Back to the Blog ....

"Lisbon Rocks!" our resident Kindergartener announced this morning, after EHJ informed her that not only can they wear nail polish, they can also wear accessories at their new school.

"Are you going to put that in your blog?" EHJ asked. Noting the cuteness of Bei Bei's response, and perhaps also the paradox between their old and new school. (Which is not to say that their old school did not, in the words of my Nickolodean inspired five-year old 'rock', but that their dress code was much stricter, limiting jewelery to stud earrings and requiring hair to be pulled tidily back with red or black ribbons. Nail polish, as MGJ learned the hard way last fall, was strictly forbidden.)

But alas, I have not blogged. For weeks. February posts were meager. But here we are, thanks to spurring on by my middle (who often would ask for something NOT to be revealed in blogland), getting back on the proverbial horse ... preparing to ride this into the sunset.

I have composed hundreds of blogs in my head. Comparisons I, like The Three, could make. Thoughts about repatriation and the United States and our family and how all these things roll together. There are moments, like this fun and spontaneous one to share. And moments that can't be shared now, when emotions are still fresh, and when tears over where we are in our journey still fall more frequently than we would like.

We are not necessarily unhappy to be here, but we carry so many people and places in our hearts that the reality of settling down and settling in ... the permanence of it .... the putting down roots and putting away suitcases carries a sort of sadness. There is nothing easy about this part of the repatriation process.

And there is a house in disarray. Smaller in someways than we remembered. Tired in ways we had not anticipated. But our house none-the-less, and slowly warming back into a home. There is a mountain of cardboard in our garage, proof that we have gotten somewhere, made some progress, not been swallowed up, by the contents of a forty-foot high cube that arrived on the back of a semi trailer last Tuesday. Five men worked for seven hours unloading our possessions-- books, bicycles, beds, long lost toys and our raiments. On Thursday my parents arrived and with box cutters in hand, to help us unpack and unearth treasures from another land. They helped us organize book shelves and place Ming inspired furniture in our 1920s Arts and Crafts inspired bungalow. They pulled books off the shelves they had dusted and read to The Three, asked about their school, and encouraged three little hearts.

This morning, my parents are gone, The Three are at school. Mr Johnson is at his alternate office working on projects that are steadily picking up (the fact that the program we originally returned to the US for was 'suspended' in January his second day on the job is fodder for other posts with labels like 'stress', 'boredom' and 'you've got to be kidding me'). Outside the sky is dreary. It is raining, a slow drizzly rain. But, as MGJ announced as she stepped out the door and pulled up her hood, "it smells like spring." And indeed a new season is waiting for us ...