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Country Roads

Country Roads

by | Aug 21, 2023 | Blog

We made it to Lauren’s house! It was good to drive up their bumpy little road and to squeeze our West Virginia crew.

It’s been a pretty laid-back week. We worked on a few projects at Lauren’s place (shelves in the laundry room and pantry and battling a population of wasps). We spent time with the kids in the sand box and around the yard. For some fun videos of life at Lauren & Bo’s place, visit Bo’s YouTube channel here.

We went into Parkersburg and visited the Discovery World Children’s Museum. It’s so fun to see the kids’ changes since we visited in May. We went to the Farmer’s Market and had a yummy dinner at The Galley in Marietta. We also had a fun afternoon at the pool in St. Mary’s.

Nathan played a violin accompaniment to a song that Lauren sang in Sacrament Meeting today and our niece Sarah played the piano. It was a treat to hear them make music together.

For those who are curious about the saga of the car, here’s the scoop. The insurance company determined that the shop in St. Louis was completely at fault (duh!), so they are paying our rental car expenses in full. However, it was determined that the car is a total loss, so we had to decide if we would take the money and let them salvage the car or take the money and keep the car to repair. After plenty of deliberation, we decided that we would just take the money offered to us and not worry about repairing the car. If we had decided to sell the car before leaving the country, that’s how it would have ended up anyway. We’ll just start over when we get back. It was kind of sad to see a perfectly good car wiped out by someone’s incompetence. We liked that car and it has been a really good, reliable vehicle since we bought it a few years ago. Anyway, that’s the end of the sad story.

Tomorrow, we change from a hotel in Parkersburg to an AirBnB in Marietta. We are here for one more week and it’s crazy to think that we are flying to Germany soon.

Reality Bites

Reality Bites

by | Aug 14, 2023 | Blog

On Monday, we packed the car, bid farewell to Alex’s family and drove away. We were bound for Lauren & Bo’s place in West Virginia. About an hour later, in rural Illinois, the car alerts started going off, the car started to behave strangely, and by the time we pulled of the interstate, the car sounded and smelled like something was seriously wrong.

It was early, so it took awhile for repair shops to open so we could have the car towed to someone who could tell us what was going on. We ended up in Highland, Illinois. Coincidentally, the town has a strong Swiss heritage, so we learned a bit about that at the local diner where we had breakfast and came to grips with a definite delay in our plans for the day.

We spent the day in the waiting room at the repair shop and it felt a lot like sitting at the hospital waiting for word from the doctor. They were finally able to give it a good look (even though by then there were symptoms and clues pointing in a definite direction).

Nathan had taken the car into a place in St. Louis for some regular, preventative maintenance on the front differential. The shop either put in the wrong fluid or put the wrong amount in AND it was the wrong fluid. Long story short, it got too hot and destroyed itself. So, of course, Nathan called the shop that did the shoddy work and their insurance company was immediately involved. We went back and forth about what to do next all day Monday. The most reasonable thing to do seemed to be to rent a car in Illinois, go back to Alex’s house, and wait for some sort of next steps from the insurance company.

Well, given the chance, people will drag their feet and/or give you the wrong information. We were under the impression that we needed to wait for someone to be sent by the insurance company to inspect the car to determine the liability BEFORE repairs could commence. That was WRONG! So we waited for days with no progress on the car and no end in sight. We returned the rental car and Alex was so gracious in allowing us to borrow his car to retrieve the rest of our belongings from the Subaru at the repair shop.

We were watching the days slip away. The rest of the road trip, our time with Lauren’s family, our plans for the car, and our impending departure for Germany were all thrown into question. Nathan worked through so many scenarios and solutions. After mulling everything over, we decided to…

…rent another car in St. Louis…

…drive to Lauren’s house…

…rearrange plans and accommodations…

…arrange to return the rental to the airport in Columbus when we fly to Berlin…

…have Alex pick up the car in Illinois when it is repaired and use it for the next year while we are gone.

So now we are on the road toward Parkersburg, West Virginia and looking forward to two weeks with Lauren’s family. We decided to cancel a planned roadtrip to Lake Michigan and Detroit to maximize the grandkid time in the two weeks we have left before we leave.

We feel blessed that we could at least spend our week of limbo with family instead of in a hotel somewhere and we are so grateful for Alex and Hanna’s hospitality. It was an emotional rollercoaster of a week and we are glad that we are able to have a plan and direction again. We are hoping and praying that the insurance mess is all worked out without it turning into a major saga.

Swiss National Day

Swiss National Day

by | Aug 6, 2023 | Blog

We made it back to St. Louis and started right back to the usual: projects at Alex’s house and hanging out with the fam.

