you've just gotta laugh

So, here we are, approximately 6 weeks out from when we are planning on moving out of our home.  With no moves scheduled yet.  That's okay, right?  We aren't behind, are we?

Ugh.  The actual move has been the bane of this whole process.  We finally got our stuff together enough to get both of us to the TMO (stands for Traffic Management Office) class on moving overseas.  We check in, and they kind of can't believe that we are going to Australia.  The woman was VERY helpful, went and got info for us, and came back with bad news.  Since we aren't going to an American base, we would not be able to schedule and plan our move online like 99% of the military families do.  No, we would have to come in, sit with them, as they do it by hand, and then wait 20 days for local companies to bid on our shipment.  Only then would we be able to get our move dates (yes, plural, I will get to that).

Okay, we could live with that.  But then, wait, our orders weren't to our final destination.  They only had us reporting to the embassy (14 hours away from where we will be living).  So they said with the current orders they could only get our stuff that far.  Well, that's no help at all.  So Patrick had to get his orders modified to say the location we will actually be living.  That process finished up two days ago.  He went, with his new orders, to TMO yesterday, but he was too late.  They told him to come back in the morning.

This morning he told me excitedly he was heading in to the TMO office! We got overly excited, and hopeful, because an hour later he called and said "you will not believe what we have to do now".  Turns out, where we live is not under the jurisdiction of Camp Lejeune's TMO office.  We have to go to Cherry Point, a base that is about a half hour in the opposite direction, where Patrick does NOT work, to go to their TMO office and have them schedule the move. Still by hand, and still with the 20 day waiting period.

So who knows when Patrick will have the time to go to Cherry Point and do all this.

Aside from that mess, we did get all of our medical/dental paperwork submitted.  One thing finally went my way, after the tragedy of getting my blood drawn, it came back two weeks later to say all the necessary antibodies were present and I was good to go.  Hooray!  And if you were also wondering about my dental affiars, I did not in fact need a root canal, I just had an old filling replaced, and there was zero evidence of decay behind it.  So basically, all for nothing.  But, I got signed off on, and am done!  Hopefully...  We still have to wait 7-10 days to see if our paperwork gets approved.

And then there's the passports.  Mine still isn't in yet.  And Patrick actually had to send his government issued one BACK because it needed a certain stamp in it.  Which will take 4 weeks.  To put a stamp on a page.  We still have yet to apply for our tourist passports, which may have to wait until we actually move at this point, depending on the wait time.

Sigh...  Even though it is stressful, I just keep telling myself it could always be worse.  As I found out this week, another family at the battalion is actually heading somewhere I can't remember but it is basically Mongolia.  WHAT?!  Makes me very thankful...

And on that note, here's a little something to make you smile:

I just have to say, he put matching cowboy boots on first.  And on the right feet too! But he has a cut on one of his heels from falling through one of his buckets (he will never learn) and it irritated the cut.  So he swapped it out for a more comfy rain boot.  Then he brought his play mat to the table and decided to climb in.  Oh, how I adore this big goof (who is currently napping with his head in my lap wearing the same outfit - diaper and mismatched boots).

are you kidding me?

Apparently the universe thought my last post had too much whining in it, because karma got me.  This is how my day went:

No sooner did I click "publish" on my last post and Patrick called me with more tasks.  Turns out in order to get medically cleared I would need immunization records for both Gunnar and I.  Dating back to birth.  For real?  I had 16 years worth of medical records lost by Johns Hopkins.  And I'm fairly certain that the doctors that gave me shots when I was a baby are no longer practicing.  So, I said that's not happening, what else can I do?  He said the overseas screening office told him that I needed to get a blood titre drawn by my doctor.  Ok, sounds easy enough.

I called my doctor who said they can't just take my word for it, I needed the overseas screening office to fax them orders for the labs.  Well after a phone call to them, I found out they don't do that, so I had to go to the base hospital and have it done.  Patrick told me to go in, ask for the admin office because I needed to be put into the system, and then they would help me from there.

I pack Gunnar into the car and we head to the naval hospital, where the parking lot looked like Christmas Eve at the mall.  I found parking and went on with the mission... In the main entrance to the front desk, asked for admin and found the right office.  I waited a few minutes, gave the guy my info and he said "Did they tell you you weren't in the system?  Because you are."

