Home Sweet Zagreb

We received an email yesterday with our housing assignment...

Here's what we know:

This is a 3-story house with a 2-car garage. After entering, there are two bedrooms and a bathroom on the left. On the right is the living room, dining room, and kitchen. The upper level consists of three more bedrooms and another bathroom. In addition to the garage, the basement contains storage space.

This house is located roughly 17 kilometers N of the embassy and 6 kilometers N of downtown Zagreb.

Some pictures were included, but not in a format that I can copy here.  Scot will be in Croatia in a few weeks, so he'll be able to check the place out and take more pictures.  It is a shame you're going to have to wait to see the pink tiled bathroom.  Like pink tile everywhere bathroom.

Kind of seems more real now that we have a place with our name on it.

And did you count the number of bedrooms to get 5?  Plenty of room for visitors :-)

Wilcox Love

Valentine's Day was a fun holiday this year in our house.  Ava got to experience her first official school exchange of valentines and Reese got to exchange them in her daycare classroom.  And it was good for me too!  I was advised by Scot to be home by 4:45 that day to cash in on my treats.  He arranged a babysitter and whisked me off in the Ford Fusion (ok, so not a horse and carriage...but it does have heated seats and is unscented) to Luci Ancora, one of our favorite restaurants in St. Paul.  We love their "tasting" dinners - that night we enjoyed four courses, a bottle of wine, and a scrumptious dessert.  And most of all, just the time to enjoy our meal in peace while we gazed lovingly at each other across the table.  Well, maybe not that last part (this was our 16th Valentine's Day together for God's sake).

Ava made these little gems for us:

The letter translated:
Dear family.  You are nice to me.  I love you because we play games together.  I love to play games with you.  It is fun.  My favorite holiday is Valentine's day.  The game that I like is Kids' Sequence.  Love Ava.

I'll blog (brag) about our parent-teacher conference later, but I just love this letter!  For many reasons - her use of lower case letters has come a long way (at the start of school she only wrote in all caps), her handwriting is very neat, and she's getting better and better at spelling phonetically.  The picture is great too with all of its detail, though Scot was a little offended that he did not make the cut.

Almost Done

This is the last night (fingers crossed!) that Scot will be at the kitchen table studying for his ACSC course.  I should know what ASCS stands for...but I don't.  There's something about aviation/military talk that somehow just ends up sounding less like words and more like white noise to me.  Hey, so I could actually say it sounds like an airplane, which would put me one link closer to the actual subject matter.  Hmmm...  Well, even though I don't know what it stands for I do know that it's a correspondence course that he needs to complete by passing 7 tests in order to someday be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.  He's passed 6 so far (all on the first try!) and his last is scheduled for tomorrow morning.  He started the course last January so it's been a nagging chore for him to stick to it.  So I'm proud of him for completing it and doing so even a few months ahead of schedule.  Selfishly, I'm ready for him to be done so I get more attention.

Purge 1

Several hundred (not exaggerating) articles of little girl clothing made their way out of the house last week via a Disabled Amercan Veterans truck. 

Also last week, some fellow Medtronic employees pounced on my work classifieds listings: a cat tree, 2 baby gates & an exersaucer.  (Seriously, I did get 15 emails about the cat tree - guess I should have priced that higher)  ;-)  Anyway, $65 in my pocket in exchange for less stuff.  What a deal.

Playroom Makeover

Before:

Well, let's be honest.  Our front room never looked like this since we've been in the house.   Picture it without the fancy furniture & baby grand.  Picture it with toys strewn all over the place, stained carpeting and bare walls.

After:

20. Check.

Along with all of the other New Year's Resolution makers, I made one of my own this year.  Which I think was pretty much the same as the one I made last year.  Who needs creativity?

It was this:  To exercise 3-4 days a week in 2012.

I would love to up this number to 5-6.  Do I have the time to do so?  Sure.  Do I want to make the time to do so?  No, not really.  So, 3-4 days it is.  Because Mommy guilt forever engulfs me, I generally try to exercise when the short people in my house aren't nipping at my heels. That translates into either an 5:45 am or 8 pm start time.  Because my left hand is curiously drawn to the snooze button on my alarm clock, my exercise generally commences at around 8 pm.

I made a massage appointment for February 17th and declared that I would exercise 20 times in order to cash in on that little carrot.

And hurrah!  I did it.  Just barely, but I did it.  And the massage was really nice.

Croatia FAQs

When will we go?
August/September 2012 - we don't have an exact date yet.


How long will we be gone? 
Approximately 2 years. 


What will we do with our house?
We're planning on renting it out while we're away - we recently floated an email out to a few different management companies that were recommended to us.  One gal came over last week to take a look at the house and discuss logistics.  We were impressed with her, the rate, the amount of details they take care of and her confidence in getting it rented.   They'll start adverstising in early summer and hopefully get a family started with a lease in the fall. 

Where is Croatia?

Croatia is in Eastern Europe, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy.  We will be living in Zagreb, the capital city.  As you can see from this map, Croatia has hundreds of miles of coastline and is often described as the "sleeper" travel destination in Europe.  Who knew? The coastal cities look amazing -Dubrovnik and Split are famous for their beautiful beaches and scenery.  There is also a park about 90 minutes south of Zagreb called Plitvice Lakes National Park that we can't wait to see.  It looks unbelievable - here is a teaser snapshot...

What language do they speak?
Croatian.  German and English are the most common second languages. 

What about the girls - what will they do?
Ava will attend 1st and 2nd grade at the American International School of Zagreb.  All classroom teachers are native English speakers.  Reese may attend Junior Kindergarten in lieu of daycare, we're not sure about that yet.  When we get back home after 2 years, Ava will be starting 3rd grade and Reese will be starting Kindergarten.  Crazy!


What about me?
So far, my boss and director have been supportive of me working remotely while we're away.  Working overseas involves some complicated logistics (mostly tax-related) so I don't have a green light yet, but we're all hopeful that it will work out.

What about the cats?
We're planning on taking the cats.  Though it will likely be a huge pain in the ass.  :-)

Where will we live?
We will be living in the city of Zagreb.  There is no military base.  The guy who is currently doing this job lives in a house with his wife and 3 kids.  We may move into his house or we will end up in one of the other Embassy-owned properties in the city.  Regardless of where we end up, it will be mostly furnished so we will bring our personal affects but put most of our furniture in storage.  At some point, we will have a list of what to take, what to store, and what to get rid of.  I'm working on the "get rid of" list already - I packed up 10 garbage bags of kids' clothes over the last week to donate.  Much more to purge, I'm sure.

Are we excited?
This type of move comes with all sorts of mixed emotions, but yes, we are mostly excited.  We really hope to make the most of this opportunity.  And we hope we get lots of visitors!