Wee-wind Wednesday

I keep hearing from people who tell me they really enjoy getting to "participate" in this across-the-world-move from afar. So I have decided to really allow myself to properly document and focus my blogs in the upcoming weeks and months to what it means to move across the world for the third time in four years.

This week's order of business?

Yesterday, we shipped our van out of Portugal.

Destination: U.S.A!

I was so proud of myself for getting everything ready to ship the van without the inclusion of my husband in our daily life. However, I did not do it alone. The day before, our neighbor, Josh, came over to help me do a few things for the van. He informed me that they instructed the van to be "clean" and he said, in a very nice way, that he was not sure this van would qualify. I informed Josh that I did not have it in me to try and get this van in tip-top shape. So he suggested I put it on the Facebook Yardsale page for our Base and see if some airman might want to do it for me.

Someone did. Someone who lived just a few blocks from me. He came to the house, picked up the van, let Scrubs lick him all over the face (some guard dog!) and returned it looking A-MAZ-ING. Sometimes, it is just worth paying for something.

In addition, I had the help of Josh and Rebekah who have graciously loaned us their second van for the two months that remain of our time. Only glitch? Their van is Japanese. That means there is a steering wheel on the opposite side of the vehicle. Egads! Mom helped me by driving my van to the port while I tackled the opposing side vehicle, and together, we got the van turned in!

So I thought it would be appropriate to flashback to July 28, 2010. This was the day our van shipped out from Baltimore to Turkey. They gave us an arrival date of October 7, 2010. It did not arrive until October 22, 2010. Not that long but VERY long if you are in the heat of the Middle East renting a car that does not have air conditioning.

Here is a blog post I wrote celebrating the return of the van October 22, 2010.

And here was a video of our family celebrating the arrival of the van. (This news was second only to the fact that my Mom and Joni had just arrived in town for a visit!) Most likely, I was pregnant with Abigail during the shooting of this video but had no idea: