{"id":1795,"date":"2025-08-19T23:59:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T21:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/?p=1795"},"modified":"2025-08-20T15:06:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T13:06:49","slug":"with-a-little-help-from-our-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/19\/with-a-little-help-from-our-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"..with a little help from our friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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So here we are, day 4 in our new home in Muravera. We still have a fair amount of boxes to open and things to arrange but fortunately school doesn’t start for the kids here until the 15th of September so time is on our side! And we have already spent two afternoons on the beach so life is pretty good at the moment..<\/span><\/p>

I chronicled the actual journey between Breda and Muravera via polarsteps and found that to be a nice way to share photos on the go and also to process a bit of the stress from the last leg of the journey (Genoa — eek!). The link to my polarsteps can be found via the the Andiamo post<\/a> (or here<\/a>).<\/p>

Before I shift gears and share stories about our new whereabouts I want to say thank you to some people who were very helpful in our last weeks\/days prior and during the move… We had a lot on our plates (self-inflicted, of course!) and it wasn’t always easy to pack and move boxes, sort out administrative issues, and simply think straight while also trying to keep 2 kids on summer vacation occupied (and Gia!).<\/p>

We received a lot of support and encouragement from friends and family all over the world the past few weeks which has been wonderful. Near or far, we knew a lot of loved ones were thinking of us along the way!<\/p>

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Opa Jan (my father in law) was called on numerous times to please come to Breda to entertain the kids. Or please come to Breda to help us move boxes and also go to the Praxis to buy more boxes… He did everything with a smile and we were very happy that we were able to celebrate his birthday (August 1st) together before heading south!
\"\"Chris and I really wanted to bring our own bed to Sardinia.. a King size box spring massive thing that didn’t fit in our stairwell in Breda. Geoff and Robin came to the rescue to help us muscle it out of the house, and they also helped us get our dryer and other large furniture items across the street to Andi and Chris’ place where they were stored for a day before we picked up the moving truck. I’ll get back to A&C in a minute, but first… My sister is also featured in the above photo, not being entirely helpful at this exact moment but wow, we are so thankful for the three weeks she spent with us in Holland, giving Alex, Isa, and Gia her full focus while also managing to box up allllll of my books and our liquor cabinet (among other things) and she of course was my ‘steun en toeverlaat’ as they say in Dutch during our road trip to Sardinia with the moving truck. Amazing.<\/p>

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As for Andi and Chris, we basically used their house to store boxes before we loaded the moving truck. Then Chris used their house as a home office space for the last week before the move when we were all home together without BSO (daycare) and without the majority of our furniture. And when they returned home on Sunday, 3 August we properly greeted them by depositing all of the remaining items in our house next to their garden the next day while we finished cleaning and then handed over the keys to our tenants. Our departure was delayed by a few days due to some Jeep issues so they also had Isa, Alex, and Gia on numerous occasions while we loaded and reloaded the trailer, tinkered with the Jeeps, installed a bike rack on the back of my Jeep– and the best part — removed the bike rack and parked it (together with our 3 bikes) in their garden when we finally took off because it wasn’t super stable and we would have likely lost it somewhere in Belgium on a pothole. So it was the right decision but still a big ask to leave everything with them (I’m not even sure if we asked… but as promised, we will make it up to them someday!).\u00a0
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Once we finally hit the road our first stop was Somm\u00e9e, where Sylvie and George live. In addition to being wonderful hosts to us when we were in France, Sylvie also helped us loads in our last week in our house. She was in Breda the week prior and spent several days with us, boxing up our entire kitchen and cleaning most of the house. She also fixed our drapes in the midst of everything. So we are also grateful for all of her help during the move!\u00a0<\/p>

It was really nice to have a few days at their place before and after Sven and Ankie’s wedding weekend which was SO beautiful and so much fun. Definitely a highlight of the year, not just the trip!\u00a0<\/p>

As a parting gift from S&G’s house in Somm\u00e9e, George offered to swap trailers with us so we could carry on with more storage space and a seemingly more road-worthy design.\u00a0<\/p>

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Last but not least, thanks to all the help we received from the Willems family, before, during, and after the move. Stephanie picked up the kids several times so I could make some progress on the boxes. She also gave some sound advice about the first road trip with the moving truck (e.g. Raech hoe zo wil je in een dag helemaal naar Livorno rijden…doe niet zo gek). I listened!\u00a0<\/p>

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We had a few days to bridge after we handed over our keys to our tenants so we spent a few nights in their house while they were on vacation in Sri Lanka. It was great to be able to hang there for a bit before leaving Breda.<\/p>

\"\"It was so nice seeing the 5 cousins enjoy each other’s company during the wedding weekend. And Sem took my favorite photo of the year so far when he was given the task of putting Alex to bed while Chris and I enjoyed the wedding dinner. So thanks for that as well \ud83d\ude42
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So here we are, day 4 in our new home in Muravera. We still have a fair amount of boxes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1838,"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions\/1838"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andiamocraig.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}