Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork

Here we are, the day after Christmas, and I am swimming in paperwork.
Paperwork that I promised myself that I would not open or worry about until after Christmas.
We are drowning in it.

We have had a whirlwind of information enter into our lives in the past few weeks, and I can not even begin to process most of it since I was initially focusing on just celebrating the season with my family and friends.
Here we are, though, on the other side of Christmas Day.

For those of you who did not read my previous post, Blake, Samantha, Easton, and I are moving to Australia. Surprise!

And...
Here is where we are...

We are selling our home. We just can not justify keeping it when we are going to be on the other side of the world. The trouble of keeping it enormously outweighs the benefit of keeping it, thus we are going to sell it.
We are going to miss our house and the home that we have created in our little neighborhood, surrounded by people who we adore and care deeply for.  We are going to swallow the hard reality that we JUST finished adding a custom back patio to the back of the house. (And when I say we JUST finished it, I very literally mean, we JUST finished it days before Blake was asked if he would be interested in interviewing for this new job.)

Gulp.

We are selling Blake's truck and my Jeep.
It is fine. Really. I am not upset or unhappy at the thought of us selling it because it just is not worth the trouble of keeping it. We are going to store Blake's high school car, the Cobra, because it is, well, the Cobra, and asking him to part with it is like asking Blake to cut off one of his arms. (Or so he says.)

Gulp.

We are still working to take Whiskey, our boxer, and our cat with us. We have discovered that the series of events we have to follow in order to take them with us includes a six month quarantine period here in the United States, a ten day quarantine in Melbourne after those initial six months, and a ridiculous amount of money to make it all happen.

Gulp.

The relator is working numbers.
The photographer will be here next Monday.
The relocation company is moving at full speed.
The dog and cat have their first vet appointments on the calendar.
The kids, Blake and I have our physicals scheduled.
Passports have been processed.
Visas are on hold for the perfect moment.
The house-hunting trip to Australia is next week.

Gulp.

This is really happening, guys!
This is really happening!