I'm blogging...from a computer...woohoo!

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone, iPad and our old Dell laptop but it is wonderful to be blogging from a ''real'' computer. One that has all the letters on the keyboard (unlike the laptop that is missing 'c' and 't'). But the bigger part of being able to blog from our computer means, OUR STUFF MADE IT TO ITALY!!

*insert bigger WOOHOO!*

After 2 months and 1 week, we finally have our household goods. I've never been so excited and so thankful to see our crap. Real cups, soft couches and our bed is finally off the floor. (We bought a king sized mattress when we moved in to the house but had to wait for our goods to get here in order to have the bed frame). The kids have their beds in their own rooms and are sleeping much better already. Peanut is sleeping all night without waking, then waking up dry and going potty all by himself. It's a wonderful thing! Bubba and Pooks do still share a room but now their beds are bunked and they love that. Peanut has his own room (for the first time ever) complete with a 'transportation' theme and a new rug from Ikea. I think he really likes having his own space as he's often playing quietly alone after we tuck him in....and I usually just let him because really, who is he disturbing?

And of course, Sissy has her own room. The pink dresser finally looks at home! She has her changing table set up and we actual use it. Her crib is assembled and the mattress is set on the lowest setting. And this weekend, she's going to start actually sleeping in there.

This co-sleeping, extended breastfeeding mama is about to kick her out of our bed and into her room. I love co-sleeping and I love nursing but waking FOUR plus times a night because your 16.5 month old is trying to feed on you, is tiring. She doesn't care if I'm even awake! She is pulling on my shirt, crying and smacking...yes smacking me, trying to get to the boobs. She does not need to eat that often; heck she didn't eat that often when she was a NEWBORN. It's a total comfort thing and it's exhausting. Now that we're here she has her own room, with her own crib right down the hall. I still plan on nursing her before bed and when she wakes in the morning...but I do not intend to continue to be an all you can eat milk buffet, all night, for much longer. As in, this weekend we'll be trying the whole ''cry it out'' method...which I haven't used since bubba was a baby.

Why wait til the weekend? Well we're about 80% unpacked right now and I haven't found all the things for her room yet. I can't find her crib sheets which are kind of a priority. As well as the cutesy stuff I bought right before we moved. I figure I'll just pack up the bumpers and bed set that I made (ironic...the only kid I sew a bedset for and she's the only kid who never slept in/on it) and put up her toddler bedding. We're going with a woodland creature theme (think owls, mushrooms...kinda vintage). I managed to get the toddler bedding as well as the wall decals on clearance right before we moved. Then at Ikea a few weeks ago I found a shaggy green rug. The only thing I haven't found is a power cord for her lantern; I want a 200v one with the European plugs, so I'll have to look around and see what I can find.

My goal is to knock out the rest of the boxes and finish getting everything but the master done on Thursday, then the master bedroom on Friday. As of now the kids' beds and toys are unpacked but not their clothes/dressers. The bathrooms are unpacked but COMPLETELY unorganized so I gotta straighten up. On the bright side the living room, play room and kitchen are completely done which were the biggies. We've decided to use the upstairs room as the office/guest room. It's big enough that B has this computer set up on the one side, I'll set up my sewing machine on the other side and their is still plenty of room for the queen guest bed. I'm not setting up my craft area right away however because then priorities will get pushed aside for Pinterest crafts. The downstairs bedroom will be used for storage. Not my favorite idea but we don't really have a choice.

I love Italy but I don't know how Italians live without closets. If you think you read that wrong, I'll retype it: Italian homes do not have closets. As in, this house has none. In Texas we had a walk in master closet, a bathroom closet, a hall closet, a walk in pantry, a walk in closet in the boys' room and a good sized closet in the little kids room. Now we have none. None. Not so much as a medicine cabinet. We have 7 wardrobes (one per person plus one extra) but B is using the extra for his work clothes as they aren't very big and if it were to try to cram everything into his one wardrobe, everything would be super wrinkled. So what do we do with towels? Extra bedding? Toliet paper, paper towels and things like extra kleenex, dog food and the like? Well our solution is to put shelving in the downstairs bedroom and use it as a basement/pantry/overstock room. Realistically while it is a very pretty room, it's not all that practical. A) It's the only room downstairs. B) The radiator is currently not working so it is FREEZING. C) It has one outlet. Not one outlet cover with two outlets but just one outlet. 4 inches from the door.

So while our original intentions were to use it  for a guest room, I don't think that's gonna happen. Honestly I'm just thankful that we have that room to use because if we didn't, then we'd have to use the garage which means that both of our vehicles would be outside. (As of now, B's car fits in the garage with all the stuff from our last garage...with room to spare). My van probably wouldn't fit through the door, let alone with other boxes and toys.

