I'm not really sure where to start so I'm going to give you a nutshell version of the past 9 months. Once I catch up then I hope to provide all of you with a more interesting & detailed account of our "yonder years".
December: Ryan says, "what do think of moving to Brazil?" I say "no way". My only reference point for Brazil was Ryan's mission which he described as terribly hot, terribly cold, terribly dirty, terribly poor, terribly dangerous...but the best 2 years of my life." I made a lot of that up, but that's the gist.
January: Ryan says, "they (Honeywell) really want me in Brazil. How about they fly us down there and we see if it's even a possibility." I said okay. My mom came to watch the kids, (thank you Brown!) and with knots in my stomach about leaving my very clingy & grouchy but adorable little Lucy we went to Brazil for 10 days. And I liked it. Turns out our little town called Sao Jose Dos Campos is very different than the small southern towns that Ryan served in. We found a house we liked and a school we loved.
February: We said yes. Then, worst move ever, we told everyone we were moving to Brazil. Month after month of waiting for visas and everyone saying "when are you leaving?" or worse "I thought you guys already left" got a little old for us - and you too I'm sure.
March - April: Me doing everything I possibly can except preparing for our move. That's what I do. When I'm stressed I avoid my problem by reupholstering a chair. That usually solves everything. Not really, all the dejunking, and packing was still waiting for me. The fun part was the shopping...Brazil is so expensive, especially the imported stuff, that our plan was to bring everything down with us that we would possibly need until our next trip home. So I went wild buying a years supply of stuff.
May - I finally got my act together and had a massive garage sale. I thought I was selling a lot of stuff, but when the movers came in July I realized I still had loads of crap (yes that's what it felt like) lurking in the corners and cupboards of my house. Here's when we thought our visas were submitted and we'd be leaving any day. What we know now is that they were just under a pile of papers on some lawyers desk. Aargh!
June - Okay, visas are finally submitted! Just so you know, we didn't wait to work on these until the last minute. These were in process from the day we signed the deal in February. It just requires a massive amount of paperwork to move to Brazil. Swim team started (I love the Bellair Barracudas!). That was a happy but stressful couple of weeks. My friends helped me a lot with rides for the kids while I worked on the house - repairs and keeping it clean for all the potential renters coming to see it.
Then I took a 2 week break from it all and went to the Ranch which is the only place where I forget everything going on at home. I love it there. Ryan isn't pictured because he was in New Jersey and Brazil most of the time. We really missed him. This was the first year that I spent a week up there all alone - just me and the kids. It went really well. I wouldn't hesitate doing it again. The whole Sharp family was there for the second week and we had an amazing time as always!
Back to my timeline...
July: Back to business. The movers came the day after we got home from the ranch. My wonderful sister Cydney drove home with me so I wouldn't have to manage 4 kids and a marginally reliable suburban on my own for 14 hours. Then she stayed for a couple of days to help me when the movers came. If there's a gal you want with you in that situation it's Cyd. From the time we were little she's been an organizing freak of nature! Her closet is often found in ROYGBV order. I LOVED having her there. She helped me think of everything. We were packing for 2 weeks in a hotel, 3 months in Brazil without our shipment, an air shipment, a sea shipment and storage. Trying to figure out where everything was going would have been impossible without her. A few days into the moving process the house became uninhabitable so we moved to our hotel. I don't know how to describe this delicately, except to say that our hotel smelled like an Indian restaurant's mop sink. Because it was an extended stay hotel people were cooking up a storm and we always had curry lingering with us wherever we went. A few of the big companies nearby use it to house all the families from India who come for training. Our hotel was over half Indian. I know because two days into our stay we had a bomb threat so the entire hotel had to stand on the curb in 110 degree weather while the police searched. There's no point in me saying all of this other than to illustrated the amount of Indian food being made every day in this hotel.
Finally moving day comes! And then it goes and we are still in Arizona. Somewhere between the US consulate in LA and our hands in AZ, FedEx losses all of our visas and our passports! It was starting to feel like a sign from heaven that we should not be going to Brazil. We had everything packed up; we had every carry-on bag carefully planned; we had checked out of the hotel. All this hoping that at the last minute they would find our package and we'd be on our way. But it didn't happen that way. It took them 2 days to find them and by then all the flights to Brazil were booked so we decided to head to Bob & Kay's house for 5 days while we waited for our next departure day. The bright side of all of this is that we were able to overlap with Bob & Kay for about 24 hours. They were coming to AZ for a visit during the Peru Temple closure. It was so good to see them and I'm really glad we got delayed.
July 27th: now we are really on our way!
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