Chance pointed it out from the get-go: Mom, EVERYTHING'S bigger.......the cars, our house, the stores, the people. Yes, everything is bigger and I've gotta say, it's taking some adjustment.
I swore up and down that after living in Switzerland, when we moved back we'd make a super smart eco friendly choice with cars. And then the size of our state put a warp on our heads and we soon realized that how in the world would we be able to live without a third row of seats in our car. So, we went a joined the Silver Volvo Club of Dallas instead: (pic coming soon....)
The second day here I dragged my jetlagged self over to the Kroger Super Store to do a little stocking up. All I've gotta say is, really I don't care if the toilet paper is 2 ply or 3 ply or extra cushy soft, or pink or blue with flowers, or scented in every flavor you could imagine. I just need some toilet paper, people. I don't need so many choices. And this was just the beginning of it. An HOUR later, Brooks and I still hadn't made it through the whole store and Brooks was beginning to notice. We were both saying to each other, where is our small user friendly, trusty Migros when we need it? Where are the unfriendly checkers that make you bag your own groceries? My jaw totally dropped when all I had to do was wheel my gigantic shopping cart up to the checker and HE took everything out of the cart for me, and then got really irritated when I tried to put the stuff in my own bags. Needless to say, I didn't make it home with half of what I needed. I think they found Brooks and I both curled up in the fetal position in the back of the store some hours later.
And then there was the chicken incident. Several weeks ago at our girls night out in Zurich
And then there was the alarm man incident. He rang the door bell and I waved in sign language that I needed to get the key to unlock the front door. This signing behavior is not unusual in Zurich, where as my friend Liz put it, "so it just feels like a constant struggle of crap German meets crap English meets wtf are we saying to each other?!". Somehow I momentarily forget that yes we are back in Texas. And as soon as the man actually speaks to me, my eyes got huge as I hear a very Texas accent speaking to me. I guess I was expecting some broken English from a German speaking man.
Despite such incidents, and my occasional bursts of "home"sickness for Zurich, we are really loving our new house and new neighborhood.
Brooks loves having all of Chance's old toys out of storage.
We've met lots of our neighbors and are enjoying our bigger space where Chance can finally be himself without worrying about waking his brother for a nap, or bothering the neighbors too early in the morning. He reminded us of this the other morning at breakfast when he was being way too loud for us grouchy parents. Ryan asked him to quiet down, and he quickly said........DAD, we live in our OWN house now, there's no one to bother. So we've been spending our days swimming in the pool, enjoying the park down the street, playing with new neighbor kids and learning to ride the bike in our very quiet culdesac.
Tonight in very Texas fashion, we pulled out the new pool plates Mimi gave us, and grubbed out on REAL Texas BBQ.
I haven't had brisket in over a year. Even Brooks liked his first taste of baked beans done up the REAL way.
