Our time on sabbatical has been filled with ease, beauty and newness. Truly! We don’t just say this because it sounds good or looks pretty in a blog.

However, this last week turned our beautiful world a bit upside. We were caught off guard because life has felt so blissful.

First, in the middle of night we experienced an earthquake. This was a first for our family as we have lived in the NE for the length of our boys lives. It was a 4.7 on the richter scale. We were staying in a hotel (on the side of a cliff) on the coast and our boys were in a room on a different floor. So the parental instincts kicked in and Seth jumped out of bed ran the halls (in his underwear passed the laughing security guard) to the boys room where he found them of course sound asleep. But there was no going back to sleep and Steph researched the entire geological and plate tectonics of Chile at 2am- she could definitely deliver a lecture on this and luckily she read enough to understand that quakes are common (which is what the security guard said also) and construction in Chile was pretty good so she did not make us get on a plane and return to the US that next day.

After recovering from that adrenaline rush and a less than restful night, we returned home that next day to Frutillar. At midnight Noah entered our bedroom saying he was itching like crazy! Little red dots all lined up on his arms….BED BUGS! yup. We stuck his jammies in the freezer (you need to either freeze em or heat em…Steph’s second lecture she prepared in the middle of the night), stripped his bed and awaited the cleaning and shake down to the morning. In the morning we did a full re-haul of the house not knowing if those little critters were here or at our hotel.

After a deep clean and sigh of accomplishing the task Seth and Steph came down with illnesses. Seemed to fit the mood. Being ill in another country is never fun. At this point Seth and Steph are still in recovery mode and moving at snail speed- hence the snail photo (which they happen to also be in abundance here).

While Seth and Steph bunk away for a few days the boys have tried to keep occupied and worked on mastering the ins and outs of world cup soccer which has consumed all chilean young persons brains. They have collected >200 of the stickers to complete the collector’s magazine. And they have kept on top of when the games are occurring. Also they have had to locate a place to go watch the games as our TV…well let’s just say it was not a focus for our sabbatical.

It’s all much more fun to look back on after all is complete and everyone is ok. As we reflect on this last weeks events, “resilience” seems like a fitting word to describe it.