No turning back!

Our command sponsorship had been approved and our passport applications filed! The dream of a leisurely move and being extra prepared was gone for sure! I had only 8 weeks to do a lot more than I had planned doing when we were moving to Hawaii! To start with...I HAD to have a garage sale. When you move to Korea, the Army only allows you to ship half the amount of weight they normally would. They will put the other half in storage. But we were nearly over our weight limit the last time we moved, and had acquired even more "stuff." I didn't want to store things that I really didn't want for two whole years. Thank goodness I had my mom and sister-in-law to help out...because I HATE having garage sales! After every one I say "I"m NEVER doing that again," and some how I end up doing it again. But I really think THIS was the last time!

Besides having a garage sale, we had to sell at least one of our vehicles. The Army only pays to ship one vehicle...if you're lucky. Sometimes they won't authorize you to ship a vehicle at all. We had Austin's Cobalt that he used to commute to Leavenworth and my brand new Armada, that I bought with every intention of driving forever. The decision of what to do was difficult. We were going to Seoul, where the traffic is worse than anything either of us have ever driven in, parking is scarce, and repairs are expensive! Based on those facts, we didn't want to take a huge, expensive, vehicle that was very likely to get banged up. We decided to sell the Armada and take the Cobalt. That was until we discovered it is absolutely impossible to fit three car seats in the back of a Cobalt. Not just the car seats we already had, but even the slimmest car seats we could find would not fit! 

This was something that made me happy, as well as caused me more stress! We are still in discussions on if there will be a forth little one, I say yes, maybe, he says no, maybe. We are both undecided, but leaning opposite directions! I would like to be done with babies by the time I turn 30. I mean, if I'm going to grow up and have a career one day, I can't be staying home raising babies until I'm old enough to retire! On top of that, the Mr. is just a tad older that I am, just a tad ;-). Which means the decision will be made while in Korea. Taking the Cobalt would only give the Mr. one more reason to not have #4! But not being able to take the Cobalt meant we either had to take the Armada, sell both the Armada and Cobalt and buy something else before we left, or sell both and buy something when we got to Korea! It took awhile, but we finally decided we would sell both of the vehicles, if they sold before we left and we had time to find another, we would. If not, we'd buy something there.

Since it takes SOOO long to ship you're stuff overseas, and since we were "home," where we had plenty of family to stay with comfortably, we chose to have our stuff packed up ASAP. We figured we'd much rather be home with nothing than in Korea with nothing! BUT, I had to have the garage sale first! The bright side to the command sponsorship taking so long was that the city wide garage sale weekend was only two weeks away. We scheduled the first set of movers to come the following Monday. These movers would pack and ship the majority of our stuff. (Household goods shipment) This would also be the shipment that would take the longest to get to Korea.

You would think that two weeks would be plenty of time to get ready for a garage sale. But, since the movers were coming the following work day, I had to not only get ready for the garage sale, but also divide our entire house into 4 different shipments. (five if you count the garage sale) Household goods, (the majority of our stuff), unaccompanied baggage (800 lbs of things we would need immediately after receiving housing in Korea i.e. baby bed, bedding, pots and pans, some dishes, etc.), storage (stuff we wouldn't see for two years), and our luggage (everything we would need until we left for Korea and until we received housing). Austin was still working everyday at this time, so that left me to do all of this while still carrying out the daily tasks of a stay at home mom of three. I know all of you stay at home moms out there know, that alone is a full time job! I was just a tad overwhelmed to say the least! Thank goodness I was bless with a wonderful mom who came over after working all day to give me a hand!

Moving day!

You can't tell by the picture, but Guinness was totally freaking out! Poor old man! This being his 4th move, he knew what was going on, and wasn't the least bit happy about it! (shhh, don't tell them they are getting left behind at Grandma's house:-( )

You might notice furniture already getting damaged! :-/ One day I'll be able to have nice things!

Our household goods shipment! See ya in a couple months!

So we survived the garage sale and the first set of movers! We spent another week in our house until another moving company came to ship our unaccompanied baggage, followed by a third company the following day to take the rest to a long term storage facility. We got lucky and had a great group of guys from the first moving company! Unfortunately I can't say the same for the following companies! I'm just grateful the majority of our stuff went with the first movers! No turning back now!