C arrived back in Valencia last Monday night. It was a long 3 weeks while he was back in the US, but we knew that this was part of the deal when we decided to move to Valencia. It was also an opportunity for C to bring back some of my cooler weather clothes, Hunter rain boots, and most importantly our 4-legged family members. You may remember from my December post about Maizey & Blue that we had some concerns about how they would do as city dogs. There are significant differ

Tomorrow is a day that may go down in the family history as the greatest day ever. Spain, and in particular Valencia, is known for its raucous festivals (hello, Fallas), though almost all of the festivals are religiously-based. La Tomatina is the exception to that rule. Held in the neighboring community of Buñol, about 40,000 people get together on the last Wednesday of August and throw tomatoes at each other. Most people run away from the chaos, which means that we are runni

I am very excited to say that we ended up renting the apartment that I was hoping for . Our agent, Anthony, was recommended by friends we've made on Valencia Expat boards. Jack and Maja have been in Valencia with their 7 children for about 18 months. Embarking on this journey for our family has been overwhelming at times, and I am in awe of Maja. If you want insight into what it would take to move a family of 9 overseas, you can follow the Burton's adventures on their blog, B

Once we know for sure, we will fill you in on the details. #moving #Valencia

Quite a bit has happened since my last blog update, not the least of which is that last Friday, 1 June, we received our visas. As has been par for the course, there was some drama receiving them but arrive they did, and we are set for our grand Spanish adventure. Our youngest and my Dad have a mutual love of the New York Yankees, and flights between the US and Spain are much less expensive from New York, so we chose to spend a few days in NY City with my parents before we hop

There are a few things that I've found during the Great Purge of 2018 and one of them was my library card. I've belonged to the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library for as long as I can remember. The Sandy Springs location was where I researched and wrote many a school paper. Post-college, I was a literacy tutor for the homeless out of the downtown location. While the boys may not remember it, I have many memories of being a young Mom and escaping into the stacks while they were e

Saying goodbye can be challenging for me, especially when I know that it is a final goodbye. I will not gloss over the fact that--though very much part of the plan--it was exceptionally difficult watching a large majority of our things sell for pennies on the dollar to complete strangers. I am grateful that we hired Ruth's Reselling to do the heavy lifting of the sale for our family (if you are in the Atlanta-metro area and need a great company to help you with a sale, please

This past weekend, we officially moved out of our house/home. While closing doesn't happen for 11 days, we are having our Estate Sale this week and the hardwood floors touched-up next week; with all the upheaval, plus the fact that we are selling our beds and our bedroom furniture, it was impossible to live at the house any longer. We are very fortunate that my parents have plenty of space in their home to accommodate all of us, including the pups, until we are ready to leave

“Photography is the story I fail to put into words.” — Destin Sparks For the next few days, I will likely be putting up few worded blog posts. Rather I will be posting to Instagram images of our deconstructed home, and what it looks like to get rid of almost everything to live our dreams. If you don’t already follow us on Instagram, you can always check out our home page for a gallery of the latest images. #moving #expatlife #expat #quote #pics #pictures #socialmedia #instagr

It is interesting to me how a single message can impact me differently depending when I hear it. This weekend, I went through my closet, yet again. It's staggering how many times I can revisit the same items and find more and more items I am willing to release each time. We have to be out of our house by Thursday morning so that the Estate Sale folks can come in and organize, stage, and price all those things that we are not keeping. All the practice I've put into letting thi

C and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary towards the end of the month, and for the majority of those years, we have been in stuff acquisition mode: furniture, televisions, home decor, books, stereo equipment...you name it, we've likely bought it. And now we are selling off of a good portion of those carefully curated things in a garage sale/jumble sale/venta de garaje. We've had a few friends ask about specific items and those things are promised out: the kitc

As I mentioned a few weeks back, I'm swimming in a ton of actions right now for so many projects: the sale of the house, getting our visas, getting #1 organized for his Israeli army service, and planning our physical move. We are done with the due diligence phase of the house sale, and now we are cruising into closing. Our agent calls this being "in the tunnel," and boy do I have tunnel vision these days. We rented a storage unit several weeks back and have been packing boxes

This week has been full of activity for visas, dog transportation, storage locations, and Estate Sales because we've crossed another hurdle. We are under contract on our house. The offer came in last Friday and we agreed to terms and went into the "Due Diligence" period by Sunday. Things are moving along at lightspeed, with an expected closing at the end of April. Over the next week or so we will have contractors (theirs), inspectors, appraisers, more inspectors, and Gd knows

My apologies for disappearing for so long. I can't believe that my last post was almost 2 weeks ago! I've been fully engulfed in the throes of house selling--cleaning, planning, getting the pups out of the house during showings, etc. The house has been on the market for 1 week and we've had a number of showings, which my agent assures me is appropriate for our price-point. Until a final contract is signed, I am not going to say much more about the process, but we are happy wi

Today we hit two big milestones in the process of getting ourselves over to Spain: we had photographs taken of our home for the real estate listing and the lockbox was put on the door. I'm so pleased with how everything turned out in the house and I think we will be under contract quickly (fingers crossed). It's always hard to gauge things when you're close to the source, so I asked the photographer how he thought the house looked. To my delight he said that the house was pho

It's only been a weekend, and so much has changed. Most exciting and important, my Mom is now here. She came out on Saturday and I've been showing her around Valencia--what a great time it's been. After picking Mom up at the airport midday, we went back to the apartment where I've been staying with my roommates and dropped off her luggage. After grabbing a quick lunch, we went back to the apartment in Ayora and waited until about 3:30 when our Airbnb apartment was available i

The last few days have been chock full of things outside of my Spanish classes. Yesterday was a trip to one of the schools that we are considering for the boys. Today was meeting up and coworking with a bunch of other expat/digital nomads, and tomorrow is a meeting for female expat entrepreneurs. While I'm not ready to discuss our business idea, I have been sourcing materials and seeing if the idea is viable. It's a very different beast when you speak the language nominally a

Today is a holiday in Valencia though I'm not entirely sure for which Saint. It is not a national holiday, just a holiday for those in Valencia province, which means that everything is pretty much closed here including my school. Knowing that I had a 3-day weekend, I didn't feel compelled to force a bunch of sightseeing in this weekend and I've relaxed a little. Saturday I went to the grocery and in the evening went on a Ruta Vegano--a tour of a few supermarkets to help new v

Last week I posted about my powder room including a picture taken as the wallpaper was coming down, and now it is Sherwin Williams Neutral Ground, which is a very pretty, tan with light brown undertones. I also posted pictures of my cleared bookshelves on IG but here they are staged: It looks great, right?!?! I wish I could say that the house really looks as good as these pictures make it appear, but it doesn't. We have things out of every cabinet and drawer on the main floor

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas doing whatever it is that you do to celebrate. Since we do not observe Christmas as a holiday, we typically eat Chinese food and see movies. Instead, this year we made soup and bread, and kept on clearing out the house. Before we moved to this house, we had a yellow and red kitchen. I loved the happy, sunny colors even if they weren’t everyone’s cup of tea. When we were looking for a house in our current neighborhood, I took it as a sign t