I Love You, California!

How many times do I have to say it?! She loves books!

In the box of books my parents recently sent was this toy that used to be ours when we were little. Adeline has been having fun with it! And notice the new two-piece jammies?! No tree pose in the mornings anymore!

We've really been enjoying the simple luxuries of being back home and our day to day routines. We love to start our day with books and looking out the window! We even got to go back to Kindergym! There's a no phones policy which I love, but I did snap a quick pick at the end of class today to show Will where it is we go to all the time. So fun, right?!

Grammy and Grandpa sent us a big box of books! They make a great mountain for climbing.

I wasn't joking - we really need a vacation from that vacation! We're still exhausted but thankful for all these snuggles. And Adeline is really loving our new living room set up and her full access to the shelves!

I missed these two so much! And apparently this is the way we eat now.

Do you ever wonder what life must be like in the Kusch household? Well, it's a lot of this!

I think we needed a vacation from this vacation! It has been so  nice to just relax and take the days slowly. We're finding joy in the little moments!

A while back I had to take apart Adeline's "jumpy chair" because she just couldn't be confined to such a space without throwing a fit. Now she's getting stable enough to use it as her activity table! I got it out from under her bed and now she can cruise around and play with her toys from the outer edge rather than inside which is so fun, though I dearly miss having her confined and not so mobile!!

We're home from our trip and it feels so good to be settling back in but we sure do have a lot of work to do, even with this "helper!"

We were up super early today to get to the airport. We had a perfectly Swedish guy, Gustav, as our driver. He actually had the car seat all hooked up and ready when he arrived and was just all around quintessentially Swedish. Our flight from Gothenburg to Copenhagen was quite easy, and we were delightfully surprised to find out that the SAS lounge had a whole kids play room! I think Adeline was in heaven! (And me too! A huge room filled with toys with a self serve snack buffet and wine on tap right outside?! Perfection!) Will had fun playing around with portrait mode and I'm putting all the pictures right here. Sorry, not sorry. Getting onto our next flight from Copenhagen to SFO was pretty easy and the first part of the flight wasn't so bad, but our little keiki slept for a mere forty-five minutes of an eleven hour flight. I just don't even have words any more. Thanks to my amazing husband for bouncing her u...

I can't believe our adventure has come to an end! And what an adventure it has been. Today started early for us - at 6:20am, because once again Adeline has gotten herself stuck in "tree pose" in her foot pajamas (we'll be order two piece sets upon landing!). At 7am I realized I never set the parking app to go the night before when Will got home from Amsterdam so he ran out quick to see if we had a ticket - phew! No ticket. So I set the app to go for parking until we were ready to leave, or so I thought because when we got out to the car there was a ticket. ugh! Good thing we're leaving Sweden tomorrow and they'll never be able to find us! Hans at Volvo said just to ignore it and that there was no way to pay the ticket online, that you had to go in to one of only a few places that accepts payments for tickets. Way too much work for us! But our day started nicely, enjoying the snowfall and sipping coffee while Adeline napped. Today was the firs...

It's amazing that somehow Will can always manage to make a trip into a work trip! He's been talking with some guys in Amsterdam who make protein concentrates out of raw crops. This is in line with what Will is working on to make protein from pongamia seeds, so he thought an in person meeting and tour of their laboratory would be beneficial. He got up early this morning to catch his 10am flight. On the way he saw hundreds of wind turbines in the North Sea. He also saw dozens of canals per acre when landing in the Netherlands. Will got a manual diesel Peugeot for his rental car, and headed to NIZO, about an hour away. He said the landscape makes Florida look hilly! haha. The weather was really crazy, sunny, then rainy, then back. And people were driving like jerks: lots of tailgating, swerving, passing, honking, etc. Thank goodness he made it through OK! After his meeting he had about an hour to explore Amsterdam. He found some traditional Dutch food of ma...