The visas arrived - finally!

On Sunday (Monday in NZ) we heard from our immigration consultant that our case officer at the NZ consulate in LA told her on Friday that he still hadn't received anything back from the NZ medical examiner and had no idea what the status was on our visas. This was disappointing news and we continued to make plans to move to Colorado while we waited for visas.

On Monday morning we received all five of our passports with visas in them via FedEx. 

Does anyone involved in the bureaucratic immigration mess have any idea what they are doing? I very much doubt it. 

They are good for entry anytime so we have the movers coming 19-21 December. We are sick of waiting around. That's Caty's last week of school so we'll stay in a hotel and wrap up loose ends (like sell the cars, clean the house, etc...) until her last day of school on 23 Dec. That day, we'll drive to Page and spend Christmas with Sue and Sherman, Erik's parents, and then back to Phoenix to regroup before leaving for LA. We'll spend two days at Disneyland and then fly out of LAX the night of the 28th, landing in NZ on 30 Dec. 

Erik's office will be closed through 9 Jan for the holidays so we'll use the first week to learn where things are, buy a car, hang out at the beach (it's Summer there!), and generally recover from jet lag. 

This week we're just tying up loose ends and cancelling utilities, Netflix, and stuff like that. I still need to finish Christmas shopping too! I'm thinking of getting Maggie rock climbing gear...

She's getting big. That is Ben's 3T shirt from last Winter. It's baggy but it looks cute on her. Pretty soon she'll be borrowing the car! And speaking of growing up: Today Caty killed the battery in the cordless phone talking on it with her friends. Now she's using my cell phone AND the land-line in my bedroom to talk to her peeps. (And she complains that she doesn't have any friends! ha!)