Moving on...

It's cliche, but there's good news and bad news.

The good news: We have a date for moving out of the house. The short sale nearly fell through last week but the buyer coughed up a few thousand extra and today the bank accepted the offer and set a closing date: January 12th. We will have to be moved out by then.

The bad news: Still no word on the visas. Last we heard was about 2 1/2 weeks ago the NZ consulate in Los Angeles sent our paperwork to NZ to be reviewed for what they told us was between 3 and 8 weeks. REALLY? That's a bigger window than the cable guy gets away with. How do you plan around that kind of window? So, we may be perfectly timed and be able to just make it all work. But what are the odds of that?

So, the solution was presented to us by my wonderful parents. We'll be packing up and moving into Mom and Dad's house in Colorado this January. They're very graciously moving out. They're moving into a nearby furnished apartment. That is the nicest thing! We can't believe it, we are really blessed.

So we'll be moving to Colorado until we get things finalized for NZ. Who moves to such a cold, snowy place in January? We do! It's better than moving to Phoenix in July, which is what I did years ago. :)

In the mean time, here's an interesting tidbit of information about NZ wildlife:

This is a NORMAL bug in NZ. It's called the Giant Weta and is the heaviest insect in the world! (Don't mention this to Catherine or else we'll never get her on the plane!)