting. 

We got Emma a cake decorating kit and the girls had fun playing with frosting and decorators tips. 

We stayed and visited longer than we should have probably, but it was just lovely to spend time together. 

When we got home I finished up my Disney dinner. I had made the cookies and stuffed shells earlier in the day, so I just made Triton’s breadstick tridents and Under the Sea Elixir and then we were gtg. 

I loved the look of the seaweed, so pretty and festive!

Sand dollar cookie yumminess. 

Tritons tridents. 

And the pasta seashells were so good! I also remembered to serve a salad because if there’s one thing my Disney inspo lady doesn’t like, it’s veg. 

Still working on my layering drinks, but these are pretty’ish. 

We watched The Little Mermaid and I wanted to sing every song because I remember when Little Mermaid came out and we saw it in the theater and I love to sing even though I have a terrible voice. 🙃

We met our Area 70, Elder Baxter at our building at 11 so I could be set apart in my new calling. 

So I was extended a calling and accepted in my ward right after I was released in February. Then Bishop Wiest said nevermind. 🙃 He said there were some things in the works and I thought they were changing around presidencies and callings are like dominoes. 

Then Elder Baxter reached out to me like 6 weeks ago and set up a meeting. Then a day before our meeting, he asked to reschedule and I was like 😩. I was super antsy for about a week and then one day I was vacuuming and the spirit said just enjoy a tiny break and a calling will come, and after that I was fine waiting. 

So back to my new calling. I don’t want to say I was disappointed, but I was hoping for something different. I was really hoping this was an area relief society advisor calling, which doesn’t exist in the US yet, but hopefully someday will. But that was not it. 

My new calling is to be a North America Northeast Area Communications Specialist. If I was asked to choose the area of the church I know the very least about, I think it would be area communications. 🤣 So lots of room for growth and that’s cool. 

I was blessed with confidence to go forward and to share my experiences with my family and that will help bring them to Christ. That resonates with me because I’ve been intentionally sharing experiences serving with my family for a long time. I love those promises. 

And then I hit the ground running with a 12 o’clock meeting. I went into the Family History Center during our sacrament meeting for that. I had arranged with Bishop Wiest for Matt to take the sacrament to a family and I would go with him and be able to take the sacrament too, but then that didn’t work out so I’ll just wait till next week. Heavenly Father knows my heart, I’ll be ok. 

We did a yum box (Poland!), played games, and i shoveled a half plate of the shepherds pie I prepped ahead of time into my gullet before my second meeting of the day at 4. And after 2 meetings, I’m more confused than I was this morning. I’m the media specialist and I guess I’ll figure out what that means soon. 

We watched another session of conference this evening and I’m gearing up for a week with the bigs and the grands! I’m excited to see them and not excited to be gone from home, but that is life when people you love are scattered all around. 

CWS

 We’ve been talking about the places in SMC we’ve never been and we decided to visit a new to us restaurant once a month as a family and once a month on a cws friday as a date. But then we went to Europe and got a little scammed 👀 so we adjusted and hiked Myrtle point beach instead. Matt says we’ve been to the beach part but I don’t remember that so it works.

Also in the spirit of saving money, I gave Matt a haircut and I did a pretty good job, I think. 

We’re watching our first session of conference together on Saturday so I needed to pick up some conference goodies and Disney dinner goodies, but I stuck to my list and coming out of Marshalls there was a beautiful sunset. 

We FaceTimed the bigs and everyone was ready for bed at 10, but our first 3 days back to school/work are ✅. 

Better every day

Slept in till 5:00 today! Every day I’ve woken up a few minutes later, and I will take that small jet lag progress happily.

I went to the temple yesterday afternoon and then had a meeting at the Visitors Center. I’ll be set apart for a new calling on Sunday so that will be exciting.

I feel like I spend half my life planning and prepping for the next thing, which is good to be prepared I guess. That’s most of today’s plan, but also a hike for Matt’s CWS. Spring ❤️.

