2,3,4....week

Monday, February 3rd - The 1st container arrived.

It was somewhat dramatic because it was huge and they could not pull into our side street.  They had to park on the main road.  They lifted container of the truck and then mover guys started brining box by box - 244 of them.  Most surprising thing was that movers or any other maintenance person, takes their shoes off when entered into the house.

The boys also started school on Monday, February 3rd.  Here are a few photos:

Tallinn European School (TES)

Cameron got his 1st locker ever.  It's a bog dear for a third grader.  Tad likes to take mini naps after school in the taxi and Mag is making a project - painting a plastic bottle black and then he would add eyes and posibly a tail.

Friday, February 7th - we received six long waited guest from Lithuania: Jurgitas mom and dad, brother Darius, white Ingrida and cousins Dite and Une.  What a fun weekend we all had.

One of many fun things we did was try our "Russian" style sauna in the house.  Here is a link for more info: Russian "banya" So the sauna is heated by burning wood which heats the stones that are in the sauna room, then you poor some water on hot stones and produce more heat and steam.  But we had no matches to fire up the stove :-)  - that's a problem.  I search high and low and finally found some in my make-up bag (not sure why there were in there, but I tend to had odd things around with me)

Meeting with Lithuanian Ambassador to Estonia Neilas Tankevicius
Chris and I were asked by the US Ambassador Jeffrey D. Levine to represent him at the Lithuanian Independence day celebration.  It was a fun night for me to "un-confuse" most Estonian national Lithuanians that I am a Lithuanian but a Diplomat from USA.

Starting the week of February 25th - boys were assigned 4 private drivers to get them safely to school and back. Pick up at 7:30am school starts at 8:00am after school pick up at 2:50pm drop at the house 3:25pm Here is a photo of driver Raul

Driver Juri

Driver Enn

Ups a bit blurry - will try to retake:-)

Fourth driver is Joel

The Embassy did ice skating in old town Tallinn - we joined them for a whole 3hr. of fun, sweating, laughing and a few bruises at the end.  Everyone took a training walker to start with but it didn't take long to start trying to skate without help.  The boys didn't want to leave.  So because they liked it that much we promise to go back when they collect 30 gold behavior start as a brother team.  So far Magnas is -3, Cam and Tad +2.

Our 1st Day/Week In Tallinn, Estonia

First few:

When we walked into our new house there where all sorts of goodies and welcome messages.
Our fridge was stocked with food.  Home made pizza for the boys and salad with potato soup for us - compliments of our host family Tom and Karen.  They also gave us some local beer "Saku: and couple small bottles of Tallinn's famous liquor.  Chocolates and candy.
California Zinfandel was delivered from the Ambassador Levine with a note below:

We were all pretty tired when we got to our new house.  The boys were excited to run inside the house and see the pool.  Only to find out that the pool was closed for "repairs" :-)  Our host family Tom and Karen and their 4 boys came to welcome us.  They did a lot of work to get our house ready and to stock our fridge with food, so we didn't have to figure that out things right away in the new country.
Here are some pictures of our fist few hours in the house:

Icicles on the roof and Tads "Fart" gun next to him:-) 

Later we had someone to get sick :(((( there was a blue bucket to keep close just in case and we got snow from outside to put in zip lock bag for cooling treatment:-)  The boys thought that was so cool, they wanted to have snow in zip locks for the nest few days:-) everyone was just lounging around....

We took a short but lovely tour of Old Town Tallinn one Sunday

"Kompressor" is our boys favorite restaurant - it's a pancake house (lietiniu blynu svetaine).
Top right is a building of Lithuanian Embassy in Old Town.
Bottom left - winter or fall - this outdoor market of Estonia knit wear and other souvenirs is here all the time.
Bottom right - the enchanted trolly that takes you around old town.

The 1st week we lived with things out of our luggages but we waisted no time to find 

a Triathlon Club

http://www.21cc.ee/klubist/

Here is Cameron's 1st track practice

His coach name is Lina.  She is also a National Champion in 800m.

This is how it all started.....

It's early October 2013, the phone rings - it's Chris calling from Indonesia.  Few minutes into the conversation he asks me Would You Rather question: " Transfer to Frederick, MD office and we stay in our current house, or move to Tallinn, Estonia and we move everything overseas"? Without hesitation my answer was - Tallinn!

This photo was taken a few days after we told the boys about the move!
There were mixed emotions: Tadas and Magnas were excited but Cameron
was concerned about leaving his friends behind.

We created this blog not only to document and be able to remember our life in Europe but also for our family and friends to be able to follow us through this amazing journey.

A few things happened before we arrived in Tallinn:

Right before Thanksgiving we had a huge 8000 lbs. pack-out that went on for 4 days.  Should have been only 3 days but we got a big snow storm which granted us with additional day of chaos:

The cleaning lady with red rubber gloves - 8132 Sea Water Path never been this clean before:-)
Chris is helping our mover to pack his carbon bike safely into a huge box

On December 2 - my car was picked up and put on a ship to take a Atlantic cruise to Tallinn, Estonia

In November the whole family went to the White House for an exit photo (daddies last day on Presidential Protective Detail).  That was one of the most memorable days to be in the Oval Office and to be able to shake President Obamas hand.  

In December Chris and I attended our last Christmas party at the White House.

We had some amazing fair well parties:

100 Raw Oysters from Canada - scouted and provided by uncle Paul - What  a fun experience that was.  I have never tried opening on but there were so many that I need to help out and learn.  Even Tadas tried one - but didn't enjoy the texture yet.  Kylie was brave as well to eat one. 

The Neighborhood surprise moving away party. Given by Pam and Dennis Smith

Cameron had a really nice fair well at his school Deep Run Elementary

An awesome party at Moms and Adrians house

We had a good laugh when looked into translation of cake message:

Head Teed  means Good Riddance

But if you translate word by word the meaning is different

Head - Good

Teed - Roads

Koik Meie Armastus - All Our Love

A beautiful memorabilia presented by Rohde/ Miller families

This is our family bible - every time we get a little home sick we grab the book for some soothing comfort:-)
Thank you everyone for pouring your hearts and souls in to it - Dad and Carolyn for organizing it and Grayson for directing and editing! 

And here comes the big date - Columbia - Dulles- Amsterdam- Tallinn

One of 3 limos in our caravan - "Estonia or Bust"

Safe and Uneventful trip

I could not pass without taking a picture of the most pretty ladies bathrooms at the airport:-)