Happy New Year!

I hope each of you had a wonderful Christmas - we enjoyed a week of Christmas, celebrating with Jason's mom, stepdad and his sister's family, then Jason's dad, then Becca's family in turn. Oh and we did celebrate Katie's birthday too! It was a weeklong party. :-) It was especially sweet to get shored up on this family time before we head off on our new adventure across the Atlantic!

We feel like we still have more questions than we have answers, but some things are starting to come together:

-- Jason was officially official last week as ALL the approvals needed were finished and he is fully accepted by IBM (and who knows who else :-) ) to work (and get paid :-) ) in Spain.

-- All the paperwork needed for the immigration company to file for the work permit is in their hands (thanks to some serious hustle on Jason's part!), and they will file it all on Wednesday this coming week.

-- The immigration lady we are working with continues to tell us that that process will take 30-45 days, and then another week for the work visa. Only after receiving that work visa will we be able to move our stuff over to Spain. So it looks like we will be completely moved no sooner than mid February, and probably closer to the end of February. But this has changed several times already so we'll keep you posted :-).

-- We continue to hear from several places that things are coming together in an amazing fashion, that someone within IBM is really helping this paperwork along, that things never come through this fast, etc. We feel like it is continued confirmation that God is working out these details and that this is where He wants us to be. (and all this in spite of the last couple of weeks being smack in the middle of the holidays!)

-- Jason has some tentative January plans: He will go to Spain on Jan 7 to meet all his collegues in Madrid (including his new boss) and then will fly to Paris with his new boss to meet the reps in Paris (oo la la!). Since relationships are especially important in Europe, it is great that he will have this chance to meet everyone before jumping into the work. Then Jason will be home on the 12th for the next week. There is a conference in Orlando the week of the 21st, then he will be home again. After that it will just depend on the progress of the work visa as to when he heads back to Spain for good.

Again - we still have more questions than answers, but at least we can see some outlines of the details ahead :-)

Thank you again for following along with us on our adventure! We so appreciate the love and support we have felt from all of you!

Happy 2008!!

Becca for us 3.

We're Home and Happy Birthday to our Katie!

Started this post with a pretty pic of my sweetie in the Puerto del Sol.  It's the literal center of Madrid and Spain.  All roads begin numerically here.

Today is our girl's 4th birthday.  We had a fun day eating birthday cake for breakfast and generally celebrating all day.  It was very fun.  She rec'd some fun new toys that we all are excited about.  

We made it home on Thursday night and had a busy Friday... leaving for Austin at 3pm for a Christmas celebration with Jason's family.  It's Sunday and we made it home at about 4pm today.  We were exhausted on Thursday night, but were glad to be back in Texas.  Sadly... it's taken a few days for our bodies to get back on Central Time zone. Even still, it seems easier to go West than East.

We are gathering paperwork for the Immigration process.  We should have all they require in a week or so.  Then the process for the work visa is "30 to 45 days".  Pray that it miraculously goes quickly!

I'll talk with my new manager on Thursday (27th) and we'll try to hash out the plan in the interim. Should be interesting!

Well, it's 9pm and I'm going to bed.  My excuse is that it's 4am in Madrid.  :-)

Merry Christmas!!

Jason for we 3

Our work here is done...

Hello friends...

We are coming home tomorrow! :-)

Our to-do list prior to coming to Spain:

- Open a bank account (even if you can't read the contract)... check.

- Find a possible house to rent... check.

- Meet your new boss... nope. (never picked up his phone today - busy!)

- Criss-cross the area and wear out some shoe leather learning the new town and acting like tourists... check.

- Talk to a couple other Americans-in-Spain and get some good advice... check.

- Drink some good Spanish wine and eat at crazy times like the locals... check.

- Visit possible schools for Katie... 1/2 check... only saw one (and it's not near our likely home).

- Connect with a potential church to detemine if we might like their community... check.

Seriously, we have covered the vast majority of the items we were needing to get done. We are tired, but it's so nice to have seen our new home in great detail and to have a plan for where and how we'll live.

We are tired... did I mention that?!? It's been a great trip, but we stuffed a lot into a short amount of time. We are glad to be getting some sleep in a few moments and then coming home tomorrow! We arrive back in DFW at 9pm after a stop in Philly.

Glad to be coming home for Christmas and Katie's 4th birthday (23rd),
Jason and Becca

P.S. (Jason writing) Funny moment of the day is a bartender speaking to me FIRST in English. When I inquire, "How did you know I speak English?"... he answers, "You have fine features." What!! I was dumbfounded and wondering what type of restaurant/bar I was in... He went on to explain that we just look different. I could see what he was saying... but it was a real shocker to hear from a surly bartender. :-)

Exhaustion!!

