Moving across the world (Katie's post)

If you were to look at my Facebook profile from the last month, you might think that we successfully moved out of our house, enjoyed a leisurely vacation in Colorado Springs, visited family, and packed our bags neatly and efficiently.  That's the thing about Facebook.  It's deceiving.  Yes, we did move out of our house in Yakima.  But a lot of our stuff ended up in garbage bags thrown into the back of our Fit.  It was not neat or efficient.

I finished school on Wednesday, June 20th.  On Thursday, we packed up our garage, took a load to the dump, took a load to Goodwill, and took a load to my parents' house.  Friday through Monday was spent saying goodbye to my brother and his family as they packed up and moved to Ottawa.  Then back to Yakima from Monday through Friday to pack, clean and move out of the house we've lived in for six years.  It's pretty tricky to pack for 1 week in Colorado Springs for a wedding, 3 weeks traveling to the beach in Croatia, then packing the clothes you want to take to Croatia, clothes you want to leave back home, and clothes you want to just get rid of.  Needless to say, our house was just piles of stuff for a week.  How many shoes ARE really necessary? Does this shirt look "Zagreb-ish"?  How hard is it to find a memory foam mattress topper?  I was amazed at how many strange things I was tempted to pack, not knowing if it was necessary or not.

On Friday, we took our last load of things to Ellensburg and Olympia.  It was a mix of pure relief that it was packed and sadness that we may never live at 414 S. 14th Ave. ever again.  Off we went with furniture sticking out of the truck in every direction.  Of course as we started to drive to Cle Elum, it started to rain.  This meant that we had to park under cover, find a tarp, redo all of the bungees, recover all of our stuff and drive on.  Well of course, it then stopped raining, which was good because I'm pretty sure that tarp would have taken off on it's own eventually.  But finally we made it to Olympia without a single thing flying out of the back of our truck.  I'm so thankful that we have family members that are willing to house our stuff while we're gone.  Our entire bedroom set is actually set up in Sam's brother's house in Olympia.  All the rest of our earthly belongings are stacked high in my parent's garage.

So after we got moved out, Sam, my parents and I piled into their Honda to drive down to Colorado Springs for my cousin's wedding.  If you had watched the news, you'd know that wildfires were inching dangerously close to the downtown of Colorado Springs the week before my cousin, Amy's wedding.  On top of that, my grandfather (who also lives in Colorado Springs) went into the hospital at about the same time.  A wedding alone is enough to stress a family out, but to have wildfires and family in the hospital...well, you can imagine.  There were a lot of highs and lows in that week.  The wedding was beautiful and wonderful and full of emotion for all of us.  I was a bridesmaid and a photographer.  We were so excited to head home from the church and reminisce about the day.  But when we arrived home, we realized that Amy's (the bride) dog had escaped from the backyard.  So off we went in our slickers (because it was raining of course) to look for little Zoey.  Even though she wasn't found that night, she was found several days later.

On our way back to Ellensburg, we decided to make a quick detour through the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.  A "quick detour" in Martin language means a 17 and a half hour trip in the car in one day.  Sam only lost it once.  He's a trooper.  :)  I loved the time spent with my parents as I never do see my dad quite as happy as when he's in a National Park. And my mom can always make me laugh so hard I cry.

After getting home, we took our last trip to Yakima to say goodbye to dear friends.  We also had to take Lucy to the vet for an appointment.  We had given our vet the paperwork for Lucy to travel to Croatia back in March.  We assumed (shame on us) that he would read the paperwork and have everything done by the time we came in on Wednesday.  The paperwork had to be signed by a USDA accredited vet, sent into the USDA state office and be stamped, then sent back to us within 10 days of us traveling.  Well, if you've caught on to the theme of this post, you'll know that this did not happen.  Our vet was not even a USDA accredited vet which means nothing had been sent in.  On top of that, the paperwork for Croatia changed last week.  LAST WEEK!!  So as panic set in, Sam was left to drive about 20 minutes out of Yakima on Wednesday evening to get the paperwork signed.  I, in the meantime, had a very pleasant, productive, helpful conversation with a lady at the state USDA office (they really need to find a way to write things in a sarcastic tone).  She was actually an angry, unhappy government employee that found no use in trying to be helpful to the crazy lady (me) on the other end of the phone.  She actually told me that I could not bring in the paperwork to her in Tumwater (since we were planning on coming to Olympia the next day anyway), but that I could FedEx the documents and possibly get it back before our flight on Monday.  In what world does it make sense to FedEx something to a person when you can just hand the paper to them???  But then I remembered that the USDA office, just like the public education system, is a government run program.  Common sense is not so common when it comes to government run programs.  Bright and early the next morning, we sent out our documents through FedEx using the fastest shipping option possible.

So here we are on Friday night, still uncertain as to whether our little Lucy will be on the plane with us when we leave on Monday.  It's the first of (I'm sure) many obstacles we'll have to deal with as we move to a foreign country.  I know that this experience will stretch me.  It will force me to trust.  It will make me work through the anxiety that I feel when things are out of my control.  So even though I may look like everything is wonderful on Facebook doesn't mean that it's the reality of my life.  It's so tempting to look at other people and assume that because they look like they have their life together that they actually do.  We all have struggles and we all need grace.  In this time, I especially need prayer as I'm about to jump into the scariest thing I've ever done.  Just as I'm sure that this will be an amazing adventure, I also know that it will not be easy.  But I hope that I will continue to trust that God's hand of protection will be carrying us through.