first moments

god is good...

this has been the most trying statement the last week. my heart and mind want to follow this statement and believe every aspect to the littlest part. sometimes i am so consumed by the last 168 hrs (7 days) that i lose focus even for a second on what the whole reason i moved here to begin with was. both excitement and fear gripped me for this endeavor. so at any one time my emotions were either on a high or in the valley of despair.

the travel was perfect. liz and i have both traveled quite a bit alone and with our kids and i know if there is an opportunity to travel without kids we will take it. however, there was no option this time. we boarded the flight on british airways and were very excited about the opportunity to be entertained by tv without having to pay. the only thought was if the kids were not doing well then it would require us to forget about salt, or robin hood and put our full attention on dutch or titus. the trip across the pond was fantastic. we made it without any "screaming incidents." they both fell asleep 5 minutes into the flight for nearly an hour and a half. granted it took me nearly 4 hours to watch robin hood i was glad that it was not because i had a screaming kid who needed me every few seconds. we arrived in london and quickly boarded the flight to brussels without missing a beat. upon our arrival in brussels national airport we were greeted with the reality that not all of our luggage made it on the our flight from heathrow. we had no way of getting in touch with anyone outside the airport to let them know and i couldn't leave my wife with our two kids and nearly 10 pieces of heavy luggage. so by the time i found out about where our luggage was it was nearly time for them to arrive on the next flight from heathrow. naturally we decided to wait for it. well, all of a sudden, nearly 1 hour and 30 minutes after landing jon vandeput comes with a security agent looking for us because he was worried about us. we kindly explained the situation to him and he was escorted back out of the baggage area. the first moments in the car on the way home from the airport were absolutely amazing. the thoughts of us doing this were real and at that moment it did not seem to be all that challenging. as my family would soon find out, our opposition was about to become greater...