Abby's First Flight

Since we have found out we were moving to Australia I have been worrying about the plane ride with Abby. How is a 1 yr old who doesn't stop moving all day suppossed to handle a 22 hour flight? And, what about her ears? Are they going to bother her? Abby's first plane ride cannot be half way around the world!! With all of these questions in my mind I planned a trip to North Carolina to visit my Mom and Tony. We bought the GoGoBaby carseat attachment which basically turns the carseat into a stroller...so cool! (Yes, these are now the type of things that I find cool!) We checked a bag and of course had to listen to multiple people say, "you sure you don't want to check her?!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Come on people, get a sense of humor...way to obvious! Give me something original.

Anyway, the trip was great. Abby did good on the plane and her ears seemed to be fine. She of course planned her morning poop appropriately so that we had to change it on the plane, smelling the whole place up. Thanks Abs!

When we got off the plane in Philly there were about 5 or 6 guys in military uniform lacing up their boots presumably because they had to take them off coming through security. I'm not sure where they were headed but they all looked slightly depressed. Abby waved at one of the guys and he smiled and waved back. She proceeded to wave at each guy and wait until they waved back before moving on to the next one. They were all smiling when she was finished and the one guy said, "she just made my day!" :) Glad we could help out.

Visa Update: The visa has been lodged. I guess we got all the paperwork completed correctly and it should be issued in the next couple of weeks. After we have a visa number we will make flight arrangments. Till then, still waiting.

War Crimes and Soft Pretzels

We completed and signed the visa forms last night. I filled them out initially and then Jason and I went over them before signing them. I guess I was tired when I filled them out because there were quite a few mistakes on the forms. You can't make mistakes on these forms! The most disturbing was my failure to answer the question:

"Have you, or any secondary person included in this application ever committed or been involved in the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity or human rights?"

The failure to answer a question doesn't imply guilt does it? Hopefully any other questions that were answered incorrectly do not have the FBI knocking on our door.

We also started a discussion with Patti...'sidebar'-you will hear her name quite often. She works for AECOM (Jason's company) and is the one with all the answers, or at least able to give us the name of a person who has the answers -'end sidebar' - about what "furnished" means in Australia as that might change what we need to pack. She gave us the name of someone who knows the answer but she believes that furnished means everything; furniture, all kitchen stuff, tv, etc. So that is great news! No need to pack 3 forks and 3 spoons.

How is the list making going? Not well....2 more lists made since last week!

One last thought...I am going to eat at least one soft pretzel a week from now until we leave. We get them hot off the line after midnight at Philly Soft Pretzel. We ate them for breakfast on Mother's Day!! YUM!!

Sliding Date?

As time ticks on it becomes perfectly clear that having a set date is not really all that important to anyone in this process. Nevermind the fact that we have close up our house, pack our belongings, and move our family and life to the opposite side of the globe! Apparently the visa process has just been started and it takes 4-6wks for that and then we make flight arrangments after that. That will pretty much put us into July and if that's the case, we won't be leaving until July 25th or 26th. Why so late? There is a VERY important wedding that we need to attend on July 23rd and how terrible would it be to miss it by a mere 2 weeks. So, those that have not been accepting that we are leaving before July 23rd (you know who you are)...your wish may have come true! And we are SUPER excited for a weekend in A.C. before heading out. We'll keep you posted.
On another note, did you know that it costs $600 to send a 50lb. box to Australia? Or $50 to send a 12"x12"x5-1/2" package? What do you even fit in a box shaped like that? Looks like we are only bringing what can fit in our suitcases. Granted we have a maximum of 12 suitcases (50 lbs each) we can bring with us but who wants to lug all of that around an airport? We are going to try and keep it to 8. Is that possible?