Well... the relo company came through today. :-)

We spent the day criss-crossing rainy and cold Madrid looking for a house/apartment with Lynn our wonderful and English speaking relo agent. We looked at a few placed and loved 2 of them. We're working on the details and negotiating a bit on one of them. We'll see. It's a GREAT place. All things depend on my work visa from Spain, which can be a bit of a challenge to get in a reasonable amount of time. We did hear good news that it might be more like 6 weeks (rather than 6 months) Pray it's closer to 6 weeks. That means I get to see my family sooner.

In addition to a busy day looking at houses, we spent another 2 hours lunching and touring malls and grocery stores. It's likely getting a little weird for the Spanards to see us searching grocery shelves and then crying "EUREKA" and jumping up and down. :-) The best news is that we found JIF peanut butter. Major score. $10 for 16 oz though. Ouch! (note to self, pack peanut butter in checked bags)

We also found the entire selection of "Old El Paso" products. Apparently, they got the company catalog and ordered it all. Some of it will be good though. Better than no Mexican food/spices, for certain!

We are beat tonight. We found a new way to mess up a jetlagged body... it's called staying up till 2am doing email and such. Our bodies have no clue what time it is. lol...

Tomorrow we see a couple more houses and some other areas. We also might meet up with my new boss and seek to improve French-US relations. We'll let you know how it goes.

much love to you all,
Jason & Becca

Plan B!!!

(Jason writing)
Well, the relocation agent didn't get the information in time... so we spent a lovely morning drinking coffee and reading the paper in our hotel lobby. :-) We have been rushing them this week, so it wasn't a genuine surprise for us that the information was lost between our account manager in London and the office here in Madrid. The fact that Christmas is coming is not helpful. We sense that this place is about to shut down for a couple weeks.

So, we rented a car and went exploring on our own. We had some help from a local (wonderful) missionary couple who recommended people to talk with at The American School of Madrid. We made an appt with the assistant director and got a great tour. We then met (interviewed with??) the Headmaster of the school who was very pleased that I work for IBM and assured me he'd do all he can to admit our Katie. He mentioned that all the Embassy children and the NATO kids attend the school. It's a good one!

After that, we drove our small car (for which IBM paid $125 today) down some small streets to a small restaurant where the prices are BIG. $75 for a lunch that you'd pay $35 for in the US. It was good though!

After lunch, we went "all the way across town" to the IBM Headquarters office. It took an entire 20 minutes! (That doesn't count the 3 times we backtracked after getting what Becca calls "lost" and what Jason calls "too far on a road we know".) This place reminds me a lot of San Diego... except that the ocean is not nearby. The climate is very similar (dry) and the distances are closer than you think. The roadways are great for driving and my little Peugeot 207 was great fun.

Across the street from my office, we found a really nice and new mall. It was essentially the same as the Galleria in Dallas. Very nice. We shopped and explored for a couple hours. The highlight was a BIG grocery store where we spent an hour looking for all the things we'd buy at home. There were surprisingly many things we recognized. The ultimate was finding peanut butter. Yes... we 3 can now live in Espana.

Now we're back in our hotel. It's midnight here and 5pm in Texas. Please don't call our cellphone after 5pm. You know who you are... :-)

Jason and Becca

Jet Lag 101

OK - I had to put a second post up on a different topic. Last night we learned that we pretty much failed in our ability to handle the different time zone. :-)

We limped through the day yesterday, feeling extremely zony and definitely needing to sleep. :-) (we probably got 3 hours max on the plane!) So we ate lunch like the locals at 3 and then headed back to our room, getting back here around 6. Mistake #1. :-) Once we were sitting on our nice warm bed, there was just no staying awake much longer!! So we made ourselves stay awake until 7 and then fell right to sleep in our beautiful flat bed.

All good until 1:30 AM local time. We both woke up then and having slept 6 hours already AND it being 6:30 in the evening in Texas, we were WIDE AWAKE!!! Not good. :-) I was starting to freak out because we had successfully gotten ourselves on neither time zone - we had slept all day in Texas time, but only half the night in Spain. :-) So we took some Tylenol PM and after an hour or so of trying to get back to sleep... we woke up at 8:15 almost running late for our appointment this morning, but still curiously feeling like it was the middle of the night. Fun times with a 7 hour time change. :-)

We're here!!!

We made it! We're actually in Madrid! We got here about 10 local time yesterday morning, and after sleeping a night, feel much more like ourselves :-). The main emotion I've been feeling is a sense of unreality - it is really just blowing my mind that we are actually moving here! Our only other European experience is our short trip to Paris nearly 9 years ago, and it feels much much different this time. Then we just wanted to see as much as possible in the short amount of time we had. This time, though we still want to see as much as possible, I definitely feel less sure of where we should start! What sort of things are we going to wish we had done once we get back home on Thursday?? It's a whole different set of knowledge we need to know how to live here!

