“I just want to go home 😭😭😭”

👆 That's what I said to Carl yesterday morning. 

Want to know what he said in response that made me immediately burst out laughing (while also still crying)? 

“Steph… I hate to tell you, but we don't have a home.”

👇👇👇

When I was packing our bags to head to Spain, I sort of envisioned us unpacking them sooner rather than later. I packed them thinking that they'd stay packed for a week or two — not that we'd be living out of those packed bags for a month. But that's where we are.

I counted yesterday. In the last month, we have slept in 10 different places. Me, Carl, and my three-year-old twins — we've unpacked and slept and repacked ten different times since leaving home a month ago. 

Have you ever had a big event in your life where you legitimately can't picture life after it's over? That's how I felt with my book coming out in April. I couldn't picture life after April 30th. I thought about that day for so long, it was hard to believe that May 1st would eventually come. 

That's also how I felt about getting to Spain. It took so much planning and coordination to get ourselves here, and I had plans for where we'd stay for the first ten days while we house hunted and tried to get settled. But then I thought… I don't know… that we'd be settled?

But that's not exactly how it's worked out. Instead, we did find an apartment (and a wonderful one, at that!), but it wasn't available right away — so we had to figure out what to do with ourselves and all of our stuff in between moving out of our first AirBnb and moving into our apartment 12 days later. 

That week it was supposed to be HOT here in Andalucia, like, 100+, and so our first instinct was to get OUTA here. That's what Kelsey and Tyler and their kids did. They headed north. But they roadtripped and we weren't thrilled about the idea of 10+ hours in the car at the moment, and so we split off and did our own thing. We started out by staying in a cheap AirBnb in the center of Granada (close to where our apartment is, actually. That was fun because it helped us start to get to know the area!).

Then, we rented a car and drove to Cordoba. The idea was that we were going to stay in a cave house. I've ALWAYS wanted to, the property had a pool on it, and I figured a cave would be a cool refuge in the heat of the Spanish summer.

That's not exactly what happened though.

We arrived at the cave house and my jaw hit the floor — the most gorgeous place I have ever *almost* slept. However, within the first hour of us being there, I saw two of the most gigantic spiders I've ever seen (EVER), on the cave walls, RIGHT next to the curly blonde heads of my little girls.

Nope. I cannot.

Now, apparently they never see spiders in there. They treat for them constantly, and our spider spotting was a total fluke. But I just knew I couldn't relax there. My girls had gotten a few mosquito bites when we were in Chicago (in the heart of the city!), a few weeks before, and their little arms swelled up immediately. They just have the most sensitive skin, and I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep with even just the possibility of them getting bitten by a spider.

So we left. (First we got to explore a cave on the property that was absolutely gigantic — it was a quarry, I believe, going all the way back to roman times!).

But THEN we left and found a little apartment in the heart of Cordoba. It wasn't the cheapest decision — considering we weren't able to get our money back from the initial Airbnb — but I'm still glad we made the decision because A. Our new place was LOVELY. Right in the heart of the most picturesque part of Cordoba. and B. Because it was clean and had a/c which was perfect because a day later, I got sick.

It's always funny to me how our bodies sometimes know things our minds don't. My mind feels pretty good. I don't feel that stressed — especially considering that we're basically backpacking with three-year-olds right now. But I guess my body feels differently because a few nights ago I started realizing, “Oh no… my throat is definitely getting a little scratchy.” 

The next morning it was a full-on cold, complete with fever and aches and chills. 

I felt awful and the only thing I want when I'm feeling that bad is to be at home… a little complicated since we don't currently have one.

Our apartment in Cordoba was a good substitute though, and I was craving comfort so much, I am not even one bit embarrassed to tell you that one night we ordered Dominos for dinner. (Things you can do when you move to a different country instead of just visiting for a few days!)

Not only was our cave adventure a bit of a bust, but when we arrived in Cordoba, we looked around and were like, “Where IS everybody?” Lots of things in Spain are closed in July and August, but TONS of things were closed in Cordoba, and there were very few people walking around at most times of day.

Finally, I discovered that Cordoba is the #2 hottest city in Spain — so we had accidentally escaped the heat of Granada by going into an even hotter place. 🤦🏼‍♀️🤪 Again, grateful for that ac.

I felt better after a day or two and we headed back to Granada, got to pick up our keys, and move into our apartment!

And today I'm SO happy to get to say, we officially live here. We have a lease, an address, closets that are unpacked, we've done an Ikea run, bought toilet paper, we are home, and I'm so happy about it.

(Pictures of our apartment coming soon!)

On the subject of home and not really having one for a while… here are a few things I've been thinking about:

1. Home can mean a lot of things.

Right now, home is my people. We don't have a place that's ours — not yet anyway — but we have each other, and until I ended up getting sick a few days ago, that was totally enough.

It's amazing how resilient we have been able to be — how resilient the girls have been able to be. We just sort of pack up our little circus and set it up somewhere else. We still live life the same way no matter where we are. No matter what bed they're sleeping in, we still know the bedtime stories the girls want to read, the PJs they prefer, the exact number of toys and stuffed animals they want surrounding them at night. 

Being so untethered hasn't left us feeling as untethered as I would have imagined — and that's been a cool thing to realize.

I was talking to my friend Kacie about the girls and how they're doing and how I really thought all of this transition would be harder on them. What she said will always stick with me. “Steph, that's just a testament to how attached they are to you and Carl. As long as they're with you, they're home.” 

2.  Parenting is parenting is parenting — life is life is life — no matter where it happens. 

When the girls were first born, I was terrified to go anywhere. I was so totally out of my comfort zone as a new mom, I felt like the only way to find some solid ground was to be in my comfort zone in every other way. I wanted to be at home, I wanted all of the right stuff around me (and organized the exact right way!) all the time. 

I couldn't imagine taking our twins anywhere — I can barely do this at home, let alone anywhere else! And yes, for a while that was true.

Cut to this morning.

We found this cute little breakfast spot in Cordoba that had tables right next to the facade of a small cathedral. It was the quintessential Spanish morning I've spent years dreaming about, and I was so excited to dig into my tostada con marmelada and cafe con leche and share the experience with my little family.

Except, my girls had other ideas. They just basically lost their ever-loving-three-year-old-minds.

Any chill, any sense of decorum or respect or obedience or just general self-control that they might have — they temporarily misplaced it, because they were just WILD this morning.

They didn't want to sit, didn't want to eat anything — not even the waffle with Nutella we tried to give them. They had the audacity to look at it and say, “Ewww YUCK!” Are you kidding me!? Nobody looks at a Nutella waffle and says yuck. Back me up here. Right? They're just plain wrong.

So anyway, I'm trying to navigate breakfast with these wild little ones, and as I looked at my cafe con leche and up at the cathedral, I remembered that a moment like this was one of the things I was nervous about in coming to Spain.

“Man, if breakfast is hard in the US, with all the comforts of home — how will it be somewhere else?”

And this morning I realized… it's the same. 

Breakfast (and basically every meal!) was challenging at home — and it's challenging here too. It's basically the same. And so with that in mind, where would I rather fight the meal battle? Probably while sipping a cafe con leche at the foot of a cathedral in Cordoba, Spain. (Just my personal preference).

It was just this cool moment of realizing that life is life is life — no matter where you live it.

Also, toddlers are toddlers are toddlers and parenting is parenting is parenting — being in your comfort zone doesn't actually make it that much easier — at least it didn't for me.

And that realization is really freeing for me. Is it for you?