Welcome to harmony's Roundeo.

After months of hard work, rejection, and patience, we got accepted to a BIGGER apartment! Spencer has done much work and I'm so grateful for him and for our answered prayer!

We have honestly looked at at least a dozen apartments and applied to probably half, maybe applied to less, as most of them were either out of price range or just not acceptable for various reasons. The night we looked at this apartment, I honestly had a good feeling about it. When we were walking to it, a thought in my heart in mind came, "this is it." But of course our experience here with apartment hunting and rejections told me to keep all hope at bay.

In looking at apartments here there's always a compromise, well, this is nice, but it is old and dirty, or it has no balcony, or the washer and dryer have to be cramped into the kitchen, or the layout is super funky and not very functional, etc. Or of course, the price is too high, or the location isn't so great.

But God had a good thing waiting for us. This apartment has the required 3 bedrooms and 2 toilets (with 4 potty-users it's become quite stressful at times, especially for a certain girl with short blond hair who screams and cries when it is not available when she wants it), and a nice layout, a balcony, room for washer&dryer in the bathroom, parking is not required (which adds around 250/month to the price of an apartment!). the kitchen is probably a slight improvement, and GET THIS, it's close by and LESS than what we pay now! (unless we do decide we need to parking, in which case our rent would then only be 100 more per month than it is now).  It's actually close enough that it is the same distance in the opposite direction from Cado's school. Although it's actually on another planet, Planete Charmilles. heheh, I'm a dork. (Planete Charmilles is the shopping center). We are actually hoping to keep the kids in the same schools, though I am already doubting my ability to do that as it would mean being very disciplined and all the weight of it would be on me, no more pedibus (parents sharing taking kids to and from school. school here goes from 9 to 11:30, then kids go home for lunch, and back from 1:30 to 4:00! ugh. Cado stays for "parascolaire" two days a week which means he doesn't come home in the middle)

We had previously made a decision to accept KPMG's proposal and stay until October of 2010 (here), and as part of that decision we hoped to be able to move into a bigger place. After we said yes, they said we realized it doesn't make sense for us to let you go in October, right after the unproductive summer and right before the busy season when we need you the most. They said they would extend him not through October but through the end of busy season. We took their proposal to prayer and personal discussion and decided to take their offer but to stay through the end of the kids' school year. We will be here until early summer 2011. It was a really hard decision because we miss our families and friends and living in America for lots of reasons. When Spencer first told me I honestly moaned. I had a plan, and I wanted to stick to it, and 2011 just sounded weird and too far away. But after discussing all  the pros and cons, we ended up feeling good about staying the extra 8 months.

So, yeah, it's a really great thing that we got this apartment. I HATE moving, who doesn't? But for that extra space and the financial benefits, it will be worth it. Now it's crunch time. We will move in in just a couple of weeks and have obviously done no preparations yet as we just got the news yesterday.  We can live there from the 15th on. Then we fly to the states on the 19th! sheesh. We will be very ready for our vacation!