Wander & Nest

It’s sort of hard to say when the sabbatical year ended. We left Sweden in mid July and went back to our home in California, but that stay was just temporary as we prepared for the real move to France. It’s weird, but maybe accurate, to think of that month in California as actually being the last part of our sabbatical year. Even though we were in our home or homes of family members, there was already a real sense that we were visiting.

Before we get to the logistics of packing and prepping for the move, let’s revisit all fun times from our month in California. In Fullerton, we shared our home with its new occupants, Wylie’s sister and her family. It was really fun to get to spend so much time together. Wylie’s mom even flew in from Virginia to spend time with everyone.

The cousins had a great time together, and even when Mara and Beni had their disagreements it was still a good time. It was really fun to watch all of their shenanigans.

We saw lots of friends while we were in Fullerton. A month is not much time when there are so many loved ones to see, so at some point I almost made a spreadsheet of all the visits, lunches, and get togethers. We are so lucky to have so many amazing friends, we hope to welcome them for a visit in Toulouse someday.

Mara and I spent some time in Ventura so she had plenty of time with the family, and even had a day at the (outrageously expensive) Ventura County Fair… an ice cream cone was $13!

We celebrated Mara’s third birthday at this unbelievable home my sister was house sitting that we deemed the “party house,” it was a great time! The weather was perfection and everyone loved the pool and beautiful grounds of the home. Since Mara is not a fan of cake, we just went with candles in ice cream 🙂

No summer trip to California would be complete without a few beach days, so we fought for parking (can’t believe this is a thing even in Ventura now!) and enjoyed the sun, sand, and waves!

Wylie and I managed to get away for a weekend to Santa Monica while my mom spent the weekend with Mara. And just by chance we found out our good friends Liz and Hector would also be in Santa Monica that weekend, so somehow with about 24 hours notice we managed a kids free weekend with friends!

Next comes all the prep for our next move. We had so much to do, including selling, gifting, and donating lots of our stuff and then packing up what we would ship to Toulouse. We decided to just ship boxes rather than a pallet or larger shipment, meaning that we would get all of our stuff quickly, but we wouldn’t be sending anything that couldn’t fit into a 25kg capacity moving box. In true Fullerton fashion, it was HOT when we were packing and we had no space to pack inside so we did the best we could with pop tents and umbrella borrowed from friends and neighbors to make the sun manageable. To be fair we had just come from Sweden so our sun and heat resilience was quite a bit lower than it had been.

We packed our suitcases for the last time and then it came time to say our goodbyes, and wow this time was different. Teary is an understatement, but somehow we managed and promised to plan the next visit soon after we settled.

The flights to Toulouse were uneventful. It’s amazing how much easier long haul traveling is becoming now that Mara’s a little older. After the long flights, we were so excited to finally arrive at our apartment! It was bright, sunny, and just waiting for us to start settling in. Mara was very excited to see her room, her very own room with her stuff. It was clear from the first moments that she felt right at home, and so did we. We were very luckily to have no delays in our flights because just a few hours after we got to our apartment our boxes arrived! We expected it to take up to a week so it was a very pleasant surprise to have our stuff so soon.

With only two weeks until Mara started school, we were eager to get things in order. So for the next few days, as we battled through some pretty rough jet lag, we unpacked, stocked the fridge, planned our most urgent apartment projects, bought appliances and furniture, accepted deliveries, assembled furniture, and had our orientation meeting at Mara’s new school. Oh Mara also got pink eye on our second or third day, but thanks to the amazing health care in the France we got an urgent video appointment, diagnosis, and picked up antibiotics in the span of 2 hours. Incredible! While there was a ton to do, it somehow wasn’t too stressful, we immediately felt at ease here in Toulouse and excited to start our lives in France.