Ok... so then I asked where I needed to go for the titre, and he directed me to labs.  There, I took a number and waited.  When it was finally my turn, the woman at the desk asked who sent me since I didn't have any orders for blood work.  I told her my story and she said "You need to go to the Overseas Screening Office and have them put it in the computer, I can't do anything without orders."  Annoying, but makes sense; so I asked where to go.  "I don't know" she said, and was on to calling the next number.

Ok... so I went outside and googled where I needed to go.  Turns out it was in the hospital.  Went back to the front desk and asked for directions again.  Found the right office to which I was told they didn't do that and I needed the immunizations clinic.  I got directions, and wouldn't you know... right next door to labs.  The woman there put the info into the computer, and it was back to labs where I pulled another number.

We waited, returned to the desk with the same woman who took my number and my ID and then asked "did you pull another number?"  Well, since I just handed you a new one, yes, yes I did.  I was lectured on the fact that I should not have taken a new number because had I not, she could have bumped me to the front of the line, but now I would have to wait.  Since they hadn't yet called my old number to the back for lab work I don't know how this new number affected the situation, but I didn't ask questions, I just apologized and took my seat again.

I finally got called back, and since apparently I couldn't hold Gunnar while they drew blood, and he couldn't be "unsupervised" we had to wait for another nurse to come in and watch him.  The vials started filling and then GASP!  Just what you want to hear from the person holding a needle in your vein.  Turns out I started "free bleeding" and blood was gushing out of my arm where the needle was sticking in.  Once it was under control, I told her that never happened before, and she told me she had never seen it happen before.  Very comforting...

I got cleaned up and quickly gathered my things, and we were on our way.  Bonus - I can now navigate the naval hospital in my sleep.  Another bonus was that I got a call that our passports were ready, and I could come pick them up.  I planned on it since I was still on base; could things really be turning around and going my way?! After lunch with Pat I went to the passport office.  She asked if I wanted to check them out, and I said yes (really just to make sure that the important documents were returned with them).  Everything seemed in order, so I put them back in their respective envelopes and noticed that they were different colors.  I asked why, and she said "oh no".  She made a few phone calls and turns out, the government issued me the wrong type of passport.

So it was back to waiting, more phone calls, paper work, and trying to control a tired toddler who was way too far past nap time.  I got everything filled out and turned back in, and she will call when it arrives... "hopefully it won't be too long".

In conclusion... Gunnar and Patrick are totally ready to go in regards to everything we have accomplished thus far.  I, however, am not ready in regards to ANY of it.  I didn't get cleared by dental, I won't be cleared by medical until my lab results come back in two weeks (meaning a longer delay before meeting with TMO and scheduling our move), I won't have a passport for probably another four weeks because they sent me the wrong one.  Clearly I am not meant to make this move, or someone up there gets a real kick out of having me run all over God's creation.

Just an FYI universe:  I'm not whining.  I get it.  You can stop now.  Thanks.

PS:  I promise to make the next post much more fun.

saying goodbye

And so the "goodbyes" begin... We have been slowly selling some things we don't want to keep or store while we are overseas, and last night our list got down to the fish tanks.  I put our big tank up online and within a matter of minutes it sold as a whole.  I didn't even get to post the small tank, but there was so much interest in the big tank I mentioned I had another tank and pretty much everything inside the tank sold on the spot.

I was not prepared for it to go that quickly.  A very nice woman, who tolerated my lengthy questioning about her abilities to care for our fish in her own tank, came to pick up our little 6 line wrasse (along with a snail and some rock and coral) last night.

I spent the hour before she got here taking photos of the little guy:

He was one of my favorites.  Ever since we got a tank 3 years ago all I wanted was a 6 line wrasse.  And I'm not going to lie, I shed a few tears saying goodbye.  Hopefully I picked a good home for him, and he will enjoy his new tank-mates.

I figured now would be as good a time as any to update everyone on where we are in our moving process.

As for the people in our family, we have each been to our respective doctors and been medically cleared to live overseas.  This involved three separate appointments at three separate doctors - civilian for Gunnar and me, military for Patrick.  We then had to get cleared by dental as well.  That had to be done on base.  I was concerned with this part because we have to be totally cleared medically before we can meet with TMO (aka the office that schedules and plans our move - which we are supposed to do 7 months out, but we are 2 months out).  However, base dental recently stopped taking appointments because they were so backed up.  I guess they managed to squeeze the three of us in, and we went yesterday.  Turns out that even though I have been getting regular cleanings every 6 months on the dot and have had 2 sets of x-rays done in 2 years, my dentist missed a pretty big issue in a tooth, and now I might be looking at a root canal.  This means I am not cleared to move with my family until it is taken care of.  Given my huge (and only slightly irrational) fear of the dentist (I have to be sedated) you can only imagine my reaction to this.  So pray for me that my appointment in 2 days goes smoothly and it's nothing more than fixing a filling.  Then I have to go back to dental on base, get rechecked and hopefully cleared.  After that we have to take all of our paperwork to the overseas screening office on base and hope that it's all filled out properly and we will be done with that part of our list.