So yeah, I'm a bit 'backblogged' but I'm trying to catch up! This week the weather has been absolutely amazing, temps in the 60's and so clear we can see the villages up in the mountains! We're this weekend to go to Soave (about 45 mins away) and take the kids to see the castle and (depending on their behavior and how much time we have) to Verona, the village where Romeo and Juliet takes place. Ciao!

The journey to Italy....

We left Texas bright and early Monday morning (try leaving for an airport at 4am with 4 kids, I dare you!). It was 1 dog in a soft sided carrier, 2 adults, 4 kids, 4 carry-on bags + a laptop bag + 2 diaper bags (one full of diapers and pullups, wipes and bibs, one full of things to entertain Sissy as well as my wallet, ipad and kindle), 4 carseats (which we checked) and NINE pieces of luggage. Needless to say, navigating the airports 5 days before Christmas was a challenge but luckily all of that allowed us to skip the extremely slow and long security lines...suddenly we were ushered off to the side and though it took us forever to get everything in bins and on the belt, we were through the line in less than five minutes.

We ate breakfast at McDonalds, sipped on my last Starbucks drink for a long while (caramel brulee latte, hope it still exists when we return!) and pre-boarded after a small wait due to arriving early. We loaded the plane and it was off without a hitch. The kids LOVED it and settled in quickly. Sissy nursed during take-off and fell asleep. She ended up napping for a little over half of a hour, then woke and played on my lap, then B's before falling back asleep. Peanut watched some shows on my iPad and was asleep within the first hour and a half and slept up until the pilot announced decent into New York. Bubba fell asleep at some point (not sure when, he was sitting by B) and Pookie only slept for maybe half an hour. He had little dark circles under his eyes when we arrived at JFK!

JFK wasn't even stressful, boring and long but it went okay. We arrived in one terminal, had to take a shuttle to the international terminal which in itself isn't a problem. But the pet relief area was in the terminal we landed in. However to get to it, you had to leave the airport and reenter, of course going through security. That was not going to happen as the lines were RIDICULOUSLY long. So Rascal had to hold it until after our shuttle ride to the new terminal. Then B took just him out (no kids, no bags) and re-entered through the international security (which was much shorter so early in the day). Then we waited. From noon until our flight left at 6pm. This was the most challenging part of the trip. After eating lunch there wasn't much to do but walk the dinky terminal. I would have loved to hit up a Starbucks, see the shops, etc but I wasn't going to go through security again so we stayed. Played games, drew pictures, ate and ate some more. Finally it was time to pre-board. The kids were doing well, Pooks was exhausted. Once we boarded, he fell asleep before we even took off! He remained asleep until breakfast was served (7 hours later). The other kids also fell asleep quickly. At some point after the dinner service (tortellini in a creamy sauce, side salad, roll, cheese chunk, and blonde brownie)  I slept as well though not very good. I couldn't get comfortable at all, the people diagonal from me were awake and talking loudly, in Italian. I was surprised (though I'm not sure why, lol) our flight was fully packed and the majority were Italian nationals not touristy Americans like I had expected. Everyone was nice and it was good flight. Minimal turbulence and we ended up landing a full hour ahead of schedule. Surprisingly even only getting maybe 4 hours of interrupted sleep, I still felt semi rested.

The worst part of the flight, hands down was the arrival process once we were in Venice. The kids were still tired and didn't want to carry push their carry-on or wear their little backpacks so B and I had to do that in addition to all the other carryons and the dog. I was wearing Sissy, he was wearing Peanut, then we were strapped down with everything else. We had to ride this escalator down from our gate and it was a challege. The pilots and crew were with us and offered to help which sounds amazing but then somehow we ended up at the bottom of the escaltor readjusting all of our stuff and realized we were missing Peanut's carry-on. No time to worry about that at the moment, we had to show our passports and proceed to get our other luggage which was freakishly fast coming down to baggage claim. B was trying to quickly grab all of our luggage, I was trying to keep the kids back, get the dog to stop barking, keep an eye on our carry-ons and try to calm Peanut down who was upset about his lost bag. B needed a cart to carry luggage and they only accepted Euro, which we didn't have. So B continued to grab carseat and shove them off to the side when suddenly the empty carousel we were standing by, suddenly started moving and we had to move all of it again. While he used a machine to get Euro change while watching the kids, I walked around to find the US military liaison. No luck. Apparently the liaison is outside of security. I returned to B, helped him load up all nine bags on three carts, and (with people staring) pushed everything out into the main part of the airport. B looked around for his sponsor but didn't see her. Not a huge surprise since our flight was over an hour early! We finally spotted a sign that was a ''Welcome" sign for our installation with an arrow to the liaison booth. We drag everyone and everything over to discover that the booth is empty.

