Patio... you can see the steel shutters.

 
Patio outside the living room... the patio furniture was just delivered.

 
Basement 1/2 bath.

 
Laundry room.... again no shelves.... and I have two flights of stairs to wash the clothes... my legs are already feeling it.

 
Hallway in the basement... there is a lot of space wasted in this house with hallways...

 
I am standing with my back to the back of the garage.

 
From under the stairs....

 
You thought you were through with the tour... down to the basement.

 
View from the balcony.

 
Master bathroom, complete with bidet that shoots warm water.

 
Walk-in closet. James took the sliding doors off the second day. We couldn't get into the closet at the same time and they pinched the sleve on one of his coats and smashed the buttons. Better to be without some doors since it is inside the closet anyway.

 
Master bedroom.... we have our own bathroom and the only closet in the house. The hanging rod is about 3 feet long so we are trying to come up with other solutions.

 
This is the room that has yet to be decided. If our nany is able to come from China, this will be her room. If not, this will be the office... so we'll see. Nice double doors to the shared balcony with the master bedroom.

 
They had a crib for Ethan waiting for us. We put him in this small room/closet... it could go either way. But it's dark and no one needs to go in there so it is perfect.

 
Right next to Zoe's bedroom door is the door to the fish bathroom. (Named for the fish on the walls of course.) In Bogota, we only had showers and a huge jacuzi tub. Here, in true European style, all tubs with a shower nozel. Once they solve the hot water problem, it will be great I'm sure.

 
Another view of the blue room.... I love it. None of the walls in the house are white.

 
Zoe's room. Teac's bed is now in the club house and when the bunk bed comes we will set it up in here. I hate to give up the beautiful head board though.

 
This is Marlo's/ guest room. There is a door out to a shared balcony. It is a little larger than her room in Bogota but she likes a smaller room because then the other kids don't want to come in and play.

 
The other 1/2 of the club house room where his bed and dresser will go.

 
When we first saw this room Teac said "cool a club house". So this is going to be his room and all of the toys will go in here. We moved his bed in yesterday but I think this is one of the coolest rooms a kid could have. That being said, he was running in circles in there on Friday and he hit a low beam head on and it layed him out. He got a huge goose egg on the back of his head, a scab on the bridge of his nose, and a black and blue line accross his forehead. I think he will be more careful from now on.

 
Next to the green bathroom there is a currently empty room that will be the tv/game room. Now we are going up stairs.

 
Just to the left of the kitchen door is the down stairs bathroom. I love the tile and the colors.

 
This is our fridge for now. If it isn't working, ie too small, they offered to bring us a full size one. I just don't know where we would put it.

 
My kitchen. To the right is the door outside and another door to a large pantry that so far has no shelves. The kitchen counters are the perfect height for the girls to do dishes so we already have a job chart going. I have electric everything, there is no gas this far out of the city, an extra freezer, and US-size stove and oven- even a hidden dishwasher.

 
From the dining room you can see into the kitchen with the stairs to the left. They did a wonderful job of getting the house ready for the kids. There are baby gates at top and bottom of the stair cases, plastic shielding on the banisters, and plastic shielding on the outdoor balconies and patio. They love kids here and the boys especially have already made friends.

 
Dining room... you may notice some of the windows look brown or blocked off. All of the windows and doors have heavy exterior metal shutters that only open from the inside. Some of them stay open better than others. We don't worry about break-ins but I believe they are to close up the house when it is not in use.
I met some of our neighbors yesterday and they are wonderful kind people that know what is going on around them. My Slovenian is helpful but I am so anxious to learn the language so that I can start having conversations with people.

 
In the back is the dining room... and straight back through the dining room is the soccer field.

 
The furniture is all for us to use from the embassy... hopefully our things will arrive this week. :)

 
View to the living room, with doors that go out to the patio, fire place, room for the piano and lots of dancing space.

 
This is what you see when you come through the front door. Stairs down to the basement, to the right, living room, to the left, what will be the tv room and the green bathroom.

 
Front entry... it looks like there are fruit trees in the front of the house. I am guessing plum or cherry... and maybe even some grape vines that have been grafted onto trunks so that they support themselves. It will be cool in the spring to see what they are.

 
This is the front view of the house. The brown door goes down to a large garage connected to the basement.

 
This is the House of Plastics that separates our house from that main road. It is the landmark used to find our house since addresses don't really exist where we are.

 
This is the road out the front gate that goes to the left.

