Oh. My. Gosh, SO much has happened in the last few weeks. It's been a whirlwind — and… I haven't kept you updated on any of it. 🤦🏼‍♀️ So, let's catch up.

So, you know how a few months ago, I released a book about decisions and transitions? I'm SO grateful for all of that work and research and learning I did for that book, because this last week, I've had to put it into practice!

This was our first summer navigating a traditional school schedule — meaning that the girls were at home for the summer but would be going to school in the fall. And for us here in Spain, the fall starts mid-September.

I'd heard parents talk before about the impossibleness of summer. School (and all of your childcare except for wildly expensive camps you need to sign kids up for in January to reserve a spot), is completely on pause.

The kids are on vacation. Woohoo!

But you know who's not on vacation? You!

You still have all of your normal work, normal life, but now you have your kids home with you 24/7 and they need to be cared for, entertained, occupied, AND, let's take a minute to mention the mommy bloggers on Instagram that have the audacity to make you feel like a bad mom if you haven't packed every bit of the summer full of memorable fun and enjoyed every single moment of the time with your kiddos. (Because, after all, you only have ___ summers left with them at home!) 

Rant Over 🤪

It was a long summer. A good summer, but a long one. 🫠

And not just because we picked up our whole family and moved across an ocean.

It was a long summer because all of that is a lot to do with a three-year-old wrapped around each leg.

I knew I would take most of July off from work — I didn't realize how little I'd be able to work in August and even into September.

(Just sharing all of that to A. Keep it real, and B. For solidarity with anyone else in the same boat!) 

WHERE WILL THE GIRLS GO TO SCHOOL??

We came to Spain not knowing where the girls were going to go to school. We had visited several private schools when we were visiting back in November — and fell in love with basically all of them. 

We wanted to visit some public schools too, but I still don't know if that's a thing people really do. I think most people go to their local school — instead of scour the whole town for the school that might fit their kid best. We reached out to different public schools about coming in for a tour while we were here in November, but didn't really hear back. If we wanted to go that route, we were going to have to figure it out once we got here.

Of the schools we were looking at, there were some we weren't looking at. We collectively (Kelsey and Tyler — my best friend and her husband who we're here in Spain with, and my husband Carl and I) decided that we wanted the kids to go to a Spanish school with Spanish teachers and Spanish kids. One of our main motivations for coming here is for us all to work on our Spanish. So we crossed all American, British, and International schools off our list right away.

Which… begs the question: Wait, if you're sending your kids to school that's run entirely in Spanish, where everyone speaks only Spanish… do they speak Spanish already?

No. 😳

They all know a few words, but not enough to have a conversation or ask for what they need. Which… sounds terrifying, right? BUT, we know that kids are SPONGES and that they're super adaptable. Everything we've learned about kids learning a second (or third or fourth) language is that they pick them up really easier, the younger they are the better, and that immersion is the quickest way. So, into the deep end they go.

(With a thousand hugs and high fives for being so brave, of course!!) 

 So, can I tell you the craziest thing about looking for schools here?

Everyone had space for us!

In the US, in order to get spots in daycare, we sat on waiting lists for two plus years only to learn that we were never going to get off of it, we waited in line starting at 3am not once but TWICE to get spots in two other ones, and we lamented more than once that we didn't get the girls on a waitlist the second we found out we were pregnant — because that's actually what it takes in Nashville.

But not here.

I brought all of my frantic, omgosh-please-have-space-for-my-children energy into these different schools, and all of them told me the same thing:

“Tranquila! Hay plazas. No te preocupes!” (Relax! There are spots. Don't worry!) If these schools should learn one thing about American parents, it's that we're the opposite of tranqila when it comes to school for our kids. WE don't want to be this way — it's just what the system has required of us for so long!)

So, before we even moved to Granada, we had to decide — public or private? The private schools needed our decision. Do we go with the private school that we'd seen and LOVED, but that's 15 minutes outside the city and would require us to buy a car? Or do we roll the dice on a public school that we have heard great things about but haven't actually been able to visit?

