We are Phase 1 - Mission Complete! We were scheduled to have our Non-Temporary Storage pickup on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (today) of this week. Our team packed quickly however and were done around lunchtime on Wednesday. Note to all others going through this: the packers here get paid by the pound, so the faster they pack, the faster they can finish your job and move on to someone elses. Not sure if this is the case with all moving companies or not. In fact, our team in TX was particularly slow; they must have been paid by the hour. ;)
All went surprisingly well as far as the packing is concerned. It's always slightly disconcerting to see the majority of your earthly possessions in boxes on the back of a truck, but we'll probably get most (if not all) of them back in a year, so we'll make due for a while.
I guess the moving company did not mention anything to the Army transportation office about finishing early because - right on schedule - we had an ITO inspector stop by to check out the progress only to find everything gone already. Oh well. We had nothing bad to say about our team, which is usually why the inspectors come out - they're mediators more than anything else.
With all of our "extra" time today, we got prepared for tomorrow's pickup - Household Goods. We are authorized 1/4 JFTR - code for one quarter of a normal move allowance. I want to say it's somewhere on the order of 4000 lbs. Since we're not shipping any furniture (with the exception of my piano), we should not have any issues with weight. Who knows - we might even have space left over to bring home a few extra things :) I also managed to get K in to see the pediatrician this afternoon. Somehow in the all of the excitement, I totally forgot that her checkup was THIS Tuesday. I was convinced it was next week. Luckily, they made a huge exception for us and got her in for an appointment today so she's now complete with all of her required routine vaccinations for travel. B will still have one more appointment before we leave to get his PPD which is required by the school he will attend in Dhaka. We've been making the rounds picking up medical and dental records for everyone. I'm having a bit of difficulty getting my doctor to release my records - I'm pretty sure I'll win this one, but we'll see.
We got some disappointing news today with regards to our visas. It's looking like the office here will not be able to expedite the request for visas for the entire family - only the "official" traveler. So we'll have to postpone some of the regional travel we were hoping to do as a family before school starts. Round 571 of Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome goes to the Army.
The kids continue to be pretty excited about our upcoming trip. B was actually happy when the packers got to our house because it meant he was that much closer to getting to Dhaka. I'm not really sure what he's expecting to find over there, but we've been doing our best to keep him very positive about the upcoming move. He had a rough time with our last move, and I'm wondering if I just didn't do enough to make him see it in a positive light. So this go-around, it's all about the new opportunities we'll have. I'll let you know if this is any more successful than our previous move. K doesn't seem to care too much about the move. She's a bit more cranky than usual, but you almost can't tell ;)
Well, I think that's it for now. It's pretty late, and we've got another early morning tomorrow. Josh and I are never really at our best when we're moving. It seems to bring out a bit of the worst in both of us. I love to procrastinate (which seems odd since I was essentially a professional planner in my previous career) knowing that it will all get done. Josh on the other hand really wants everything to be done well and has little patience for my "wait til the last minute to get everything done" attitude. Maybe we just need more practice moving... I think we'll get to test that theory!
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