Room to Spare

As evidenced by this picture, we cannot buy anything in Hungary. If we do, we will have to leave something behind when we return home!

The house is packed and loaded for sea, air, and storage. It took a total of 120 man hours! We are thankful we were not doing all of that ourselves.

No turning back now!

She's sick : (

The movers have quite a bit packed already. Granny took Cade for the day and I took Chelsea to the doctor. Sinus infection. We hope we can get her on the mend in the next 100 hours as that's all we have left before we hop on the plane. We'll have pain meds with us just in case. Poor girl.

Bad boys, Bad boys

We didn't know we were auditioning for Cops, but cops have been involved twice already.  That's twice in less than 48 hours. Thankfully, it has been people involved with the move...not us directly.  Pretty humorous!

Let's hope the bad boys theme song doesn't play for us anytime soon!

What a Difference a Few Days Make

Our schedule as of Friday morning.
- Saturday, September 25 - finalize suitcase, air shipment, sea shipment, storage piles
- Sunday, September 26 - House Hunters International films "back" story
- Monday, September 27 - last day in the Houston office
- Tuesday, September 28 - movers come to pack house
- Thursday, September 30 - movers finish packing house
- Friday, October 1 - fly to Hungary

Our schedule as of Friday lunch time
??? Got word that work permit is delayed 1-2 weeks and movers will be canceled and we should not plan to fly out.

Our schedule as of Friday end of day
- Decided to hold off making any changes, "just in case" things somehow can stay on schedule

Our schedule as of Monday 8:15 am
- Just got word work permit came in. Scrambling to get everything back on schedule
- Monday, September 27 - packed up my Houston office and gave keys to my replacement; dear friends came to help us get ready for the movers tomorrow. Sold washer/dryer and refrigerator. Wasted time blogging instead of finishing up inventory list for insurance purposes ; )
- Tuesday, September 28 - movers come to pack house; buyers pick up minivan from us. Go get rental vehicle and check in to hotel
- Thursday, September 30 - movers finish packing house
- Friday, October 1 - finalize transition with replacement at Houston office
- Saturday, October 2 - relax hopefully
- Sunday, October 3 - fly to Budapest

I'm told that this is normal for an ExPat and I should learn to expect delays and unplanned things around every corner. I may be a little too "type A" to accept that.

Do the Math

Our departure date is rapidly approaching! Tonight, I realized that I have been so focused on what to ship/what to store that I haven't given any thought to what we will actually pack to take on the plane. So, I made a chart for each of us of what will go in our carry on and what will go in our checked luggage. I researched what the airline allowed in regards to luggage and learned that each person can have 2 checked bags plus 2 carry ons plus a personal item/stroller. We aren't known for packing light, so I am fairly confident we will take advantage of those allowances. However, when I add everything up that equals 8 checked bags, 8 carry ons, 2 personal items, 2 strollers, 2 car seats, 2 cats, and 2 kids. Anyone want to come with us to carry our luggage?

Winter Wear!

Still Time!

So, we finally gave up on House Hunters. We have been super busy and haven't had time to do the video at a time when we were all here, awake, and looking presentable. Tonight I finally e-mailed the H.H. producer and apologized that we wouldn't be able to participate due to our quickly approaching departure date. She e-mailed right back and said there is still plenty of time and they can film the day before we leave. I am laughing....I guess they are really interested. We will do our video and see what happens.

One Car Family

That was reasonably quick. My Craigslist ad for my truck yielded a buyer already. Now off to find a rental car.

(Pre) Move Day

It's getting pretty real! We had our "pre"move consult yesterday. We had no idea we would need to tell him what we are shipping by sea, what we are shipping by air, what we are storing, and what is "history" as he kept referring to it. We'll have a list of all our "history" items up on the blog at some point in the near future in case any of you want to relive history by way of the things we're planning on selling or giving away.

For now, please let us know if you need a vehicle or a house. We have an excellent 2009 Honda Odyssey EXL with GPS and Rear Entertainment. It's got about 22K miles on it. We're also selling our 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 Quad Cab. It has about 137K miles on it. Both are running great.

We've got our first appraisal on our home scheduled for Tuesday. Once both appraisals are back, we will find out what the company will buy our home for. At that point, we know what our price point is where we are indifferent if we sell the home or the company buys it.

We're planning on adding up how much power we need for various appliances so we can go buy all our transformers today.

I also just booked our pets on to our flight. We were hoping to have them shipped separately, but it is cost prohibitive to do that. We save over 3K by putting them on our flight and doing a little work ourselves.

In theory, we'll be landing in Hungary in 2 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes from when I am posting this. How's that for making it real...

(And for those of you wondering, we're super slackers and haven't recorded our casting video yet, despite much prodding from House Hunters International. Maybe today.

Two weeks later....

I am already a blog slacker...two weeks without blogging! Hopefully I'll do better once things get more exciting. In efforts to see all of our family one more time before we leave, we have been on a tour of Texas and now ventured into Mississippi. Two weekends ago we went to Austin to see Laura /Scott and Matt/Kayla. Last weekend we went down to Harlingen and this weekend we are in Mississippi to see Kenny/Cassie. Whew! It has been great to see everyone.

We are planning on a move date of October first, pending Larry's work permit comes through. Our house went on the market on Friday and I am thankful we only have a few weeks that we have to keep it clean! We are hoping for lots of showings this weekend while we are not there to mess it up.

I quizzed Chelsea on the move today. Is Hungary close or far? Far. Will you go to the same school? No. Will you see your friends or make new ones? New ones. Will you have the same grandparents? No.
Apparently we still have some work to do!