As time goes on, I realize how much I do things like my dad. Several times when we were staying over, we would wake up to him having breakfast ready to be cooked. Just so, this morning I had waffles and bacon ready to cook once Kellen and Noël wake up after a long, hard day; they finished clearing out their apartment yesterday and are hanging out here for a couple nights before moving to Germany.
I had long thought it possible that Kellen and Noël would try living overseas, but I expected that it would be across the Pacific Ocean, not the Atlantic. Noël has traveled quite a bit, most notably having spent a year in Japan. For Kellen, however, this will be his first time out of the western hemisphere. He will be working for a toy company doing back-end programming, while Noël will probably start out doing graphic design and writing. Bella, after adjusting to the move, will presumably continue her cat ways.
This will be Kellen's first full-time job doing programming, and I'm very excited for him to be able to flex those muscles. The company he'll be at has a lot of people who can speak English (not to mention many Germans seem to be good at it anyway) so he'll be able to get right into the job without an overwhelming language barrier. He likes the people he'll be working with, which will also ease the transition.
This is a good time in their lives for Kellen and Noël to do an adventure like this. It will also give them a good opportunity to do short trips around Europe without having the big overhead of a trans-Atlantic flight.
Melody and I have been kicking around the idea of making another Europe trip, and we were thinking that it could be next year. Of course, now we're almost definitely going to go next year, and there will naturally be a stop in Düsseldorf. It seems that by then they would have settled in and become comfortable in their routines.
The title of this post just says “Bye!” because I don't need to wish Kellen and Noël good luck on their move. They have a good balance of adventure and practicality, so they'll fit in and have a great time. We'll miss having them around here, but we won't be out of touch.