August first is Swiss National Day, marking the date of the signing of the original Letter of Confederation in 1291, so we decided to do a few things to celebrate. We cut out paper shapes and glued them together to make Swiss flags. We talked about William Tell, but only for a moment. We also made chäschüechli (little cheese tarts made in yummy bread crusts) and a flourless chocolate cake (not strictly Swiss, but we had to have chocolate of some sort). Teddy liked filling the bread crusts with Grandpa.

We built new shelves in the pantry and laundry room and got things organized, which was so satisfying. We went to two different libraries, the farmers’ market, and to the Magic House (a delightful children’s museum in the city). We were also able to fit in some board games and a couple chances for the Mommy and Daddy to go on a date.

Our time here is coming to an end. It has been a treat to spend so much time with the grandkiddos and with Alex and Hanna. We’ve enjoyed seeing how the boys have grown since we were here at Christmas and they’ve grown up a bit just in these three week. Peter even started crawling while we were here.

Next stop: West Virginia and the other two grandkiddos!

B-day & Chicago

B-day & Chicago

by | Jul 31, 2023 | Blog

Howdy!

Remember when I said this trip would be less vacation-like and more like real life? Well, this week was a bit of both.

The beginning of the week was real ife. We worked on projects, including patching walls and painting the boys’ room at Alex’s place. Teddy helped with the painting, so that was fun and exciting 🤪. It actually turned out great and we had no major incidents.

We also got to celebrate Alex’s birthday on Wednesday. We went to the top of the Gateway Arch and then to Fitz’s for dinner and bottomless frosty mugs of root beer.

Thursday, we jumped in the car and headed north to Chicago for a long weekend. We have really loved our few visits to the city and this one was the best yet. We stopped in Springfield on our way north to have a bite and tour the Lincoln Presidential Museum.

Activities in Chicago included catching a taping of the radio show Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, jazz at Andy’s Jazz Club, and the Willow Springs Blues Festival. We also got out of the heat and saw a couple of movies.

We also go to Chicago for the food. We did an outstanding food tour (Megan Bauserman, you need to do this one!), we did a “taco crawl” in the River North neighborhood, and we made a pilgrimage to one of our favorite bakeries in the world, Hewn.

Now it’s back to St. Louis for another week of fun and family.

Hope you’re all healthy and happy!

At the Studebaker Theater
A mural on our food tour in Uptown.
Pasteries
We Did It!

We Did It!

by | Jul 21, 2023 | Blog

We finally did it. We left. We’ve been talking about this for years and we finally did it. A little backstory…

Nathan and I retired from full-time employment at the beginning of 2019. We immediately left for Mexico on a humanitarian project/vacation and that kicked off what we thought would be several years of on and off travel. We tried leaving for an extended trip to Europe that summer and we really liked it. We were prepared for more of the same. We just had to sell our big, time-consuming house and figure out our next move. Cue the pandemic and two grandkids.

Covid was good for us in that it forced us to stay home and get the house ready to sell. But it really put a damper on the travel plans. However, rather than jetting off to some foreign country, we became road-tripping experts, driving thousands of miles across our own country to visit lots of National Parks and to spend time with family. It was a really fun couple of years, but still not what we were planning.

So we moved into yet another house and started projects there. I also decided to go back to school to finish my degree. That dragged it out even further, although it wasn’t a drag. Nathan had a most glorious ski/snowboard season with all that amazing Utah snow. I finished up my penultimate semester of school. We spent time with friends and family, we went to lots of movies with El, and Nathan worked hard to make the house absolutely beautiful.

But it was time to move on. We have now accomplished our goal: we have renters in the house, we have our belongings packed away, and we ran away from home!

So, what are the plans, anyway? The renters have a two-year lease, so we need a place to crash for a couple years. The plan right now is to spend the first year in Europe and then come up with something else. Since we are moving with no real commitments, we are keeping the plans loose for now. Leipzig, Germany is our first destination and then we’ll play it by ear after that. Part of our decision-making will depend on a residency visa for me, but Nathan can stay as long as he wants with his Swiss passport. We will wait and see.

First stops, however, are Missouri and West Virginia to play hard and get grandkid snuggles before we go far away. We already stopped in Kansas City for our favorite barbecue and we will be taking a couple of weekend trips to Chicago and to Detroit, just for fun.

This week was full of driving across the country. We stopped in Kansas City for our favorite barbecue to celebrate getting the house all done. We’ve been enjoying time with Alex’s family and in a few days we’ll celebrate his birthday with dinner and a trip to the top of the Gateway Arch.

This trip will be a lot less like a vacation and a lot more like real life. We won’t move around as much, but we will dive deep into one place or another. We will also be doing day trips and weekend getaways to explore more areas in Europe that we haven’t experienced yet.

Thanks for coming along for the ride. We’re not the greatest at journaling, but if it’s more like writing a letter, we will be more consistent. So thanks for being willing to read these messages once in a while.