Distance

By far the hardest part about living 6,000 miles away from the good old US of A is the fact that the large majority of our family is 6,000 miles away. Krazy has a whole bunch of first cousins with a whole mess of kids who all live here and it's been amazing getting to know them. And, of course, our friends have become family because we are all in the same situation living far away from the support network of parents and grandparents. Although our British friends definitely have an advantage being only a 4 hour flight away and so many of their parents seem to own apartments in Netanya (a city on the beach about 20 minutes from here).
Anyway, we went from living about a mile from my parents to much farther away. My kids went from seeing them at least once a week to hardly ever. Big had a very close relationship with my mom, D. And Little was too little to have really formed any significant relationships before we left. We've had some trials and tribulations in our relationships with family members since we've been here. We were originally supposed to be here just for one year but then we decided to stay longer. To make a long story short, that didn't go over well. My parents in particular now assume that we are never coming home and they are not happy about it. While we've managed to get past all of the mean things that were said when we first broke the news, I do think that our relationship is different and forever changed, especially the relationship between Krazy and my mom, who also used to be very close. Hopefully over time things will continue to get better.
This has all been a very long way of saying simply that distance sucks. I hate missing major milestones--all 3 of my sister-in-laws as well as my own sister have had babies since we've been away. By now we've met them all, but seeing them only once a year is really hard and sad. I had my own major milestone last week when I had my official graduation from the MBA program that I completed (it's a weird Israeli phenomenon that the graduation ceremony takes place a year after the program ends). I had asked my parents a while ago if they wanted to come and they said they did but they didn't think it would be possible, etc.
AND THEN THEY SURPRISED ME AND JUST SHOWED UP!!!! They literally just showed up at my apartment on Wednesday afternoon! We went to graduation Wednesday night and then we just hung out at their hotel and the beach and the pool for a couple of days. They left
Saturday night so it was a very short trip, but SO AMAZING!!!!!

This is me shocked to see them: