Getting there...

We picked up our motorhome today! We just need to get it registered which should be relatively simple now that the place we bought it from have agreed to honour their website and include 6 months of NSW rego. As of Monday, it will be advertised in Gumtree (it is already), the Trading Post, RV Point, maybe eBay, and CMCA. The guy that fixed the back (and did a marvellous job, by the way) said that we should have no problem getting what we're asking for it. Fingers crossed!

We have also juuuust about finished packing. Just a couple of boxes with some loose stuff. We have sent the customs forms off to the shipping company which they should have received today, and hopefully they will pick everything up next week! I wonder if our boxes will beat us to America. Very exciting.

AND, we made it to the US Consulate last week. You know, I never used to agree with the term "Terrible Twos". Nate and Maya were so agreeable and easy to be around when they were two. Eli, on the other hand, is just like what the mainstream would have you believe all two year olds are like. And taking him to the US Consulate was just like what you would imagine taking a typical two year old to a consulate would be like. He shrieked in the security office. He ran under barriers into forbidden areas. He threw himself on the floor screaming in the quiet waiting area. He protested, vehemently, absolutely everything. Finally a kindly employee pointed out the toy area. Ahhhhh. $500 later, the US citizenship paperwork and passport applications are waiting to be processed... I didn't provide any proof that I have ever spent time in America. I didn't think I'd need to since I had to list all of my movements in and out of the US *ever* on their paperwork. That was tedious. Plus I have pages and pages of passport stamps. Not good enough. Luckily my high school got back to me with my transcript right away! That's four years down. One year to go. I'll call my middle school tomorrow as they don't seem to have an email address. (I know, right? Weird. It's 2010.) Then we can forward that info through and viola, citizenship granted.

That's just about it. Stuff shipped, tick (well nearly). Kids' passports sorted, tick (again, nearly). Motorhome in our possession and ready to sell, tick (um, nearly - it just needs a good scrub and some rego). If it sells in two weeks, we might be leaving the country in three!

I'm so excited, but at the same time I'm well aware of all of the wonderfulness I'm leaving behind. I tend to deal with things after the fact. I won't think about how much I'll miss all of my friends until I'm gone, and then I'll suffer dearly. But that suffering will be tempered by the excitement of being home and seeing my beloved "old" friends and family. I'm not sure if that's a healthy way of dealing with life - am I not mourning properly and pushing things under the surface? Or am I just incredibly clever? Maybe a bit of both?