The Goodbyes have Begun

What a difference two weeks makes.

Since I last posted, we've finished and turned in our physicals. We have been to the travel clinic and just today we finished our last dose of oral Typhoid. I will be glad when that is out of our system. It made me very tired and some unpleasant intestinal upset. Mae has had a headache and maybe even a mild fever all week. Ellie seems unaffected by it. Kernel opted for the injection and was spared some of these unpleasant side effects. But his vaccination is good for just two years whereas the girls and I have immunity for 5 years. When we get to Abu Dhabi we will probably start taking Rabies vaccine as well.

Our house is now on the market and we had our first showing today. That was a scramble to get the house ready for that! But today was very nice and relaxing until we got the call that somebody wanted to see the house. I've never been through a house sale in my entire life.

But Saturday night was our going away party. Our dear friends had offered to host it in their home for us. We had just about 50 friends and family there. The biggest surprise was that my mom flew in for it. That was a great surprise to have "Granny from Pennsyltucky" there (I'm hoping that gets a giggle out of them. It was her idea for our aliases and now that she is part of the blog, she needs one too.)

Our party was really wonderful. The only bad part was that it was the big start to all the goodbyes that we will have ultimately say as we prepare to leave Texas as our home state. It is not our intention to come back here after our time in Abu Dhabi is over. But we enjoyed having a wonderful BBQ with our friends and visiting with them for hours before some of them had to go home. Most of them are from church and so we will see them for the next two Sundays but some of them we genuine goodbyes and we all came back home feeling very loved, but heavy hearted for those we said goodbye to.

The kids seem to be doing ok right now. We all have had some stressful and teary moments. But for the most part, they are doing ok. Our youngest, Mae seems to be having the most outwardly emotional struggles. We all just can't wait to have this stressful time behind us.

This week sees us finishing up the visit with my mom. She goes back home early Wednesday morning. I hope we can do something fun with her. Judd has his last full week at work as he only works 4 days the following week and then the week after that, we leave. We should also get our guaranteed buy offer (this is where the company buys our house from us, but for less than the ideal price) and I think that if it is a reasonable amount, we are just going to take it. We also need to get our air freight shipment together so that it is ready to go a week from today. That's starting to look like a 500lb. camping-in-our-house kit.