Month: December 2015

Moving Right Along – Passports are ready!

On By laurasuzyIn Preparing to Move, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The kids passports came back in just 10 days!  This is the second thing we were expecting to take 3 weeks but only took 10 days.  I am super excited, because that means all we have to do now is secure health insurance, get an apostille on our background check documents, and make sure everything is properly translated and photocopied!  We could apply for visas next week!

I have been reading Tsh Oxenreiders Organized Simplicity in order to prepare my mind for getting rid of our stuff.  I think it will be very helpful.  Somehow, knowing other people have made the choice to sell most of their stuff and live with less, and done so happily, even with small children, gives me hope that I can do it, too. Tsh said they ended up with 15 boxes that they kept which became their checked baggage for their flight abroad.  At the time, I think they only had a toddler.  I’m very curious to see how many boxes we end up moving!

Fingerprinted, Examined, Richer and Poorer!

On By laurasuzyIn Preparing to MoveLeave a comment

The visa application checklist is coming along!  Last week Ryan and I got fingerprinted and sent off our criminal background check requests.  This week, the whole family converged upon the doctor’s office for our physicals, and we have our medical certificates.  We also realized that the kids’ passports expire next November, so we decided it would be best to renew them before we apply so we don’t have an issue with them expiring shortly after we arrive in Spain.  So yesterday we brought the kids to the post office to apply for new passports, and we left an unplanned $660 poorer.  We decided to pay expedite fees so that we’ll have the passports in hand when the rest of our documents are (hopefully) ready in January.   This process is not cheap!

We’ve been working on selling things on Craigslist, and the kids are getting into the action, too.  They are motivated because we told them if they list and sell their own stuff, they can have the money to use in Spain.  My personal hope and dream is that we can sell enough non-essentials to fund plane tickets for our family.  Ryan sold the saltwater aquarium last Saturday, so that gets us a good chunk of the way there.  Getting richer and getting poorer… this is an adventure!