We started the New Year jumping in the ocean in Monterey. We hiked to see elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park during their birthing/mating season. And the next day I was sick with Covid. We spent the next few weeks testing and quarantining. My kids ate a lot of McDonalds, since I had to bribe them to get their noses swiped. Finally everyone went back to school and work.
Hyrum and I spent a week at "JFAOC"-- which was a training course for his new career path as a foreign area officer, with spouses.
I ran an 11-mile race in Big Sur. The training runs along the coastal trail were as beautiful as the run itself and I was proud for pushing my body that far, while managing plantar fasciitis pain and recovering from a sprained ankle.
The kids spent every afternoon at the playground with neighbor friends. We were so spoiled and didn't take it for granted. That involved nerf guns, laser tag, sports, pokemon cards, and sword fights. They started walking home from school independently (1 mile) and each practiced the piano 5 minutes a day.
In March they finally got to take their masks off in school. That felt like a turning point. Tiago finished the year in his Spanish school and was happy to be done. Mila and Siena participated in their school play, Aristocats.
Enzo had his first visit to the E.R. for croup. While waiting for him to be seen by the doctor I was reading on my phone about how Russia just invaded Ukraine.
The girls had an Encanto-themed bday party, which was only appropriate given how much we listened to the soundtrack.
We visited Utah in March for a family reunion, which involved lots of hot tubbing, ping pong and foosball. Everything is better with cousins.
Hyrum graduated from Defense Language Institute in French, with a great speaking score. He went from not even knowing "au revoir" the year before to being completely fluent.
I spent January through May worrying about our upcoming move, and it proved every bit as stress-worthy as I feared. We only had plane tickets a few weeks before leaving. (They subsequently changed about a dozen times.) My biggest concern was finding housing for 6 people within our budget. And navigating a city with 4 kids and no car. I escaped the worry for a weekend going to San Francisco with friends. We rode segways down Lombard Street at dusk.
The day before moving out of our house Tiago and I went to pick up pizza and stopped at the beach spontaneously on the way home. Out on the horizon we spotted a few whales surfacing and blowing out water. It was incredible, and was a perfect send-off from our beautiful home.
We went to visit family in Utah for 5 days, and ended up staying 2.5 months waiting for our visas to be approved. It was a wonderful, weird summer that didn't go as planned.
As a result we got to go camping with cousins, learn to swim and go off the high dive, eat chips and salsa from grandma's food storage (until it ran out quickly), reap the benefits of Grandma's garden, visit splash pads & lakes and attend the temple frequently. Hyrum spent a week in the Alps in Germany for work.
Mid-August we received our visas and headed to Paris, just in time to adjust to the time zone and have the kids start school. We packed WAY too many tourist things into the end of summer. Eiffel Tower, Saint Chapelle, Sacre Coeur, Arc de Triomph, Louvre, Luxembourg and Tuileries, Pere Lachaise cemetery, etc.
We spent nearly a month in a hotel trying to get an apartment lined up. We learned to grocery shop nearly daily and carry our stuff home in reusable bags. Groceries always include at least one baguette. And figuring out grocery delivery nearly changed my life.
The kids absolutely love their English-speaking Catholic school. It's a small community that's incredibly nurturing. I spent 3 weeks trying to navigate french bureaucracy trying to get Enzo enrolled in french maternelle (kindergarten for 3-yr olds). My level of annoyance enrolling him matches his loathing for being forced to leave the house daily and attend school in french. But it's keeping me sane.
We spent a weekend in Normandy with family, but Hyrum has been the primary traveler; he is focused on traveling around Europe and learning about the region he will be assigned to for the next decade. Tough gig. Most of his trips have been cold-- it was -30 f when he went to Kazakhstan. Hopefully we will join him for a few trips in 2023.
It feels like we've been plagued with sicknesses throughout the year. Covid in January. Stomach bugs through the summer. Siena tested positive again for Covid the first week of school. And Enzo has had more fevers this fall than I can count on one hand, plus ear infections, and what appeared to be RSV. Half of us were hit with sickness Christmas morning, which only felt fitting for 2022.
For Thanksgiving we spent two days at Disneyland Paris. The kids had a big sense of, "Oh, THIS is what Disneyland is." They laughed and they cried. Overall, very happy.
We took a quick Christmas trip to Colmar, one of the most Christmas-y towns in France, on the border of Germany. It's full of timbered houses, fun colors, and shuttered windows. Christmas decorations everywhere. We (mostly me) also visited most of the Christmas markets around Paris, eating plenty of tartiflette, churros, apple cider and crepes.
It feels like a dream that we've been able to live in both Monterey, CA and Paris, France. (Very un-Army, if you know anything about their normal duty stations!) We traded the natural beauty of the coast for urban life in one of the most iconic cities in the world. Plenty of challenges along the way, but a very rewarding year!
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