Christmas Vacation

Yesterday was a pretty great day, despite the fact that we are all sick or recovering from sickness (except Addi, but she's started feeling crappy so it's only a matter of time).

We got to stay home and have a nice leisurely brunch together. We re-used some ham that we had for Christmas dinner and whipped up scrambled eggs and bacon to complement. It was the first meal for the kids that hadn't consisted primarily of Christmas cookies. :) Before that, Jess and I spent a few hours working on uncovering the kitchen and living room from the piles of dirty dishes and Christmas present debris, just so we could cook.

After brunch Jess and I talked a lot about our family's future. This is a topic of continuous discussion, and it's something that provides us a far amount of stress. We have a pretty good situation at the moment that affords us a lot of opportunities, but it is far from ideal. We know we want to get back to Iowa to live close to our family *eventually*, but it seems that there is never a right time to make such a risky move with an unknown future. But, if we never decide to make that move, then we'll always live away from family. It seems awfully simple but in reality it's more complex.

Jess and I have decided that we will leave Spain at the end of 2016, which is 6 months beyond our original planned end date. Now that we've made that decision, we get the opportunity to plan our next steps.

Talking it through yesterday, we have basically three options:

1. Move to another country, and re-establish our life, friends, school, church, job there.
2. Move to somewhere in the U.S. with my current company and re-establish our life, friends, school, church, job there.
3. Move to Iowa, draw upon our family, but still need to re-establish our life, friends, school, church, job there.

All options are equally valid, but with each passing year option #3 becomes more and more attractive. This is due to many reasons but as our family gets older, we are beginning to prioritize personal goals over professional goals. And our personal goals are to get our butts back to Iowa and start our farm!

That doesn't make it any easier to sort out the details and and decide to make a risky move. Only time will tell.

In the afternoon we took advantage of the 65 F weather and went for a walk. Yesterday we had everyone (including Olive) except Henry who was feeling grumpy and decided to stay home and clean his room.

Probably Priscilla's first time swinging. She loved it.

Games

One thing we've not done enough of recently is to play more games as a family. Part of the reason is that between Truman (age 5) and me (age more than 5) there are many years different and the types of games that are fun for me, are perhaps not so fun for Truman, and vice versa. But Truman is getting older now and we got several new games for Christmas, in hopes of getting some more quality family game time.

Last night, we opened up one of Henry's new games (Settlers of Catan) and played together as a family. Truman/Daddy vs. Addi/Mommy vs. Henry. There was a last minute switch of alliances when Mommy was winning, and Truman deserted Daddy so he could build a house with the little leftover game pieces. Henry remained a lone soldier. Like all strategy games, Settlers of Catan can take a while to play and last night was no exception. I think in the end we spent 3 hours sitting at the dining room table together. Think about that for a second, 5 out of the 6 of us spent 3 hours sitting together at the dining room table. This is the same family that has trouble sitting together for 15 minutes to eat dinner together.

Another game that Henry got for Christmas is Axis & Allies. This is a massive game that can take days to play. I'm super excited about it because it was one of my favorite games when I was growing up and now I can play with Henry! We started the game three days ago and we haven't finished yet. After quickly dispatching Russia, we've entered into a slow period where I (playing Germany and Japan) am having trouble matching the prowess of U.S. (played by Henry, along with Russia and U.K.). Anyway, I'm super excited that he's into it.

3 days. You can see the results of my 'Russian Pincer' move. :) You can also see that the U.S. has invaded Africa and will like dominate the entire world. Oh well.

Priscilla

Priscilla is sick (like the rest of us) and that is continuing to make her not very fun to be around. She feels better during the day and we play, but a lot of the time is spent clung to Jess in one way or another.

The kids are getting frustrated, especially Addi, that she doesn't want much to do with them (we call that "getting the Daddy treatment") when all they want to do is love up on her. I can speak from personal experience that it can get frustrating. We keep reminding ourselves that she's only been in Madrid for less than two weeks and we need to be patient.