Settling Into a Bit of Normal

With the departure of our friends, the first thing on our agenda was to visit the consulate to order our new passports. We had waited a week hoping that against all odds they might show up, but now its time to say goodbye to our impressive collection of stamps and visas and get down to business. As it would turn out, and so often how God does things, the consulate is literally two doors down from our apartment building - it couldn't have been more convenient. We gathered our paperwork and headed over with our tails between our legs feeling like less-than-stellar travelers. It turns out it's quite an easy process because we had copies of old ones, a police report, and birth certificates (thanks solely to our South African escapade). Also "conveniently," we are in Barcelona for another entire week which means we actually have time to get brand new passports instead of just emergency ones. This is a small victory because ours were set to expire in January 2017, meaning we most likely can't travel out of the US as of August since most places require a valid passport for 6 months after the travel date. Overall, the price for new passports is the same as in the U.S. but without the expedited fee. All these things are just another example of how truly protected we have been this entire journey. Additionally, we expect that our travel insurance will cover the cost of the new passports but that is TBD still.

This was our "serious-business" photo at Consulate ordering new passports.

The next four days are about as ordinary as it gets as we had to complete standardized test, the one and only annual requirement for homeschooling in Minnesota. We'd booked this apartment with this in mind, making sure the internet speed was sufficient and we had enough space to spread ourselves out a little, so the kids can work without distractions. We had to take the tests on U.S. time, which means the kids had to take their tests back to back between 3-11PM as the Internet couldn't handle two kids testing at once. This was all completed relatively smoothly, but made us all rather stir-crazy as we tried to keep the days quieter so the kids weren't exhausted come test time, all the while adjusting to the pace of Spanish lifestyle of waking later, eating later, etc.... Additionally, the sky was grey and rainy most of this time, which only added to our lethargic disposition. Another frustration was that the weather caused it to take 3 days to complete one load of laundry because we could not get anything to dry. Our building had a centralized line drying system, that was actually pretty cool, but there was no roof over the atrium. However, the upside of all this down time is that we were motivated to go for runs, walks and get some exercise, which we had, sadly, not done in quite some time - partly due to Dad's feet and also simply because we were not necessarily in places that were conducive to doing so. We also tried to take advantage of the ability to have "date-time" with the kids individually, which we are trying to incorporate more into these last couple of months as we are thinking it will be easier to do in European countries. Finally, when the kids weren't testing on our computers, Mom and Dad tried to catch up on some blog posts and pull together some plans and tours for our last couple of months as we are really looking forward to being more "present" as a family and on screens less as our travels wrap up.