Yesterday was our day on our own so we walked around like tourists and just saw some sites and people watched. We saw the Plaza Mayor and the Puerto del Sol. We also found a great place to eat that was recommended in our travel book that had yummy tapas type food. (as far as I can tell, tapas just means smaller portions of things so you order a wide variety :-) ) The waitress was very friendly and even convinced us to order some sort of intensines - we're not sure what "callas" is exactly, but Jason tried some! He says it was good, but he's not sure he'll order it again. :-) We are currently waiting for the real estate agent who is going to start showing us places to live and even preschools for Katie. I'm excited to see what sort of places we might be able to live in - I think today will answer TONS of questions!

We love you all and appreciate your prayers!

This Blogging is SUCH fun....

OK... so this is probably a violation of the blogging code of conduct... but WOW is it fun to see comments and know that someone is actually reading these posts. Very cool.

Today was hard. On one hand, the move people are telling me this will take more time than we expect and that we're doing things differently than they'd recommend. On the other hand I have my new manager (who is french) exclaiming, "Ridiculous!! Do they think we are fools?! We are trying to run a business here!" (imagine your best Inspector Clouseau accent) when I told him of the potential multi-month delay. It was funny.

We are a bit unsure of the day's developments... but the good news is that I can work from here in January (doing the new job) and after our late January customer conference in Florida, I'll head to Madrid. I have my mgmts (and HR's) agreement to allow me to travel back/forth if the wait stretches too long. It's a bit of a risk and it's a not our vision for how this should work, but we're praying and keeping our sense of adventure and "flexibility" about us.

We shall see.

Thanks for praying for us. ... and for reading the blog... :-)

Jason

The Roller Coaster Begins!!

Well, I guess we should expect some bumps in the road in an undertaking this large... and we hit the first one today. Basically work visas have recently been taking longer to be approved, so it may take some time for Jason's. We cannot officially move over there or lease an apartment before that visa is approved. So it looks like it might be a little longer before we officially move over for the start.

That is good news in a way because it takes away the rush, but it does leave us feeling in limbo. We are still going this weekend for our survey trip, mainly because they want him to start working even if it is from the US and we don't feel comfortable with that until we've actually stepped foot in the country! So we will go and see what sort of places are available, and just acclimate ourselves to the city.

We covet your prayers - that the visa will be approved soon, that we will figure out a way for us not to be separated from each other for much time at all, that we will have wisdom in making these big decisions.

J/B/K

The Whirlwind Begins

I've been pressing IBM to get the approvals completed so we could get our Survey trip scheduled and completed. Well... the VP of HR for Europe kicked things in gear yesterday and in one day we made huge progress. We have all the support staff in place to help us on both the US and Spain sides.  Seems like about 4/5 people on each side of the Atlantic helping us with this.  It now feels like it's happening...  

We leave Saturday for our survey trip to scout out the land and hopefully find a place to live.  We'll be back home next Thursday.  

The level of detail and complexity is a bit astounding, but we're just working those things in the "critical path" and trusting that the other stuff will sort itself out when the time comes.

Prayer requests for the moment:
- Safety on the trip
- That Katie will be ok while we're gone next week
- This is my quarter and year end at IBM. It's our most hectic time and my workload is high without this move. Pray for speed in execution of my work!
- For all the hundred of details to just work out smoothly. So far, so good.

- That we'll find a great place to live.
- For time to emotionally/relationally connect with people before we leave. Had a great talk with 2 friends today... I'm thankful for that!

It's past my bedtime. Hitting the hay...

Jason for we 3

Spain!

It looks definite that we're headed to Madrid, Spain with IBM! I'll be a Manager and Sales Executive for our Portal software portfolio. My territory will be: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Amsterdam and Belgium. Given that my current teams' territory is MO, KS, AR, OK, TX and LA... I'd say this is a dramatic change!!

I received confirmation today from the "mobility center" in Europe that they are working on our details for coming over. It's exciting opportunity for us personally and for me professionally. Exciting and a little scary all at the same time. :-)

The timeline is still very much up in the air. We are still hoping to go over this week... which may be very unrealistic. We'd need to leave in 2 days and I have the sense that there is much paperwork to do prior to them allowing us to come for the Survey trip.

However, if we aren't able to come this week... I'll ask that the Survey trip occur in early January. That will be a bit of a delay from the original plan, but it'll all work out fine in the end.

Exciting times. Pray for us. We still have a gazillion loose ends and unknowns in this whole process.

Wikipedia has all the Spain facts you'd ever need to know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain

Another favorite Colorado Pic of mine

A few pics from our Colorado vacation...

We 3 in Rocky Mountain National Park!

This is at the end of a nice, easy 1.8 mile hike. It's a beautiful and popular lake called Emerald Lake. We had a lot of fun getting there and frankly much more fun on the way down. It was much easier.

We're Bloggin....

Wow... this was v easy. Hope it looks good!

We've created this blog as a place to log some of the activities of our days/weeks and a way to post a few pics without melting down the inboxes. :-)

Hope you enjoy it!

Much love,
JBK