Preparing for our move to China!

Once we accepted Dan's position, we faced the daunting task of trying to prepare for our move. First we had to pick a realtor, sell the house, choose the belongings that would go in storage, in our air shipment, or on our sea shipment, find a home for Jenny (the dog), and most importantly try and prepare El, Eens, and Coop.

Picking our realtor was very easy! My friend Teresa sells real estate in our area and her daughter went to school with Ellie. I knew that I would be able to ask her anything and she would be open and honest with me. I also knew that she was familiar with the area and would be able to tell potential buyers all the great aspects of it. Plus, she is a good friend and very dedicated to her work! We definitely made a great choice because she sold our house in 5 days!! Yea, we could check that off of our list!

Next, we had to start going through our house and deciding where everything would go. This was very difficult for me because I felt very strongly about bringing things that would make our new house seem like home for the kids. Dan did not agree with all of my choices, but in the end, almost all of the toys and books got shipped to China. My rationale was, when we return home, the kids will be too old for toys we stored and also, China does not have the best reputation in toy making this year!! Our new house is furnished, so we really didn't have to bring too much furniture. We did decide to bring all of our mattresses because the ones in the house are very hard. According to the Chinese, hard mattresses are good for your health, but we prefer a little comfort!! I also convinced Danny that I needed to bring my "big red chair". I love that chair and really don't know where it will fit in our new place, but I had it shipped anyway! I'm sure I will be happy I did! After we decided what was going where, we then had to fill out all of this crazy paperwork for insurance purposes. I'm not sure how many pieces of paper we ended up with, but by the end, I refused to count how many socks were going anywhere. We're just praying everything makes it to the destinations safely!!

After walking around the house hundreds of times and changing my mind on things a thousand times, we started buying items that would be difficult to find once we arrived in Tianjin. I was able to e-mail another spouse from Deere that lived in Tianjin. She was extremely helpful and helped me remember things like, coffee (duh, they like tea over there!), swim diapers, spices, bug spray, make-up and toiletries. I knew I needed deodorant because when we were delayed while visiting in May, I looked for women's deodorant because mine was in my checked bag, and much to my dismay, I couldn't find any. I ended up smelling like Danny for a day - that's not a bad thing necessarily, but I didn't feel very feminine!!! There were a ton of other things that we stocked up on just in case!

The next step was to find a home for Jenny. She is too old to fly on a 13 hour plane trip. We had
thought that my parents would be happy to take Jenny, until they got a second puppy. Three dogs would have been too much for them to handle, so I started begging other family members. Jenny has been a part of our family for 10 years so I couldn't bear to just give her to anyone. She has two issues that my siblings are disturbed with, one is that she howls loud, and the second is that she has a lump close to her shoulder that is not very pretty to look at. My wonderful brother Rob and my soon to be sister-in-law Steph decided to look past her flaws and give her a home!! I couldn't have been happier. I know that she will be in good hands and in the end, they may even love her little issues like I do! She is a very sweet dog and I am going to miss her like crazy! I think Coop will too!

The biggest challenge for us was to try and prepare a 6, 4, and 2 year old for moving to China. Ellie was more excited than I imagined she would be. She is looking forward to going to her new school and I promised her that she could continue to take swimming lessons, ice skating lessons and most of the things she does in the states, plus she will probably find new interests. Her biggest concern was that she wouldn't be able to understand her teachers. She must read her mommy's mind!! I have had to explain to her numerous times that all of her teachers at school speak English and that we will find teachers for extra curricular activities that speak English also. Of course, unbeknownst to El, she will most likely become pretty fluent in Chinese over the next three years! If she continues to be mainly concerned about the language barrier, then I think we're in good shape! Eensie was ready to move to China the day we told him under the assumption that his friends were coming with him. According to Eens, Henry, Ryan and Jenna are all moving to China at some point this year!! Too cute! The biggest change for Eensie will be that he will attend pre K all day, everyday. I'm sad about this because I thought we would have one more year together at home, but in the end I know it is best for Eens. He loves school, primarily for social reasons, and I think the more exposure to the language he can have, the better! I sure will miss him during the day though. Our little Coop has no clue what is going on! He can speak a few Chinese phrases that have been taught to him by his daddy and watching Ni Hao Kai Lan on Nick. I'll probably be bringing him to the grocery store with me as my little interpreter!! I think he will miss Jenny the most out of all of the kids. Every morning he comes into our room and looks for Jenny and loves on her. He lays all over her and she rarely gets mad.

We know that this move will not be easy, but we are bound determined to stick together and turn this into an adventure of a lifetime!!