All that jazz

We were all awake and moving around by 4:30 this morning. I woke up at 3:30, but since I went to bed at 10, that’s not too terrible. It was one of those nights where everytime I woke up I was confused about where I was. I wrote out a list of to dos and got them all done. 💪🏻  Before we left I made Adi a paper chain countdown for how many days of school she has left and i wrote little sweet things about her inside, so I put that up.

Sarah Cox has been posting monthly young women updates so I grabbed a few from her today. 

I talked to Amy for 2 hours and planned dinners, teacher appreciation week (camping themed!) and next weeks trip to see the bigs. 

I made burritos for dinner with canned fruit (tinned fruit for my Aussie friends) and then went to Aldi while D was at ballet. I did self checkout and scanned food twice 3 times accidentally, so maybe I am really tired. 

Everyone else went to Casto’s for a service project and since my list was done I laid on the couch to catch up on some survivor and I fell asleep, since Lent is over that’s allowed again. And then I really did wake up disoriented a few times. 

It feels so good to be home. We met several people that were really interested in the US, that would really love to live here. I keep imagining looking at everything through their eyes and with such gratitude. How open and bright and big everything is here. All the variety and ease that we enjoy. There really is no other country like ours. 

Finally, driving home from Aldi this license plate made me smile and also jealous. 

H-o-m-e

We made it! After what I believe to be the longest flight I’ve ever been on (and Delaney and Frankie), we touched down at Dulles. Y’all, 9 hours and 45 minutes is a long time. And we had no food. They fed us a pretty good lunch after 2 hours, and then a pretty good warm panini sandwich after 7 hours and 45 minutes, but we were hungry. We would have brought food, but for the transportation fiasco and also I guess grocery stores are closed on federal holidays too, so 2 strikes.

All in all, if given Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa 2 thumbs up. One weird thing about Austrian was their uniforms though. Head to toe red and even red purses. Apparently their red tights are infamous, and I do like iconic, but in my opinion they are a little much.Anyway, we got through customs and everything and popped over to Raising Canes after we picked up our car. 

And then we had a lovely 3 hour ride home through traffic. We talked about waiting it out but we were all so ready to be home, and also naively hopeful it wouldn’t take the 2 and a half hours it said it would. Jokes on us, it took longer.

We made it home and had an hour and a half to kill before we wanted to go to bed so I got on an unpacking roll and my adrenaline kicked in and that’s why it’s almost 4am European time and I’m still blogging. Hopefully that means my adjustment will be easy? Fingers crossed 🤞🏼 

I love this. I feel like maybe I’ve shared it before, but I’ve been talking about this a lot with the girls and I just know it’s so important and so hard and like so many things, something to choose everyday. 

Also, Sarah sent this and just look at those precious babies. Love them so much. ❤️

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I love love to travel and I love love to come home. 

Vienna

Matt dropped us off at the airport in Zagreb yesterday and dropped off our car, which was a fiasco. Are there any honest car rentals? They said we scratched the car and obviously that cost $2000, because we have that coverage through our credit card. And the €10/day insurance that we had to add was just… for what? It’s all so predictable and stupid and now we have to get with our credit card to be reimbursed. And I don’t want to give those crooks anything. I hope we can fight it. 

So anyway, that started the day off rocky, but we’ve got a common enemy so we’re all fine with each other. 🤣

We had a 35 minute flight to Vienna that was blessedly smooth and easy. There were at least 30 empty seats but we couldn’t move around because of the weight balance, which seems silly, but I guess is true?

Love a quick and smooth flight. 

Matt takes lots of flight pictures and shares them with me. 🤣

Then we got to Vienna and the real fun started. We hadn’t bought out transit passes and we were a little unclear because the airport was out of the main zone, so we went to an agent. He looked at the address of our Airbnb and did a double take and was like where is that? And then he told us it’s a federal holiday and busses aren’t running out there and we’ll have to take a cab. What now???

