Today starts the week I’ve been dreading. I know I’m supposed to be excited. I am, but I’m also annoyingly anxious. Bailey has his vet appointment this afternoon. When I made the appointment I hadn’t known that today is a federal holiday, so the USDA office isn’t open. Hopefully the paperwork will be waiting in some queue tomorrow and they will just stamp it and mail it out within a day or two. Everywhere says that it takes 2-4 business days, but most people who have moved recently said it was mailed out within 48 hours. We leave on Saturday, so we have to have it by Friday. We really should get it in time, but it’s that small chance that we don’t that is causing me so much anxiety.

There’s also the fact that Fedex just lost our package. Fedex will be delivering our USDA certificate- it’s going to be mailed to us overnight. This past Saturday I got a text that a package I was expecting was delivered. It was nowhere to be found. I called Fedex and they opened an investigation, but it has definitely shaken my confidence in them getting us our USDA certificate on time. Or at all. Anyway, I really hope that in 3-4 days the certificate arrives and all of this anxiety will have been for nothing.

We have a ton going on this week. No more free days. Like I said, today is Bailey’s vet appointment. Tomorrow we are selling our SUV. We’re using Carvana. I just went online, got a quote, uploaded a few things, and got to schedule when they will come to our house to pick it up. That was really nice. It would have been really hard to try to sell it privately since I have never done that and we need really specific dates to have them picked up. A lot of our planned money is coming from the sale of our vehicles, so it’s nice to have that 100% done this week. Wednesday is when our pallets are getting picked up. Thursday we pick up our rental car. Friday we sell the truck (also to Carvana). Saturday we leave. And every day we pack, donate things, and throw things away. We did completely finish one of our pallets. Tomorrow we’ll finish the other.

I know this entry is kind of whiney, and I thought about not including it, but the stress and anxiety are definitely a part of moving internationally, so I figured I should have an entry about how stressful it can be. At this point so much is out of our control. I have moved tons of times in my life, but never with two toddlers. Actually the most stressful part of all of this is moving our dog. None of us are sleeping that well, and we’re all a bit grumpier than usual.

Kyle’s driving certificate came last week. We sent his stuff in literally just one day after sending in mine, but his certificate showed up weeks after mine did. I think I have everything I need for the Driver’s License exchange, but if I don’t it’s kind of too late now. No matter what, we’re leaving SC on Saturday and we’re driving to DC. DC is an 8 hour drive and we’re going to break it up into two 4ish hour days. We will be in DC all day Monday and our flight doesn’t leave until almost 10PM. We have some things to do that day but we should have some time to go to a playground so the kids can burn off some energy before our 7.5 hour flight. The change of scenery will be nice.

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I don’t really know the purpose of this entry, lol. Just kind of a venting/airing my anxiety post I guess. Hopefully in a few months I will look back at this post and laugh at all of the unnecessary stress that I caused myself. And then I’ll walk out of our apartment and walk to the cafe to get some coffee and sit and relax in the sun, grateful that we finally made it to Portugal.