What Can You Fit in a Suitcase?

After a little searching I have found more than one way around the "Great Firewall". I'm much less worried now about becoming unable to get online for the things I want to do. Thankfully it's not that hard.

We are having some interesting times trying to get items like our ClearPlay DVD player and the computer to China with us. It looks like we will be experimenting with "what exactly can you fit in your suitcase?". It should be interesting...

As far as all the boxes go, we have had to number each box and keep a list of what is in each box. This is to make the time going through customs a little smoother when the shipment arrives.

BlendTec makes a blender that will work in China - yea! They are expensive, but it will be so nice to have a few semi-familiar conveniences while we live there. We will have it shipped later (they have to build it for us first).

In Case I Can't Access My Blog

If for some reason I can't access my blog from China (a very real concern), I will email my blog posts to someone and have that person post them for me from the U.S. I hope I won't have a problem with this but based on the current blockages of YouTube, Twitter, and some other sites, I am a little worried. So far, I think Google stuff is still accessible, but who knows how long it will last. Apparently, Facebook is already blocked in China. :-(

Countdown...

Yeah! Roommates in the works for the homebody. That's good news. After staying alone last week, it was concluded that some company in the house would be a NICE THING. :-)

We had a wonderful open-house put on by friends to let people in the neighborhood come wish us well. It was nice to see everyone and chat and say good-bye.

We will maybe not be taking the electric piano to China - we are worried it will get stolen in customs. We will be inquiring about the possibility of leasing a piano in China. Hoping, Hoping, Hoping... We have removed all the DVDs from their cases and put them in CD holders to place in our luggage, again, because we don't think they would survive the trip through customs.

The violin will have to be hand-carried to China by us. We may have to pay an extra fee for the carry-on. Oh well.

It's been a crazy week. We did manage to go see the new Harry Potter movie on opening night. I was so tired that I can't really remember any of the movie... Hmm, don't think I'll do that again. I still haven't recovered from the sleep-deprivation. Oy. Brad just confessed that he can't remember it either, lol. We may have to see it again at a more human hour.

I've gone back to martial arts to sharpen some skills before we move to a huge city. First day back - sprain a finger - how to feel like a dork. Still, I'm rusty on the "formulas" but not too bad on the skills. I'm also not so out of shape for it as I had worried. Apparently all the running has been good for me. :-)

TB tests for school admission tomorrow - yea! - not.

Not So Much Stuff

Image by Kassel via Flickr

The time rushes nearer! The passports arrived two days ago. We have boxes everywhere. I told Meg and Sara they had to be completely packed for China before they can pack for EFY next week. They have discovered that they don't have as much important stuff as they thought they did, though everyone is wishing we could take our beds.

The two girls will be living out of a suitcase for the next two weeks but the boxes and household items we are sending to China will ship out next week. We will then spend the last week cleaning.

Brad and Jace come home from Timberline National Youth Leadership Training Camp today. It will be nice to have their help. Sometimes I wonder if I'm taking too much or not enough and it will be nice to get Brad's opinion once in a while.

I still haven't gotten the soap made. If I have to, I suppose I can take the remnants of past batches. That would be interesting (especially the batch that was supposed to be green but turned purple!), grab bag soap. :-)

The photo today has no significance to me (I got it from Zemanta), it just brings me a calm, peaceful feeling, and I like it. Here's a great song to go with it.

Books, Books, Books...

When you have a mazillion books, how do you choose which ones to take? We are discovering that Juvenile and Teen Fiction books are not available on Kindle so much. :-( I guess we'll have to just keep making requests for the digital versions. It's an interesting thing, the boxes the kids are shipping will be mostly full of books. They don't have a lot of other "stuff" they are attached to except maybe their MP3 players.

Dentist appointments are almost all done. We have the best dentist in the world. Dr. Randall Stucki at Alpine Dental is wonderful! (It's not easy to get that kind of recommendation from me for a dentist or doctor.)

So how many boxes will two pallets hold anyway?

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Sticks, Not Soap Today

Part of me keeps waiting to receive news that, "never mind, you're not going to China after all," but the news never comes. Although if the passports don't hurry up and get here, it just might happen. They are supposed to be here by the 8th. We paid a fortune in expedite fees, so they'd better hurry up.

I'm starting to feel the time crunch. Partly because Brad is at Timberline Scout Camp and I'm not sure what to pack, and partly because things keep coming up that seem to eat time. We need to get the car's registration and inspection renewed, new tires (here's expensive: new tires on 4 cars in 2 months!), and an oil change and tune-up. I need to get sealed grade transcripts for school applications, try to keep a running list of what we should bring, and oh yeah! half a bazillion passport photos (well maybe not quite that many).

At some point this week I need to get some sunshine. The eczema on my leg is FINALLY almost gone thanks to the sun and vitamin D and I want that to continue to be a happy thing. (When all else fails, do what the dermatologist first recommended, lol.)

Today was not a soap day. It was a stick day. We finally got rid of all the pruned branches and the bush stumps that we recently dug up (and some not so recently). Tomorrow will not be a soap day either. It will be a funeral and dentist day; neither of which are the cause of nor contributing to the other circumstance. :-)

For a Girls' Night FHE (Family Home Evening), we went to the Dollar Movies. Best deal in town on a Monday, $2 for 4 people. I almost felt like I was stealing, the price is so ridiculously low on Mondays, I had to laugh. We went and saw the Hannah Montana Movie. That is a silly but fun show, with some make-you-move music. It was actually nice to go to a show where I didn't worry about "naughty scenes" or language.

At this point, I'm too tired to think about anything more to write.