You know how things get thrown at you and you’re not thinking the most clearly and you’re frustrated and hungry and not sure what to do? That was us. We checked other options (our Airbnb shuttle, airport shuttle, etc) and tried uber but it wasn’t connecting. And that is how we paid €50 for a taxi. 😩😩😩 so now we’re out $2050 so far for the day. I’m sure we’ll get the $2000 figured out (🙏🏻 🙏🏻 🙏🏻) but we were still having some sticker shock. 

The plan was to drop our things and then tour Vienna, but now we needed to figure out rides. And we were very close to the airport, but very out in the country, with no sidewalks and too far to walk anywhere. 

We went through all our options - go back to the airport and rent a car, uber to a bus and hope for the best, not tour Vienna, or uber all the way to the city (uber finally started working, obvi). 

I’ve been thinking a lot about a family member who had to check their child into an inpatient facility and a friend with a new cancer diagnosis and really focusing on gratitude, and in that moment of frustration, I suggested we pray and make a decision. Adi offered the most lovely prayer and it calmed and centered all of us and we decided to uber to a train stop and go from there. 

So we get to the train station and it’s under construction, no trains at all. 🙃 Our driver offered to drive us all the way to Vienna but we’d learned our lesson that haste makes waste and we decided to find food before we made any other decisions. We walked to a good restaurant Adi found and… closed. I was like, I should have been documenting all our L’s!

We laughed it off and everyone picked a positive (hey, we landed safely!) and found another restaurant tha was delicious and we found a bus and we bought our passes online and save €.50 each and Delaney (the child) was free because of the holiday. 

So we get on the bus and he asks for our passes and he’s like, this is for Vienna. And I was like yeah. And he was like Vienna? And I was like yeah. And he was like, we’re outside of the core zone. And I was like? And he was like that’s €4 each. 😩 So Matt tried to pay with our credit card and it was cash only. 😩 And I was like ok cool, let’s get off girls, and he was like, nah it’s fine. 🤗

It felt like it had been a long day and it was only 3:00. 

We took a metro and walked and made it to the cutest Easter market ever. Everything’s looking up!

Frankie’s fighting for her life back there. 

It’s in the square for Schönbrunn Plaza which was on my list so perfect. 

They took their Christmas market stalls and made them Easter in a truly smart marketing move. 

We walked all around and I didn’t dare buy anything because of all our L’s for the day and I really wanted to, so that was the tiniest bummer. 

We’d managed to consolidate and empty a suitcase for just in case souvies, and that empty suitcase stayed empty. No one even wanted a treat and I wanted that too but abstained. 

I feel like I could make these and I feel like I want to also. 

We walked the grounds and it’s very beautiful. 

We made our way to a lookout and asked a nice Austrian lady to take our picture and she even clarified that we wanted the palace in our picture. I always say Asking people to take your picture is like a box of chocolates.

Love this girl! I hope she had the best time and is happy with her trip choices. Even with all of our many lessons learned, I am. 

The palace we didn’t see behind us. 

Frankie was hot to go. You know that end of a trip feeling when you’re just kinda antsy to get home. 

Sisterly love and hijinx. Right before Adi dropped her. 

We voted against a tram tour (free with our pass!) and headed home after our walk. 

Not before Matt left his last little piece of Maryland though. 

It took us over an hour to get home, but we acted like we knew what we were doing and were never questioned about our passes again. We waited forever for a few busses, but only spent €20 to get all the way back to our apartment after we got as close as we could with the busses, so that was sort of good. And we didn’t find any open treat places so no treats for us. 😞 

We were up and at em at 5:45 to catch the bus from our apartment at 6:15, because after that there wasn’t another until 10:30. Success!

It was an easy bus then train ride to the airport and we hit the corto at the airport for grocery store brekkie for €20 and got to our gate 3+ hours early. Our first easy travel through Vienna. 🙃 And chandeliers in the airport? Amazing. 

This was by far our rockiest overnight layover. I think there will just always be unexpected circumstances and you just gotta roll with it as you travel. At one point we saw a Marriott and then paid travel groups on busses and we questioned why people would use those, but we learned some lessons from that hubris. There is safety in a tour group and American hotels we know. We’re always learning.