Move Day 1 - Packing & Air Shipment

The movers arrived this morning! What a whirlwind, trying to make sure we have everything we need to take on the plane...and then what we want to have on the air shipment...because everything else will be 6+ weeks getting to us. As anyone who has had professional movers knows, when they arrive and get started, there is no time to rethink things, change your mind, etc. It all happens SO fast! I feel like the day was a total blur.

So now almost everything going with us is at my sister's house (where we're staying now that our beds are packed up) and the air shipment stuff is gone. And I've only had one major screw up - Nathan's stuffed puppy and pillow pets went in the air shipment boxes instead of being kept out for us to take on the plane. (There goes my Mother of the Year Award!) Tonight he was ok...when I told him that puppy and his pillow pets had been so excited that they jumped ion the air shipment, he looked at me and said "no, they got packed up in the boxes". My little guy is growing up WAY to fast! Hopefully he'll be so excited about all the new stuff in Switzerland that the 10 days will fly, but I feel SO badly!

Tomorrow they'll finish packing up the house and a 40' shipping container will be dropped off in our driveway for them to start loading. Way more fun than a big old truck ;-)

Auf Wiedersehen Party

What a night we had saying good-bye to all of our friends!  Definitely a party worthy of our younger years (much to the dismay of many of our bodies the next day).  Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us, and to those who couldn't make it, we missed you!

The goal of the evening was to deplete our alcohol supply as much as possible, and we did a great job!

BEFORE:

And AFTER (the empties earned their place on the mantle as the night wore on):

As always, the Kappas showed up en masse, ready to help celebrate!

And a few more pictures from the evening...

Including a guest appearance by our littlest friend :-)

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!