Let the Adventure Begin!

A busy family with three boys 5 and under, we’re about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime – moving to Lucerne, Switzerland for 2-3 years!What a whirlwind the last two months (not even!) have been!  Here is the quick version…
Week of July 9 – Dave finds out he needs to leave on a last minute, week long trip to Lucerne
Week of July 16 – Dave is in Lucerne, and it becomes clear that if everything goes the way his bosses hope it will, he’ll be the one to be taking on the project there.  We immediately know that if the opportunity is presented to us, we’ll take it!  Two to three years in Switzerland – wow!
Tuesday, July 24 – Dave meets with the Senior Management from Europe, and it’s official!  
Yes, this was all about 8 weeks ago.  The weeks since then have been crazy.  Dave has been in Lucerne every other week and we…

• Have figured out a school for the boys – the International School of Zug and Lucerne

• Took a house hunting trip (just Dave, Laura & Matthew) and found a wonderful apartment (more on that later!)

• Did a massive purging of our belongings

• Got the boys passports

• Taken the whole family to NYC to visit the Swiss consulate to apply for our visas

• Spent countless hours researching, filling out forms, checking expat forums, etc. trying to wrap our minds around living internationally

• Had movers come in and pack up all of the stuff we’re NOT taking and put it in storage

So here we are…8 days until we leave!  Dave returns from Lucerne again tonight, we’re having a going away party tomorrow night, getting all three kids baptized on Sunday, and then the movers show up Wednesday to pack and load us out!  In the mean time, we have another big project ahead of us figuring out what we’ll take on the plane (we get extra baggage, so can take a lot), and what will go in our 1500lbs of air shipment (arriving in about 2 weeks).  Then everything else will be loaded into a sea container and will arrive in about 6 weeks.I’ll continue to fill in details as we go along…but for now, it’s time to get back to work!