Ultimately, we took the leap and decided on public school — mostly because we really didn't want to have to buy (or drive!) a car.

So we arrived in Spain having no idea where our kids were going to go to school. 🤪

School was one big consideration as we were living out our own personal version of House Hunters International this summer. Where's the closest school? What's its reputation? How will we get there?

We wanted to make sure there was a school close by, and, we wanted to find a school we could both go to together. 

We figured that our kids (and us too!) were going through enough transitions — we didn't want to have to navigate them separately. 

It was this weird game of Tetris we were trying to play together. If you take house A and we take house B, we can both go to this school, right? But what if you take house C and we take house A, then what does that do for schools?

The problem was, even once we found apartments to rent, we still weren't able to answer the school question because they were all closed for the summer.

And not just kinda closed, like, really closed. Especially in August.

AUGUST IS FOR VACATION:

I didn't know this before arriving in Spain, but the whole country essentially shuts down for August. (That really is only a slight exaggeration). The city empties out, everyone goes on vacation, stores and restaurants close, everyone is OOO for the month.

So we watched the school year rapidly approach still not having the kids signed up for school — really hoping that they'd have spots for them, but honestly, having no idea.

So, we went to France for the last week of the summer, and tried to take our mind off of it.

Finally — the first Monday in September arrived. The schools were open, the year would start the following Tuesday, and we were told we should just show up and ask them if we could enroll. Cool, cool, cool.

There was one school closest to both of our houses — ours and Kelsey's — and we figured, that was probably our spot. 

But it turns out it wasn't. It really didn't have any of the things we knew we were looking for. So… now what?

We had our work cut out for us. We all dove in deep, Googling and emailing and every morning walking to one or two schools to ask some administrator or teacher (who totally didn't have time for it, and did I mention, Spanish people don't do this?!) to show us around and tell us about the school. Everything else was on hold. Nobody did any work, and our minds were overflowing with pros and cons and different scenarios of where the kids could go and what that would mean for them and for our lives here.

Six school tours later, we had to make a decision.

Some schools felt homier than others. How much does that matter? Some schools were slightly bigger than others. Again, does that matter to us? One school had a great lunch option with a cook that the kids could take advantage of — others had sack lunches brought in if you wanted to opt in for that. Do we care about that? 

Someone heard that Spanish schools give kids a ton of homework. Is that true? (No, at least not at the schools we were considering). Would they be cool with us having a fair amount of absences (while we have family visiting and also while we travel)? Do the schools have anyone on staff that speaks English, just in case? One school didn't have an English program at all — they were bilingual, but in French. Do we want the kids learning Spanish AND French at the same time? (Probably not, right? That's a LOT!)

And no matter how much information we were able to gather — we were still going to have to make a decision without knowing how it was really going to play out.

I hate that, but that's basically always the case. Marriage, kids, a new job, buying a house, moving to a new city — you make the best decision with the information you have, but you really don't have any way of seeing the end of the story you're about to live before you choose to begin it.

We were STRESSED. 🫠

This decision was important. REALLY important.

We all wanted the kids to feel safe and loved and cared for — we wanted them to be comfortable and to have fun and to enjoy their time at school. We also didn't want to be far away from them. We wanted to be close by for their peace of mind and for ours as well. We also didn't want to write a check we'd be so annoyed to have to cash several times each day. (WHYYYY did we sign up for a 30-minute walk each way!?)

There was also the issue of the paperwork we needed. Before we left the states, we made sure to get every document we could possibly think of. I even had the girls shot records from their pediatrician's office. 

But it turns out we also needed documents from the city as well. We had to do this process called Empadronamiento (which is a LOT of syllables to say out loud, for the record).

And, to be honest, I'm still not totally sure what it is.