As for our furry family, we are still deciding if we are taking the dogs with us or not.  It's a heart breaking decision, but it comes down to what is best for them.  And even a direct flight from LAX is 15 hours.  That's a long time to be under a plane.  They are good travelers, but I think that's asking a little much of them.  It's a lot of time for me to spend panicking above in the cabin as well.  I told Patrick I would need to be sedated (that seems to be a reoccurring theme for this post...).  As it turns out, that wouldn't be possible, because if we took them, I would have to take them (and Gunnar) over by myself in August while Patrick would go ahead in June.  Sounds like a job even SuperWoman would turn down.  The reason for that is because they have to be quarantined a minimum of 30 days in Australia, no matter what.  But they also have to be quarantined a total of 180 days (6 months) from the date they get a certain blood test drawn.  Well the date they were first able to get that test taken would put them in quarantine until September 8.  If we had to pay for quarantine from June to September we would go bankrupt, and also it would be miserable for the dogs.  The would be 10 hours away from us, in Sydney, in a cage, with strangers.  We are getting all the necessary tests and shots for them to come with us (which has involved 2 vet visits on base so far, we still need 1 more off base, and shipping vials of blood off to a lab), but they might be staying with their cousins at the farm with my parents.  We can't seem to bring ourselves to even discuss the topic.

After all that, I guess the next step is to sell more stuff, and then sort the rest between storage, household goods, and other things.  The HHG shipment will be expedited I believe, and will take about a month?  I'm going on what I've heard, so I'm not sure.  And the storage stuff will be shipped off to wherever the military has space to store it (no climate control available much to my husband's chagrin).  Then the rest of our belongings we will need down under (but aren't HHG) will be shipped, but take somewhere between 5 and 6 months?  That's what Patrick tells me anyways...

Major things left on our list of "to sell" items are our cars.  We still have Patrick's old truck (we have 1 interested party) and we have decided to sell the Tahoe as well.  Patrick's parents will be taking the new truck.  We spent so long looking for the perfect one, it would be a shame to have to start that process all over again in 2 years.

We also have sent off our applications for our government passports (which involved going to base for photos, and then a separate meeting with the base passport office).  It's been over a month, so hopefully they will arrive soon (along with our important documents) so we can then apply for civilian passports as well.

If you're still with me (and not bored out of your mind) then thank you.  It feels nice to vent about all this, and putting it all in writing makes me feel like I have accomplished something.  There's still a lot more to do, but we're getting there (I guess) slowly but surely...

down under

If you know me and Patrick well, I am sure you have heard the story I should be telling now.  But because I love my husband so much, I won't say anything more than this: for the last 8 years, there has been a running joke amongst our families that Patrick owes me a trip to Australia.  Well, it turns out he has decided to cash in big time.  We are headed to the land down under.  For two whole years.

Yep, you heard right.  Orders are in, and ours are to Queensland, Australia.  From what I understand this is a Royal Australian Army base, so I am not expecting many, if any, Americans.  It will certainly be our biggest adventure to date.

We have absolutely loved our time in North Carolina, and are sad to see it end. And, I have never been more proud of Patrick (and his work) than I have been at this duty station.  I know, even through the long hours, he has thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities and responsibilities given to him as company commander.  We will definitely miss our 2D Rad Bn family.  But, nevertheless, I am slightly excited.  Actually, more terrified than excited, but I'm sure that will balance out as things get crossed off our never-ending 'to do' list...

Right now, I am still in a state of shock, and even re-reading these words I get dizzy.  Discussing things we need to do 'for Australia' still sounds like a joke.  We weren't expecting this at all.  It came up rather quickly.  One day Patrick got an email that a billet had opened up and he was on a very short list to fill it.  The next day he said we got it, and orders would be written up later in the week.  Crazy.  Now, we have a LOT of planning to do, and then some.  Stay tuned for plenty of exciting/scary things to come in the way-too-near future.  I still can't believe that in a few months we will be living on the other side of the world.  Wow.