People keep asking how it is going.

Here is my answer. It is going well. Really well. Better than I expected and I had high expectations. We made the decision, we got on the plane, and thats it. The bills are not piling up in my head the way they were. The noise is quieter. We can see clearly already. And that alone has been worth every uncomfortable conversation and every raised eyebrow we got.

But I would be lying if I said it has all been seamless.

We are figuring things out. We are building a routine from scratch. Bedtime is a work in progress. Dinner time is a negotiation. Electronics are a battle we are fighting every single day. And then there is the grocery situation.

I know how that sounds.

We are five people. A family of five. And in Norway, a pack of meat is the size of something you would serve two people back home. A loaf of bread lasts us two days. We eat a full container of berries in one sitting. A pack of cheese has four slices in it. Four. We are not dramatic people but we stood in the grocery store this week looking at each other like we were solving a math problem we were not prepared for.

The little adjustments that are not hard exactly. They are just new. And new takes time.

The moments.

There have been a few.

One night last week I was sitting on the balcony at 11pm. The sun was still up. It is just up here. You put on a blanket and you sit outside at almost midnight in full dusk and it is the strangest, most peaceful thing. I sat there in the quiet and realized my head was quiet too. No noise. No mental list. Nothing running in the background. No me comparing or overthinking. Just me and the water and the light.

I did not know that feeling would happen so easily

The other moment was inside the house. No TV on. Kids running around in their underwear, sliding on the wooden floors, Michael Jackson playing. It was 10pm. And I just sat there listening to them. All it took was a plane. We are across the world. And we are fine. More than fine. We are actually living.

The kids.

Avilene is thriving. She is drawing constantly, making art, helping with dinner, cuddling me at night. She is currently deep in research mode about ferrets. She wants two of them and she is building her case. She knows what they eat, what their home needs to look like, what they require to be healthy. I keep telling her they smell and look like boneless rodents. She does not find that funny. We are at a standoff.

Jake is giggling. A lot. More than I have heard in a while and it is one of the best sounds in the world. I miss him. He has decided his mission in life right now is to build a computer that runs flight simulation. He is talking about parts and specs and things I cannot follow. I just nod and tell him that is amazing because it is, but also spending a lot of time hinting to be focused on the present.

Gavin is 13. And 13 is its own thing. He loves history which should mean he would be walking around this place with his jaw on the floor. Instead he is in his own world, very focused on opinions he has picked up from other people, not yet doing the work of forming his own. I am watching him and waiting. I get very frustrated. Trying to get him to just be quiet and look. To take in what is right in front of him. We are living inside the history he says he loves and I am hoping at some point it clicks. It will. I have to believe that.

Adam and I.

We have mornings now. Real ones. Before the kids wake up we have coffee and we just talk, even though it is 8 am. About nothing. About everything. There is no agenda and nowhere to be and it has centered us both.

We cook dinner together now. We clean up together (as a whole family). We sort the waste which is its own learning curve here and we do it all as a unit. All five of us. That is new for us. New for us as a family. We have never had that kind of rhythm before and I did not realize how much I wanted it until we found it.

The decision.

Not one second of doubt.

We are barely watching the news. We are barely consuming any of the noise that was following us around back home. Here, people talk about politics the way they talk about the bus schedule. Casually, openly, without the weight of it all. It has been one of the most relieving things I have noticed.

We are not planning far ahead. We are not doing the where-is-next spiral. We are just here. Present. And that is something I did not know I was capable of.

What surprised me most.

How easy it has been.

Not easy like nothing is hard. But easy like we fit. Like this is something we were built to do and we just had not done it yet. I am not missing things I thought I would miss. I am not white-knuckling through anything. I am just here. Looking at the water and the quiet streets and my kids sliding across the floor in their underwear.

Yeah. This is right.

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If you are reading this and sitting with a decision that feels too big. I am not going to tell you what to do. But I will tell you that the thing you are afraid of is usually smaller than the life you are trading it for.

We sold the house. We got on a plane. And two weeks in, I have silence in my head and berries to figure out how to buy in bulk.

I will take it.

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Thinking about your own family adventure? Whether it is Norway, Japan, Korea, or somewhere else entirely. I have been to 57 countries and planned over 300 international family trips. Let’s plan yours together.