So long America, Merhaba Yeni Evimiz

Yeah! We are finally here and doing great! We've been here for a little over 2 weeks and getting settled. We've done enough shopping to satisfy me for a lifetime. It's amazing what actually goes into furnishing a house from scratch. And when I say scratch, I mean scratch. No light fixtures, just wires hanging from the ceiling. No appliances, not even a stove. And no curtains or curtain rods. So needless to say we have spent a total of about 17 hours at Ikea in the past few weeks. It took us a few weeks to get internet, which is the reason for the lack of communication and blogging, but we got that a few days ago, along with our satellite TV, so we are in business. It's starting to feel like home, but we are really anxious to get our couch and living room chairs, which will still be a few more weeks. We really love our 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 1 squatty-potty apartment. Our neighbors are great and seem to be happy to have us as neighbors. I have a little grocery store just 1 mintue walk from our house and there's a little kids park just a few steps beyond that, so Owen is thrilled with that.
We love our new home and are excited that you'll be able to discover it with us. Here are pics from our trip here and our first few days.


Goodbyes with family
Checking in with our 13 bags, 1 car seat, 2 carry ons and 1 stroller, we were quite the site! Ryan and I weighed and reweighed our bags a zillion times to make sure they were not over the 51 lbs. limit. This was the moment of truth and we didn't have a single bag overweight. We did have one weigh in at 50 lbs. 14 oz. We definitely got our money's worth.

Owen eating his kids meal on the plane. We are new fans of British Airways. They had special kids meals, kids movies and even a Paddington Bear welcome backpack full of activities for the long plane ride. Owen was an angel on the plane. He slept about 4 hours the first leg and 2 hours the second leg.

All of our bags made it safe and sound and again we were quite the spectacle at the airport, but we breezed through customs and our friends were there waiting to pick us up with their van to take us to our new home!
My new kitchen- Here's a picture of me cooking our first meal, grilled cheese sandwiches. I think it will take me awhile to get all of the kitchen things I need, not to mention figure out what to buy at the grocery stores. But I just found a big grocery store today that's about a 10 minute walk, so they seem to have a few more familiar looking things.
I made cookies last night. They turned out ok, but the process was quite the chore. It started with hard butter and no microwave or mixer. So in order to soften the butter in order to cream it, I decided to just put it in the oven for a few minutes in it's original packaging. Well, 10 minutes later when I forgot about the butter, I found it dripping into my new clean oven. But, my butter was soft. Then I had to figure out what 350 F is in Celcius (it's 180 if you want to know). After that I spent forever creaming the butter and sugar. It's hard to do with a wooden spoon. The rest of the mixing and baking went pretty well, but the house now smells like burnt butter :)

So far we have purchased a total of 19 pieces from Ikea. If you aren't familiar with Ikea then I should tell you that everything from the store comes in nice compact boxes and all of the instructions you need to assemble the inexpensive but quality furniture. It's really great until you have to put an 8 foot tall wardrobe together with glass mirrored doors and you are still assembling your purchases a week later. Ryan's thumb (which is now blistered) will be happy if it never meets a screwdriver again.
These are pictures from Ozgurluk Park. It's a huge park about 15 mins. from us on foot. It has tennis courts, a tea garden, walking trails and lots of play equipment for Owen.


We got our satellite just 2 days ago so here's a picture of Owen sitting on a plastic patio chair in our living room watching Dora and Blues Clues. They have all of his favorite cartoons in English, so he is all set!
I bought this super cute fabric at Ikea and I found this lady in my neighborhood to make my living room curtains for me. Her name is Serifey and we have had a lot of fun this week trying to communicate about curtains, pillows and table clothes. At one point I think there were 5 ladies in her small shop watching me as I used charades to describe what I wanted the curtains to look like. She made the curtains for me in 2 days and they are perfect! It's been fun to get to know some of the ladies in my neighborhood and Serifey made me promise to come back to see her soon.