Where to begin

Jeff says we must keep track of this saga.  I'm not really sure why, my ability to block large segments of my life from memory has served me well in the past.  But I suppose he's right, we'll want to share all the excitement of Asher's early life with him when he's older.  And who knows, we may even laugh about it all.  And if not, I can simply delete all record of it and go back to forgetting.

The first couple days we were just a couple of frantic headless chickens not having any idea of where to begin.  The result of course being that absolutely nothing got done.  The adrenaline finally wore off I think and we were able to settle down and actually look at what had to be done.  The first being our paperwork.  Oh, the paperwork.

Jeff's grandfather was born in England making him eligible for an ancestry visa.  This gives us a lot more flexibility once we're over there as far as working, living, and qualifying for certain benefits.  In order to get that visa, we need to have passports which are valid for the entire term of his contract (which will be 2 years, possibly 3). Ours expire next year.  Okay, so off to renew our passports.  As we are gathering our necessary documentation we discover that a couple things are missing.  Jeff's birth certificate and our marriage certificate (I have two copies but no original).  We can order those, no problem, it's just money right?  Then we're looking at the passport renewal forms and realizing that we have include our current passport.  That means we can't travel until we get them back.  We're supposed to be going to Canada to see family in the beginning of December.  Not only that but we also need to send our passports in with our visa applications as well.  Don't these people know that we need our passports to go places?  

After talking with the Canadian Consulate we've decided to have our replacement documents mailed to my mom's address, we'll renew our passports at their office in Edmonton while we're there and just pray that they complete them before Jeff has to fly to Florida for his conference.  Oh ya, did I mention Jeff also has a conference that he's presenting at in the middle of all this.  And then when I get back from Canada on the 23rd, we'll send away for our visas.  'Our' visas by the way, apparently Asher needs one as well (at £200 each we're exceedingly happy that Oxford will reimburse us for those).  I suppose that's good though because then when he gets picked up by a casting agent, there will be no problem with him working while we're over there ;) 

We've just found out that Jeff will be taking shifts at Fermilab for Oxford for the first couple weeks of January so that means we have a bit more time to get through the processing for our visas.  Thank God!  Now all we have to do is survive the trip back to Canada and find favour with all the processing peoples there.  

Our other big dilemma is whether to ship all our stuff over there, sell it all and buy new once we arrive, or ship a few things, sell a few things, and store the rest here until we have a permanent posting.  I don't see any end in sight for that, I'm so torn about what is best.  You can find horror stories on all sides online.  I'm really hoping to be able to talk to someone in person about their experiences moving overseas.  We have some friends that have done it, but it's always been on the company's dime so that's kind of an easy decision.  I'm calling a few companies today to get people out to give us estimates and we'll go from there. 

A couple nice developments even from when I started writing this are that we're getting closer to settling on an actual date.  Likely the 14 or 15 of January.  And it seems that there is quite decent, short-term, furnished faculty houses for rent near the University that we will be able to get into.  They are near doctors, pubic transit, and there are several young families in the area that have started play groups.  Here I thought I would be stuck in limbo and confusion for at least a couple more weeks and now I'm feeling a bit more settled.  It looks like we may even have all our tickets bought by tomorrow or the next day.  So I guess I don't need to resort to blocking everything from memory just yet.  But stay tuned......