Loose ends

All the movers had come and gone, our house was empty and we had now invaded my dad's house! Austin's leave (vacation) hadn't started yet, so he was still going to work everyday, while two of the three kids and I finished cleaning up our empty house. (Carter was going to school) Besides the general cleaning, all I had left to to do at the house was figure out what to do with all the things we couldn't ship, or they wouldn't store.(i.e. food, batteries, light bulbs, candles) It was a huge relief to be done with the majority of the moving! Everything was on it's way that wasn't going on the plane, except for our vehicle! Whatever vehicle that might be. We still had two vehicles to sell, but we were getting lots of calls, so I wasn't to stressed about it. What I was stressed out about was the fact that we were basically homeless, all of our possessions were gone, and we still didn't know when we were actually leaving. Getting our tickets and passports squared away was up to Austin. But the fact that we didn't have them yet was not his fault. The airline tickets and passports had to come from the personnel travel office on post, and the flight dates had not been released yet. So there really wasn't anything we could do about it, but wait.

Finally, on his last day of work before his vacation started, the flight dates were released and he went to book our tickets. We knew Austin's report date was the end of October and were hoping to leave as close to that date as possible. Unfortunately, the Army had different plans, and we were leaving a week SOONER than we had been planning to! And we still didn't have our passports! We now had just under 3 weeks before we left. I thought they would be a relaxing 3 weeks, but they flew by! Between getting Carter off to school, Addley to preschool and picked up twice a week, last minute dental appointments taken care of, football practices and games and eventually selling our vehicles and buying a "new to us" vehicle to drive in Korea, there was no time for relaxing!

It was a good thing that we didn't buy our new vehicle a day later. In order to ship your vehicle it has to first be registered and titled. Since we bought it used and it had a crazy electronic Kansas title, it took until just days before we left to get everything we needed to ship it. It was a Tuesday when our title came in, Addley's last day of school was on Thursday, Carter's on Friday, and we were flying out on Monday. Since the closest vehicle processing center is in St. Louis, on the opposite side of the state, and not open on the weekend, that only left the next day to drive it out and drop it off if we didn't want the kids to miss their last days of school!(which we didn't) We don't like to do things last minute but ALWAYS do! We decided that since we had to drive all the way out there, we'd try to make the most of it and take the kids with us and take the train home. None of us had ever been on the train, and we thought the kids would really enjoy it. It was a crazy trip and we didn't have but 15 min to spare when we finally made it to the train station. If you are reading this and will be shipping a vehicle overseas....when they say no more than 1/4 tank of gas...they mean it!!! It doesn't matter how close the needle is to the 1/4 tank line, if it isn't under it....they aren't going to accept your vehicle until it is. Which leaves you with two options; drive it until the gas is low enough, or pay some dude to drain and keep your gasoline for you. Since we had a train to catch the later was our only choice.

It was an absolutely crazy day, and Tracker didn't enjoy it much...but Carter and Addley really liked the train ride. I'm glad we did it.

I did a terrible job taking pictures...she really did like it!

It was now Thursday and only 5 days until we started our trip. We now had no vehicle, and public transportation is basically non existent where we are from, and not everyone we know has extra vehicles laying around large enough to pack all three of our car seats in. We still had to take Addley to school, pick her up, take Carter to football practice and a game, and had some last minute shopping to do. Luckily my mom's truck is big enough and my brother and sister-in-law are generous enough they let Mom barrow their extra truck so we could barrow Moms! I really don't know how we would have survived this entire process without our amazing family! Oh, and by the way, our passports STILL had not showed up. I was really starting to sweat. Austin and I had both talked to the girl in charge of passports several times, and finally figured out that my passport was the only one we were waiting on. The chick forgot to send our marriage license in with my expired passport that had my maiden name on it. So my passport was filed for a few weeks later then everyone else. I was seriously p.o.ed! When I asked the obviously childless woman what we were going to do if my passport didn't show up before Monday, she nonchalantly told me,"Oh it won't be a big deal. They will all go and we can change your flight to a later date." I won't elaborate on the rest of THAT conversation....but luckily they arrived the very next day. Rather than relying on my new favorite person to overnight them, Austin happily went and picked them up.

The only thing left to do now was pack our suit cases back up and figure out what the kids were going to do on the plane! After spending a small fortune and 2 hours at Wal-Mart, I was pretty sure if we didn't have everything we needed to make this trip successful, it just couldn't be done! I was also thrilled to know I wouldn't be going into another Wal-Mart for at least 2 years!!!! (a note for those who might be reading this in preparation for their own trip, since we were arriving in country after the school year had already started, I went ahead and picked up all Carter's school supplies, and am glad I did. The PX was no longer carrying all of the supplies from the list. Poor guy would have showed up with just a pen if I hadn't. The school he attended in the states had shared supplies for Kindergarten, so we just paid a fee and they provided the supplies.)

A few of the things we grabbed...

This iTikes Canvas for Addley. It's awesome, I might like playing with it just as much as she does! 

These neat little cars you can race on the iPad. Carter and Addley both really like these. 

We also got Tracker one of these. We probably could have saved our money on this one. He really doesn't care much for it. 

We also picked up some "old school" coloring books and markers, a new funny, squishy teether for Tracker, head phones for the kids so they wouldn't disturb everyone playing their games, and LOTS of snacks. I might have a tendency to get "hangry" as Austin calls it.


I spent every spare moment I had the next two days packing our bags and trying to make sure we didn't forget anything. We had a small family get together and even though our bags were "mostly" packed....it still hadn't set in that soon we were leaving for two years! It felt like any regular weekend!