Independence Day

Image via Wikipedia

One thing I am really glad about with this move to China thing. We will come back to the U.S. every summer. I am so happy that we will be here for the 4th of July. I think we probably will be very glad for a heavy dose of "God Bless America" and "The Star-Spangled Banner". Besides that, today I ran the Provo Freedom Festival 5K the whole distance. I have never run that far before and I would like to do that race again. Erin and Jace also did it. Brad ran the 10K. Yea! To top it all off we had the big family 4th of July picnic. It wouldn't be a properly celebrated holiday without everyone there playing games together. Especially the candy bar game!

Tonight we will once again go to park along with the Stadium of Fire crowd and have a picnic, games, and watch the fireworks. Ooo... aaah... ohhh...

Tomorrow the guys leave for Timberline Scout leadership training all week. Hopefully the girls and I can get a lot done at home to make progress toward moving. Only 23 days left!

Making Salve to Take Along

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Today was spent making our family's favorite skin salve. We call it Boo-Boo Goo. It's great for insect bites or stings, or cuts. It seems to decrease irritation and help the wound heal quickly. I made a double batch because of requests from some family members. We want to be able to take some with us to China. I don't want to have to figure out what the Chinese equivalent is. It's a long, slow process but it was a good occupation while I waited for my girls to come home from camp (covered in mosquito bites!).

Monday will be a soap day, I think, since I also want to take about a year's supply of homemade soap with us (I KNOW China's Customs officials would frown on bringing the chemicals necessary to make soap over there!).

A friend died today. I think that after her long battle with cancer, she can finally have peace and rest. I only hope her family can too. I pray for them.

Tomorrow is Independence Day. Besides running the Provo Freedom Festival 5K, and enjoying some picnics with family, I plan to take a few minutes to re-read the document that started it all. You can read it too if you click here. Happy Holiday!

Will it Kindle?

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I've been sorting the books we need to bring with us for Meg's senior year of homeschool. Some things are obvious that we need to bring: the math books and DVDs, books by small publishers, textbooks and workbooks, a decent atlas, and so on. It gets harder when you start to consider the "real books" that we want to have with us for learning purposes. I keep having to search Amazon and Project Gutenberg to see if we can put it on the Kindle instead of bringing the tome. This can save us a lot of weight in shipping, but it takes some time to look everything up. Some things I expect to be at Project Gutenberg, but they aren't. Good thing I checked.

Got one more doctor appointment out of the way today, and started Jace drilling math and English so his brain will be in gear for the admission exam for the international school. Sure hope Sara remembers what she learned last year...

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Dashing Around

Today was crazy, but the Lord's hand must be in our efforts because the timing of everything worked out OK. Jace and I spent the day dashing from one appointment to the next trying to make sure all body parts are in working order. Teeth are good as long as he brushes well, ears are good as long as he actually want's to hear what you are saying. :-) We made it home from the appointments just in time for me to remember my appointment with the sister missionaries. After that Jace cooked dinner - yea!

Brad and Jace and I went to the book store to look at some Chinese Mandarin language resources. Always read the reviews on Amazon before you fork out the big bucks! Doing this saved us a lot of money. We did not buy the very expensive "big name" language program after all. Turns out the format doesn't work so well in Chinese, though it's great in many other languages. We bought some other resources for a lot less money that will work out better for us. We still plan to get some other things but we will wait till we are in China for that.

We also heard today that a friend of ours is moving to the same area to teach at the "international school". Wouldn't it be something if he was teaching at the same school our kids were going to? It will be strange enough to know someone else in the church branch we'll attend. Small world.

Apparently Google and China are having some challenges getting along, and Google was cut off in China for a couple of hours last week. If there are bigger problems that develop and you think I may not have email access to gmail, send email to my alternate address (I will never check this unless there is a problem with gmail or Google) which is: ilovewarmsocks2@yahoo.com . I hope there won't be any lasting difficulty, but it pays to be prepared.

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Catching Up

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So, to catch up some of you who haven't been talking to us for the last week or so, here's the general set-up (or breakdown depending on the moment ;-) ):

We are moving to Clifford Estates, Guangzhou, China. The college students will stay here and work their hiney's off (besides someone has to take care of the dog and cats). The younger ones will be attending an international school. The timing for getting all the documents in order seems to be coming right down to the wire, so keep us in your prayers, we can use all the help we can get. Meg will continue her homeschool studies for her senior year of high school.

We will likely be living in China for several years, with long vacations to the U.S. in the summers. We're hoping to be able to work in Girls' Camp with our "home ward" for Sara each year and maybe some sort of Scout trip for Jace.

We will be attending an English-speaking branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, composed of international members of the Church. We are not allowed to meet with members who are citizens of China, and proselyting is prohibited.

Brad will have a long commute to work everyday, and the kids' school is about a half-hour bus ride from where we will likely live. No, we don't have an exact place chosen yet, that's why we are leaving on the 27th of July. (YIKES!) Any other questions?

Sorting Our Lives

The sorting process has begun. We have two categories:

• Stuff we will bring with us
• Stuff we still want to have during the summers and in three years when we come back.

Everything else is given away, goes to D.I., or in the trash. There is a lot of stuff leaving this house just now...

We went shopping for luggage tonight. My what a great deal of room ten 29 inch suitcases take up. It took us two trips to buy it and bring it home. We will need help to get to the airport...

Did you know that you can't have a TB test for 6 weeks after receiving the MMR? It tends to cause false negatives....

Getting Started

So I'm starting this blog with the goal in mind of making a journey journal of our family's travels and experiences in China and wherever else the Lord sees fit so have us go. It took me some time and effort to select a blog address that wasn't already taken ("Oh, the Places We Go!" was used). Still, I think I have come up with a decent one that is descriptive enough but not too difficult (I was afraid people wouldn't be able to remember "Family Peregrinations", lol).

I'll write more later!