I got the email this morning that our visas have been approved. We are so excited! I was really hoping to find out while we were on vacation and we did. I even brought our passports with us, just in case. We are going to mail them to DC to get our visas put in them.

There is still so much that we need to get done, but just knowing that we are moving to Portugal will make it all worth it. The biggest things are to finish what we need for the driver’s license exchange, and get Bailey ready to go. I requested our driving records from SC and FL, so those should be coming pretty soon. I think that from there I need to mail something to VFS DC to have them sign. I still need to figure that out some more. Bailey will probably be the most stressful part, but tons of people have moved pets with them, and we only have to do it once. We will probably just do it ourselves, but are still looking at the possibility of using a pet relocation service. They are so expensive though, and we will still have to do the majority of the work. I think that if we were able to get the visas on our own, we should be able to do this on our own too.

I’m still not sure of our move date. Once we get our visas back, we will know the date of our appointment in Portugal. We will need to find a lease before that appointment. I’m really hoping our appointment is not until January, but we’ll see. So far we have an AirBnb rental for the month of November, and we will figure things out from there. The rental is in Sintra, and I was really hoping to get to stay there. It is in walking distance to a bunch of stuff. Since walking is a major priority of mine in this new life, I think it’s fitting that our first place will be around so much stuff.

We are going to enjoy the rest of our vacation and then get back to work when we get home. Less than 2 months until the move! Woo-hoo!!