Week 13 - Things are looking up!

This was another pretty good week in terms of weather.  It was in the 50's and 60's with very little rain.  It finally rained a little on Saturday, but not much.  This next week should be in the 40's and 50's and very little rain!

Big news on the business front is we went to our first tradeshow and we partnered with a really important company in the fund industry in Luxembourg.  We have a lot of work to do, but with their help and credibility we should be able to create a great company.  That is a huge relief!

On Wed. I turned 44!  I really don't like birthdays that much.  Feels like life is going by too quickly!  The kids made crepes and I got a soccer ball for my birthday.  Kim and I went on our first date since getting here.  We went to a nice little restaurant here in Kehlen.  It was super expensive.  We basically used the two birthday presents from mine and Kim's parents to pay for it.  I had chicken cordon blue and Kim had a filet.  It was a really good meal, but cost 75 euros.

We have now jumped through all of the immigration hoops and got our official resident cards this week.  That will allow us to get reimbursed for our medical bills.  I'm excited to get reimbursed for the false alarm heart attack!   We also will start to get paid for our kids!  They have a very family friendly environment here in Luxembourg.  We will earn about 260 euros per kid per month paid to us directly by the government.  Some members of the church here really take advantage and have lots of kids!  ;)

On Thursday, we went over to play soccer at the local outdoor futsal field.  It is a small soccer field the size of a small basketball court that is outdoor, but enclosed and has an astro turf field.  We played with some of the local kids that were a little younger than Jake.  We all started laughing because when they did something bad English swear words would come out.  So they'd be talking in Luxembourgish or French and then you'd hear the F-bomb or Sh#$%.  It was very weird to hear little kids with such terrible potty mouths!

Some of the older youth - 17-20 showed up and wanted to play us.  They were pretty confident that they were going to whoop us.  However, we represented U.S. soccer well and killed them.  We scored 7 straight goals before they even scored!  I wore my GPS watch and we ran over 4 miles in that little field.

That evening we had another first.  We grilled chicken on a Weber grill where we had to light charcoal.  Charcoal here is very different.  It is basically pre-burned wood.  It worked really well and we loved having a little different meal than we've been eating.

On Friday night the kids had a fun Let's Dance competition for mutual over at Kodiak Smith's house.  We'll see if Spencer will let us post the video!

We also had two fun games of soccer on Saturday.  I played early with the Portuguese teams.  We played 7 v 7 King of the Hill with 5 teams.  Luckily I was on a good team and we stayed on for 6 games in a row as King of the Hill.  We then played with the kids in the ward and the stake president even showed up.  We had a great time.

After that we drove 45 minutes into France to visit Snowhall.  It is the largest European indoor ski resort.  It was a big refrigerated building, built on a hill, with snow makers, a small snow cat and a rope tow.   We had a great time for 2 hours!  It was a very different experience, but we were glad we went.  Unfortunately Jacob wasn't feeling good and didn't get to go.

The best part of that trip was we got to eat at a KFC in France!  It was really yummy and the best part was they had that really good small, crunchy ice.  We haven't had a single drink with ice since coming to Luxembourg, so this was a real treat!  The cups were really small, but they had free refills, which is another thing they don't have here, so I went back about 10 times!  For some reason we always feel dehydrated here, so it was nice to fill up on some cold, carbonated sugar water!

Kim had to give a talk in church today.  I think it was the best talk she's ever given.  She was confident and the content of the talk was really good.  She liked it because of the translation time, you only have to prepare 1/2 of the talk you would normally need to prepare!

Jake hit a new record this week on the Rubik's cube.  He finished it twice in 12 seconds each time.  That is really impressive considering the world's record is just over 5 seconds.

Here are the pics and videos from this week!

https://plus.google.com/photos/103549940612929148835/albums/5992120596471124113