We are official!

After arriving 95 days ago, I can finally and officially say that my 3-year visa to Spain has been approved, allowing my family and I to stay here! My spouse and I were on a train to pick up our kids for lunch break when the news arrived. I think I let go of a breath I’d been holding for more than 6 months.

While we’d been told our case was straightforward, this was still the most stressful process I’ve ever been part of. We signed a long-term lease last week, built beds on the second floor of our flat, and prayed all would work out. The last couple of days, I definitely thought through what we would do if we were denied. How on earth would we get rid of these beds? Would they even fit without completely disassembling them? Certainly not down the elevator. And where would we go? I kept a couple of thoughts in mind — desperately hoping we wouldn’t have to figure out how to quickly move to yet another continent.

Thankfully today, we retire our tourist visas and begin real life (thankfully Spain didn’t make us wait this long — kids have been in school since a week after we arrived, we have an actual address and have begun the long, slow process of equipping a home)!

Friends, we have done the thing! We kept repeating to ourselves, “we did it!” — and I expect that will continue for the rest of the week. We still have a long way to go — we are not yet out of our paperwork era, with registration for next school year beginning tomorrow and a whole slew of other official documents we still need to get. But today? Today we did it!

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