It's like, registering where you live in the city? Something like that? But what I DID understand was that it was important. We couldn't enroll in any school without it. We found out we needed it on Monday of that week, and so with just days to go before school started we had to find an office that had appointments (very few did), gather our documents, take a taxi across town, and Carl and I arrived only to find out that I'd made the wrong kind of appointment. 

We walked through a noisy room toward a grumpy man who sat behind a thick piece of plastic, leftover from Covid, that had a small hole at the bottom of it. And in the fastest, mumbliest Spanish I've ever heard, he informed me that I'd scheduled the wrong type of appointment. The thing I'd scheduled an appointment for was a 2-minute process, and what we actually need would take about 20. He just wasn't going to have time to help us.

Lo siento.

Did I mention that our kids couldn't enroll in any school until we had this piece of paper? Did I mention that school was supposed to start in 4 days? Did I mention how long this summer has felt and how ready we are (and THEY are!) to have a little bit of space from each other and get to hang out with people our own age? Did I mention how long it's been since I've been able to work?

So I begged. I told him I'd wait as long as I needed to, and if he had a break between appointments, I'd be so grateful. I sat in the waiting room (making sure he could still see me, and I made sure to keep my face looking slightly panicked, slightly pathetic, and very desperate).

After about 30 minutes, he rolled his eyes and waved me forward. 

I'm not 1000% sure what happened in that appointment. Again, SUPER fast Spanish on a topic I know nothing about in a room that was VERY noisy with a thick sheet of plastic between us.

BUT, alas, we got it. (And we were pals by the end of it!)

We got our Padron. (Again, what does that mean? Not 100% sure). And we could register for school.

But, what school were we going to go to!?

It was Friday afternoon and we still hadn't picked.

For Kelsey and Tyler it was super important that they find a school that had at least a FEW English speakers. Their boys are older and are more likely to feel afraid, lonely, embarrassed, and confused. They have more context, more experience, more awareness of themselves and how comfortable they feel (or don't feel) in a new place. 

Kelsey and Tyler thought that having ONE English speaking kid in their class would help tremendously. And so they basically scoured the city to find that.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, they found one. It was a school about 12 minutes away from them who had a few international families attending, and each of the boys classes had one or two kids who spoke English. 

Sold.

The problem was… that school is 20 minutes away from us. 

So now the decision was ours. We wanted to go to school together. We wanted the kids to have the comfort of knowing that their friends were in the building. We wanted the comfort of being able to navigate a new school system in a different country in a different language together. 

As much as we didn't want it to be true, we just knew that 20 minutes was too far.

So… we decided on different schools.

Kelsey and Tyler's kids are at a fantastic public school — and yes, each of the boys has an English speaker in class, just in case they get super lost or stuck.

We're at an equally fantastic charter school about 9 minutes from our house. There's less of an international presence at our school (not much of one, actually), but because the girls are younger and because they have each other, we weren't as worried about them needing a friend in class. We've all come to the conclusion that the two people who are in the best position to thrive in a new country with a new language are the three-year-olds. It's the grown-ups who are going to struggle the most, for sure!

Our school has the great lunch room with the cook and we're really hoping that some space from us and a healthy dose of seeing their peers do it will help the girls become slightly less picky eaters. 

They also have uniforms, which is a gift from the Lord I didn't know to ask for.

No battles about what we want to wear in the morning, same thing every day, yes and AMENNNNN to that! 

And, as a fun surprise, a little girl in their class's mom is from England and so she speaks great English! The teachers didn't even know!

We picked a school — but could we get in??

Okay but here's the thing. Kelsey and Tyler decided on their school on Friday afternoon, were able to go in and register the boys, no problem. 

We decided about an hour after them, brought in our paperwork, and thought we'd be good to go — only to find out that because our school is a charter school, there's this other step that has to happen. We had to wait for some sort of approval, and it could be a few days.

So maybe we weren't starting school on Tuesday? Also — were we going to get in?? Or was school going to start for everyone else and we'd have to join somewhere else late because it turns out we couldn't do this one? 

