Last Week: Packing Part 2

Last Thursday morning, the packing company arrived. Of course I left the camera in the daiper bag and the girls were at a friend's house! I was amazed at how together this company was. They arrived at 9:15 am and about 3 minutes after they had arrived, they were set up with their roles of cardboard bubble wrap, stacks of paper, tape and labels and were already wrapping and packing things! We packed almost everything but fragile things and oversized things like baskets. All of those things were laying out on the counters. When packaging a piece of furniture, they took the corrugrated cardboard and wrapped it around and then used knives to cut pieces out so they could wrap it around. I thought it was pretty amazing!! They left exactly 3 hours later after everything was packaged, wrapped or boxed and labeled and numbered. We ended up with about 140 items (with a couple numbers missing and couple duplicates!!). Friday morning, we went to the office to say good-bye to the Thai staff. That afternoon, Jacob met the packers to pack our 20 ft container. Packing and fumigating the container took 30 minutes! They drove our container down on Saturday, loaded it on a ship on Sunday and it left port on Monday. It is scheduled to be here the 8th, though it'll probably have to be unpacked and put into storage while we await renovations to be complete. Saturday morning, Keely woke up with what seemed like a high fever (we forgot to pack any of our six in our checked luggage!). Sunday we went to fellowship and had dinner with some friends at their house.

Moving/ traveling day was crazy. Jacob and I got up at 4:30am and woke the girls close to 5am. We left the hotel at 5:15am and got to the airport at 5:30am. Jacob dropped me, the girls and the luggage off and circled around to park the truck. Since we were leaving so early, we knew only one family was coming to see us off at the airport. In case they weren't able to make it, we had decided to lock our keys and sim cards (what makes our phones work) in the truck. Soon after Jacob dropped us off, I realized he had forgotten the carseat. It was raining and so when I saw him park, I waited for him to get out -- totally forgetting he was locking everything inside. So by the time I yell that we forgot the carseats -- it was already locked in! And we have no way to call anyone! Jacob happened to have a loaner Hong Kong sim card that he put in his phone and we called a lady from our office who called a lock smith. He arrived with like 2 minutes to spare before we needed to be going through immigration!

The locksmith "breaking" into the truck

Jordan having a last few minutes with one of our friends

When we checked in, we asked if there were extra seats and if we could have one for Jordan and her carseat (she only had a lap ticket). We got the impression that the answer was yes and then Jacob asked at the boarding gate and they said yes but as we were boarding the plane they didn't understand what the carseat was and then when we got to our seats they gave us a bad time so we just gave it back to put under the plane. (The flight attendant seemed really frustrated at us and I wasn't really sure why)

Jordan taking a catnap in the stroller in the Bangkok airport

Keely on the moving sidewalk

Jordan playing in the boarding area

At the gate in Bangkok, they called the crew and came and told us there weren't extra seats and that we had to gate check it. We decided to not push our way on the plane and boarded close to last. We are only on the plane 2 or 3 minutes when they move the lady in our row so we had 4 seats. Jacob runs to go get the carseat and they are closing the cabin door!! Jordan doesn't know the meaning of sitting still...so she climbed all over me and the empty seat, she did sit still some and played and ate some of her meal and then climbed over me some more!!

Jordan in her seat playing

Jordan in her seat eating

But we arrived and made it!! YEA!!