 
This is the house from the back gate. The stairs to the right go upto the kitchen door, the left stairs up to the patio which wraps around to the living room and front door.

 
Mountains to the other side..

 
This is on the road to the school, about a 15 min walk from our house at "kid pace". The day was so clear, it was our first glimpse of the mountains around the city.

 
Back gate just to the right of the field.

 
This is our back yard. You can see our balcony up in the top left corner. The house sits in its own compound with white walls surrounding it and front and back drive-through gates. Doesn't it look like a perfect soccer field?

 
Here we are on our way to the first day of school. Rain boots for the mud but nice sunny skies. The night before at the mall we had some snow, not enough to stick, but it was fun.

 
The second night in Montenegro we went the new mall at Delta City. It is a beautiful mall with arcade games in the middle of the aisles in places and an indoor play area for kids. We met two other families here that both have 4 year olds. They were so welcoming and supportive, it was a really fun and exhausting night.

 
The lounge bathroom was the coolest. If you can see the glass doors with leaves trapped in them and the beautiful glass tiles...

 
walls of string

 
Well, the flight was not fantastic but not bad. James and I slept for maybe an hour while the kids took turns dozing off. Ethan had the roughest time of all and just couldn't get comfortable. We flew Austrian Air and some of the flight attendants were very nice and some were just plain annoyed with the kids. That was frustrating. We waited to be the last ones off the plane since we had to undo the carseat etc and she came back to tell us they were waitning on us even though not everyone else was off the plane yet. Lame.
We spent about 5 hours in the Vienna airport. We were flying as a United co-chair so we tried to use the Star Alliance Business class lounge for our long wait. They wouldn't let us in with the kids. As a business person, I would have been relieved... as a mom, I was annoyed. So we walked down to a different lounge and they let us in. The only thing was it was beautifully decorated with these white nylon strings hanging all allong the walls, surrounding the tables... they were everywhere. How do you keep kids out of them? They did pretty well considering their parents were exhausted and they had to keep their voices down. Boy was I relieved to leave Vienna with its snow covered runways and kid unfriendly demeanor.

 
Good friends can be like cousins and we sure appreciate how much they love each other.

 
One of the best things that has happened to us is making all of the wonderful friends we have. It doesn't seem to matter how far away we are, or how often we come back, we love them all. It means that we have family all over, and are so blessed to never be alone, no matter where we are.

 
Grandma was such a good sport about food. We had kababs one night, 5 Guys burgers, steak, BBQ, and lots of mashed potatoes. She told us she was on vacation and wanted to go out to eat... so we did.

 
Interesting how much pop culture contributes to our world view. The pop icons that are in the US History museum are fun... like Kermit, and the ruby slippers...

 
Wonderful Grandma Fowler came to visit us our last week in VA. We dragged her out to the US History museum and had a great time looking at everything... here we are in the sculpture garden... not sure why I took it so crooked... uh

 
This is Zoe modeling the beautiful skirt Aunt Janie made for her in the entryway in VA.

 
A few days later we made the trip back to VA and the land of the cold. This is the kids all huddled up watching TV on the couch down stairs. We had one of the most pleasant trips ever. The plane wasn't packed so our lap child got his own seat, and we had a row all to ourselves. Security was helpful and quick, and everything went very smoothly.... go figure. I hope we didn't use up all of our good Karma in one trip. :)

 
He got two cool '57 corvettes, a Diego set, and a phone that rings and calls you back.

 
For Teac's 4th birthday Bekki helped us make a cool train cake. We played and decorated it at her house and then took it back to the Smith's where the LAN party was in full swing.

 
Do we look exhausted?

 
This gives you an idea of the crowds. It is beautiful this time of year with all the decorations, parades, and fireworks.

 
We were some of the insane people that went to Disneyland over the Christmas break. Teac was just tall enough to go on most of the big kid rides including Space Mountain. This is him sitting next to grandpa as they came down the hill. When he came off and I asked him if he liked it, he was clearly shaken and a little distressed. His conclusion was that it was too scary. Poor guy, we took him on lots of big rides. We also did Dumbo, Autotopia, Buzz Lightyear, and the Carosel. Considering how packed the park was, we did very well. It was great fun.

 
Isn't he growing up so fast.

 
Well, as crazy as it is, we only took video Christmas morning. We had a great morning with lots of chaos and presents. We were with family and are so blessed to have so much. This picture is the morning after with everyone in their new pjs.