Last few days in England

We have just over a week left in England. Eight days before we fly out. It's bitter sweet. Iam glad to be going back to the States and I am thrilled about being closer to family. However, I am going to miss England terribly. My younger 2 sons grew up here. This is their home. They only know England. It is going to be quite different for them.

Wednesday will be our last night in this house. This is the house Griffin grew up in. He was 2 months old when we moved in. It's his home. He is really excited about moving, so that's good. He can't wait to get a new room. :)

We we be leaving a ton of great friends behind. The great thing is we have friends in Texas. At least we aren't arriving not knowing anyone. That should make the transition easier.

We have gotten the hook-up on a church. It seems nice. David is already getting emails from some of the youth. I have been talking with someone from the church via email. Thanks so much to Melissa for passing on our info.

Our phone and internet is being turned off on Wednesday. We will be able to check our email and such once we are in billeting, if their wireless works. :) We final out of housing on Friday. Dave finals out of the base on Tuesday. After he's done with that we are taking a taxi to London and staying the night at a hotel near the airport. We fly out at 12:35 pm UK time and will arrive in St. Louis around 6:30pm their time, if all goes smoothly with our connection in Chicago. We will be spending the night near the port and heading out to Mom's on Thursday morning. Hopefully the truck will be there when we get there. :)


So, this will be my last blog post for a while. :) Don't miss me too much. LOL

Finally

We are finally packed out. Two and a half days and 10 crates later, our household goods shipment is on it's way to Texas. :) Monday our unaccompanied gets packed out.
Time is getting close for us to leave. We are all excited and looking forward to it. :)
Wel, I am off to finish up washing the laundry and sorting out what we are keeping and what is going with the unaccompanied. Fun fun. :)

It's Moving Day!!!

The packers are here. Well, one of them is. The other 2 are finishing up a job that took longer than they expected. They should be here around 1 or 2. Since they are 2 men down it may take an extra day to get the packing done. No big deal. That means one extra day off of work for Dave, which he's all for. LOL

I think they guy has almost gotten Griffin and Lucas' room done. Then he's moving on to David's room and then the computer room (also known as the "piles of crap " room. LOL).

I have a little bit of stuff to do today. I need to send out a mass email giving everyone my new email address. I also need to let everyone know when our phone and internet are going to be turned off. I need to switch some online account information so they have our new information.

The house hunting is going good. We found a house we really like and are talking to a realtor about it. :) We don't want to buy a house sight unseen, but it's getting close to us leaving and we need to get the ball rolling on the whole house hunting thing. :)

Well, I am off to finish up the bits I have to get finished today.

One More Month

Well, we only have 1 month left here in England. Things are rolling along. We have our "let's see how much crap you have to pack" inspection on the 4th of July at 8 am. They come to pack our household goods on the 9th and 10th of July. They are dropping off our Flintstone furniture on the afternoon of the 10th. I will definitely take pics for ya. :) We have our housing pre-inspection on the 13th of July. Our unaccompanied goes on the 16th. :) The cleaners come to clean the house on the 26th of July and we final out of the house on the 27th of July. Then we move into billeting on base until the 30th of July. Dave out processes the base on the 31st of July and we are going to London that night to stay in a hotel close to the airport. We fly out on Aug 1st. :)

We will get to Mo on Aug 1st. Hopefully the car will be there when we get there. We will probably get a hotel the night of the 1st and pick the car up on the 2nd. Then we will drive to my Mom's. Then we have to register the truck and squeeze in visits with everyone. We plan to be in Texas on Aug 6th. Then we just have to find a house, buy it and close on it before school starts on the 27th. No rush. LOL

The Ball is Rolling

Well, we have pack out dates. Whoo Hoo!! We pack our household goods on the 9th and 10th of July and our unaccompanied on the 16th. Not much time. We haven't had any luck with giving the cats away. :( Dave called the pet liaison on base and left a message with her. I am sure she will be a great help.

The truck gets shipped on Tues. Monday we have an appt to get the lights converted back to US specs. We will be using a friend's car for the rest of our time here.

Dave is going today to schedule the delivery of our stick furniture. Fun for us. Actually we have never had the stick furniture before, so this will be a new experience for us. Nothing we can't handle, I am sure. I will need to go to the loan locker after they pack our unaccompanied to get loaner dishes and stuff.

We are hiring a cleaning service to clean the house for our final out. We decided long ago it is money well spent and have been saving up for it. We figure it is well worth the cost to have that taken care of. Of course we will still be doing quite a bit of cleaning after they pack us out. There won't be much else to do. LOL

We are flying out of London on the 1st of August. They have us flying into Chicago O'Hare. UGH I have flown through there twice and it was horrid. That was the screw up point for everything that went wrong on our trip home a few years ago. Planes were delayed or cancelled, we missed connecting flights. It sucked. So, we are not bringing any luggage. We have decided that we will mail clothes and such to my Mom's before we leave. We will each bring a carry on with a change of clothes and that's it. We have a 1 hour 35 minute lay over at Chicago. That is just not enough time for the 5 of us to collect our luggage, go through customs and make our connecting flight. Carry ons are much easier and a lot less hassle. We figure we are going to the States and anything that we need we can get for a reasonable price. Plus none of us have summer clothes, so we are going to have to buy clothing anyway. :)

So, I am busy sorting through the entertainment center. It needs to go to the dump, but everything on it needs to be transferred to the bookshelves. Our coffee table and end tables will hold our TV, DVD player, and AFN box until it gets packed up. :) That should be fun.

Well, I am off to finish up the sorting and moving of everything I can without Dave's help. Fun for me. :)

The Joys of Moving

Well, to prepare for our international move, ( Doesn't that sound so much more exciting than PCS? LOL) we have been going through tons of stuff. Now the average military family moves every 3-4 years. We have been here for 8 years. Sure we have moved from house to house, but it's not the same as moving from base to base. In those 8 years we have accumulated a ton of stuff. We have also accumulated another child. LOL So we have started the much needed process of weeding out the necessities.

We have made 2-3 dump trips a week, on average, for the last month or so. That's a lot of crap. I mean, we are talking an Expedition load. We have started a pile for a yard sale, that is quickly taking over the house. Thank goodness the yard sale is in 2 weeks. Today Dave and David are taking down the shed. They have managed to empty it out and divide the piles into trash and sort through. Now they are cutting the shed down. We have figured out that we need to ship the truck 6 weeks before we leave in order for it to be waiting for us when we get to the States. That means we need to ship it around June 20th, if we are leaving here Aug 01. That doesn't give us a tremendous amount of time to get all the hauling done that we need to do. It's enough time, but just barely.

Dave goes for his briefing this week. After that we should be able to start setting actual dates. Then the fun stuff starts. LOL Up until now we have been working under self imposed deadlines. It's stressful, but not tremendously stressful. Once the military starts issuing deadlines the real stress begins. :)

Well, I am off to finish sorting through Griffin and Lucas' room. I am going to let them pick 5 toys each and the rest will be packed up. They will still have their game boys and DVDs and such so 5 toys each will be plenty. :)

Hope you all have a great day.

We are going to...

Dyess, Tx. Whoo Hoo. Second choice on our list and Dave gets to work heavies like he wanted. :)