(Did I mention that my Spanish vocabulary has a significant gap when it comes to words pertaining to the education system at an organizational/governmental level? So the woman at the front desk told me what process we were waiting on, I asked for clarification, and still walked out of there totally unsure about what was happening.)

My stomach was in KNOTS all weekend, and the knots reached epic proportions by Monday morning. I wanted to prep the girls for school — wash and brush their hair, for one, but also mentally and emotionally prep them. But not knowing if they would actually start the next day, I didn't want to gear up and say, “You're going to school tomorrow!” and then have to take it all back.

Tuesday morning, we still hadn't heard anything, so we settled into it being a normal day. Our sweet babysitter came over (we LOVE her!) for a few hours, and Carl and I headed off to do some work.

I sat down, ordered a cafe con leche and then my phone rang.

We were in, they were ready for us, we could come and fill out all the paperwork and get the girls' uniforms. We were welcome to jump in for the shortened first day — the kids just had to be there at noon.

It was 10am.

I called Carl and we sped-walked the 9 minutes to the school, sweatily gathering stacks of paperwork we needed to fill out and guessing at what size uniform the girls would need.

Then we RAN home, uniforms in hand, and tried to cover our franticness with a facade of calm and excitement. “Hey girls, change of plans! We're going to start school today! Oh, and you're going to wear uniforms! And here they are. And we need to leave in 20 minutes!”

It was chaos, but we made it.

….

We made it.

…

deep breath.

…

We made it. 

As of today, we're a full week into school, and it's been going great.

While we're not at the same school as Kelsey and Tyler's kids, our schools are in the same neighborhood, which means we see each other at dropoff and pickup. 

The girls have a truly fantastic teacher — who loves them so much already (and who gave me her personal number — just to make sure we settle in okay!). They have their surprise English speaking friend in class to help them out (which I'm super grateful for!) and they're already coming home saying Spanish words that I know for a fact I didn't teach them.

There were some tears at dropoff those first few days — and that would have happened in Nashville as well. But actually, by Friday, they were confidently holding each other's hands and walking into school on their own — eyes dry.

Like I said at the beginning, I'm so glad that I just wrote a book about how to figure out what YOU want and need and then make confident decisions, because I've NEEDED those lessons this last week.

It was hard looking at a whole bunch of different paths and trying to figure out which one was right for us. It was extra hard to have four of us trying to do that all at the same time, and coordinate with each other. (Which, we really were able to do for most of it. It went great. I am so grateful the four of us are a little team!).

But then, the hardest part was realizing that we needed different things for our families. We had to part ways and make different decisions — even though we were both sad and scared at the prospect.

Can you relate?

Friend, if you struggle making decisions, if you struggle to figure out what you want, if you're so inundated with what everyone else thinks you should do or what you've always thought you're “supposed to do” that you can't even imagine another way — my new book is for you.

Create A Life You Love is the book I needed when picking a college, a major, graduating from college, getting my first job, getting laid off from my first job, figuring out who I wanted to marry, if I wanted to have kids, and then how I want to raise those kiddos. I used everything from this book SO much this last week (and really, over the last two months, and year, and two years, and longer).

My mission in life is to be who I needed when I was younger, and this book is what I've needed. So if you're in a season of transition or trying to make some big life decisions, I'd love to share it with you!

You guys — thank you for coming on this journey with me. Thank you for reading, thank you for caring, thank you for being in my corner, and no matter what you're going through right now – what decision you're trying to make or transition you're working through, I want you to know that you're not alone.

The Everything Era (this time in life when we have to figure out everything all at the same time!) is HARD, but thankfully, we don't have to do it alone.

Forever grateful to have you in my corner and to get to be in yours.

All my love,

Steph

(Now, ordering another coffee and then meeting up with Kelsey for lunch in a while, because our kids are in SCHOOL!!!!! 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 )