At this point we were tired, thirsty, in a place where we couldn't speak to dang near anyone and the kids who had been wonderful were starting to lose it. They were sick of sitting, sick of being patient and sick of airports. B went and bought a bottle of Limone! Gatorade, it was 3 euros for one 1/2L bottle...apparently Gatorade is a hot commodity over here! Then B let Rascal out to go potty, then look for his sponsor again. I wrangled up the kids, the luggage and parked it near a bench. Boy were we a sight, lol. I ransacked all our our bags coming up with a bag of animal crackers. It bought me some time but not much. As I'm standing there completely frazzled, the liaison approached me. Apparently we screamed ''desperate Americans!". He called B's sponsor (who was on her way) and then allowed me to call my parents and let them know we made it safely. While the liaison and B were talking, I went over to the the ''lost luggage" station to see if they had Peanut's lost carry-on....they did! With his carry-on in hand, I went back to the booth to find that our sponsor had shown up too!  The guys quickly loaded up the luggage, installed the car seats and we were on our way to our new home!

Part 2, our arrival to post and our first outing, will be written shortly!

We have a report date for Italy...

B applied for the job back in July, in August he had a phone interview. First week of  September he was offered the job. Now at the very end of September he was finally given a report date. Whew! It's quite the process.

While he was given an exact date, I will share that it is mid December! Before Christmas but after Thanksgiving, so I'm grateful for that.

Let me just say that this whole process is confusing, overwhelming and long but I know it will be worth it. Just to give you an idea of what's happened thus far:

Very first thing we did was apply for Passports. This should have been simple but I didn't have my birth certificate, my parents still did. So they sent that to me. We gathered up everyone's birth certificates, citizenship papers, social security cards and oh wait, B's is missing. We tore this house apart and could not find his SS card. Awesome. So he had to go to the social security office and request a new one. We finally had all of the required paperwork. We chose to take the photos ourselves, have them printed, and then we had to go on post to turn those in. All four kids had to be with us and we took the oath. (Not the kids, we just signed for them.) That was the second week of September.

After the passport fiasco, I started researching what we need to do to get Rascal to Italy with us. Trust me, for a 10lbs dog, it gets complicated. First all pets coming into Italy must be up to date on their rabies shot (which he is) and be microchipped (which he is not) and have had an annual exam no sooner than 21 days before entering the county but no longer than one year. He also has to have a health certificate deeming him healthy and free of any diseases, he has to have an airline approved pet carrier that he can stand up in, turn around in AND that can fit under the seat in front of us.

So I set to work. Started researching carriers, which ones are best for in-cabin and least likely to get refused at the ticket counter/by the flight attendant. Not an easy task because each airline has strict requirements but they vary, as does the carrier sizes. Some are $20 some are $120. I know we'll be using it internationally, for at least one round trip flight but I also know that I'm going to be paying a huge amount at the vet. I want something durable but not over $50 if I can work it. Meanwhile, I get him in to get him micro-chipped at the animal shelter (just $10!). While there, I was looking around and they had used kennels and carriers available for donation. Imagine my surprise when one of the carriers was the EXACT same thing I had been looking at the day before online (http://www.petco.com/product/8232/Sherpa-Roll-Ups.aspx?CoreCat=OnSiteSearch). Only the animal shelter was asking just $10! So I was able to get him microchipped, then get his airline approved bag for a total of $20. The next day, I took him to the regular vet and had his annual exam, vaccines, a new rabies shot (they must be vaccinated for rabies AFTER being microchipped), a heart worm check and talked to him about flying with a pet. Total spent on all of the above mentioned things for Rascal to be ready to fly: almost $200. Plus the airline will be charging us $125 for him to ride in-cabin. Whew! So now that is done.

Rascal with Tito (who is no longer with us but apparently I have no photos of just Rascal)

Moving forward...

Wait. We can't.

We cannot book flights, schedule movers, send the van, nothing without official PCS orders. Well just this week, the lovely Italian office calls B and says ''Hey I need the kids' birth certificates to cut your orders with the kids on the orders''. Well that's just great because we sent ALL of our birth certificates with the passport stuff to the state department. While I have copies of the older boys', I didn't think to make copies of the younger kids'. Okay, not a big deal, we now have to wait to get our passports back (should be done mid to late October), once we get those we can apply for our Visas and get our PCS orders. Once we have our orders we can do the above mentioned things like book flights (which because we're flying in cabin with a dog, we're suppose to do as early as humanly possible) and schedule the movers. Once we have the movers scheduled, I can call our landlord here and give her the mandatory 30 days required notice that we are not renewing our lease. Once I do that, then I will finally really feel like we are moving.

The passport office called today, there are four steps left until our passports will be done and ready to pick up. I'm not sure how many steps there were to begin with but at least we're processing! 

So that's where we're at, a full month in from accepting the job. I'm not sure if it's more or less complicated due to us being DoD Civilians who are PCSing or if it would be the same ups and downs if we were Active Duty.