Moving to Singapore Part 2: The 40 hour trip

One nice thing about a lot of our furniture being moved out is that made room for staging suitcases. To pack for this trip we had to think about 1) what we'd need during our two weeks in quarantine 2) what we'd need at our serviced apartment before our air shipment showed up 3) what we didn't trust or couldn't put in the air or sea shipment. Things like alcohol and jewelry aren't allowed in the shipments. Normally I wouldn't put weights and resistance bands in my suitcase but we knew we'd use those during our quarantine. While I probably should have put more clothes in the shipment and instead brought the HEB pharmacy, we did our best. We made sure to bring water bottles and kid lunch boxes since we thought they'd be going to school as soon as we were out of quarantine. We also brought a few favorite kitchen things (popcorn popper, knives, dish brush), several pairs of shoes, important documents, the girls violin and piano music, several games, many bottles of sunscreen (we weren't supposed to put aerosols in the air shipment and I couldn't remember how many I'd bought for the sea shipment), a birthday party box, a few books for the kids to read, oatmeal, snacks, snacks and more snacks, hair products, etc etc. Clearly too much but I wasn't in a state of mind to downsize. 

Well, it started out in neatly organized piles. But when you gotta pack breakable stuff, things that leak, and odd shaped stuff it takes a lot of trial and error.

Almost done, and most of it fit!

And then I slit my wrist on a plate that shattered as I was washing it. It seemed deep. So fleshy. And bloody. Our friends the Hernandez's who were driving us to the airport were literally walking in the door as this happened.

Thank goodness we had planned to leave about an hour earlier than we needed to. We tried to go to urgent care, (while Travis and Matt loaded the vehicles) which of course was not going to be urgent enough for our needs, so Kelly, a FNP, took me to her house where she had sterilizing spray, Dermabond and Steri strips. Thankfully by this time it had stopped bleeding and we could see the cut was just in the top layer. I definitely needed stitches, but this was much faster and worked well. SO grateful for her expertise and care in our time of need! Because if we missed this flight... we would have had to wait WEEKS to fly out. Getting entry approval into Singapore is really difficult right now. This is why we couldn't fly out September 3rd as initially hoped, and once they secured Sept 13th we heard that the next available date was October 3rd. Clearly this would have made Travis' transition to his new job very challenging (maybe he would have had to go ahead and leave without me? Then I would have had to care for 3 kids with one hand. No, that wasn't going to work.) So despite slicing my wrist open onward we pressed.

So. Many. Bags. We maxed out our checked allotment (10), also checked 3 carseats, each person had a carry on (5) each person had a backpack (5) and Ellie and Travis were also carrying their violin and guitar. Thank goodness it's only an 1/8th scale violin.

It took us nearly an hour to check in, this was partly because of the 60+ pages of documents Singapore requires that the airline had to sort through, and partly because they were working hard to figure out how to seat us together. Initially we were spread apart across a large, completely packed business cabin. We're thankful that some nice people must have agreed to move for us!

Couldn't bend my wrist or pull a suitcase, and it hurt when anyone touched it, but it was still capable of holding a glass of wine in the lounge.

Really proud of all my little travelers. They did a great job of keeping track of all their own things. This was a much better way to travel than with baby carriers/strollers/car seats/diapers etc!!!

The first leg was to take off at ~6:15 pm and was scheduled to be about a 14 hour flight. Everything was right on schedule! With the exception of my wrist injury.

Ellie said "Wow!! it's like my own little house!"

The Q suites were SWEET. Those gold buttons are seat adjustments (including a light massage function!) the blanket was very soft and fleecy, and of course I needed that glass of champagne after our adventure getting to the airport. Max enjoyed endless orange juice. Unfortunately we couldn't sit in a 4-person suite on the first leg, but at least we were all reasonably close together.

Max slept great! He fell asleep at approximately 9:30 pm and didn't wake up until 6:00am (Texas time)

Ellie also had a good sleep. I think she was using her mask as an eye mask too. She said she woke up but she didn't tell me until we were all awake! Sweet girl.

A truly enjoyable way to travel. Battery operated candle and all!

We flew just a little south of where we used to live in Saudi! Was a very strange feeling to stop in the Middle East but know we wouldn't be staying.

Our layover in Doha was NINE HOURS. Was great to spread out in the business lounge.

The ubiquitous Middle Eastern "lemon mint" drink! Hadn't had one of these since 2018.

Being silly in the dining room at the lounge

Max and I took a few walks to see the big airplanes

They did in fact get tired of playing iPad for a few minutes.

Odd, but fun playground in the Doha airport. The kids of course don't remember playing here but they did, several times, between 2014-2017!

Off we go to the next plane!

Leg 2 was only an 8 hour flight--and we were able to get the 4 person suite! It was pretty slick how they folded the walls down. We let Lucy have her own seat behind us, she is a brooding pre-teen after all. I didn't sleep particularly well but it was as comfortable as a plane could be. The breakfast pancakes were delicious and I'm still thinking about how good they were.

Q Suite

Ellie getting her beauty rest. She did a much better job than me of sleeping with her mask on! 

Once we landed in Singapore, the customs process was straight forward (though it took awhile), then we followed the signs to take a PCR test (Lucy was deliriously tired and this didn't go well for her, but we all survived). After that was baggage claim, where we weren't allowed to flag down any assistance like we normally would for this many bags. I think Ellie was actually the one who pushed a baggage cart through the rest of the airport since I still didn't feel like I could use my wrist. Poor Travis then had to load all the bags onto the bus, and off we went. 

Check out the next post about our two weeks in quarantine!

On the move again: Singapore! Part 1: Florida, Packing, Saying Goodbye

Hello? Anybody out there? Does anyone still use Blogger anymore or is it just me? If no one else ever reads this that's ok, it's definitely therapeutic for me to write it all down.

Since we've up and moved (again, 6th time in a little over 8 years) to a new country it was time to dust off the ol' blog again. This move has been on our radar for quite awhile, but only finally came to fruition in the beginning of June 2021. Unfortunately due to some circumstances I'm not fully aware of, we weren't technically supposed to tell people or begin planning for it until August 4. It has been a whirlwind two months since that happened, but for posterity's sake (maybe my children will want to read this one day?) I will document it here. Of course I couldn't do a few small blog posts over the last month, I've learned the way I process life is to go over a whole bunch of events all at once. I was going to put it all in one blog post but it got a little out of hand, so this is part 1 of 3. Let's just say you've been warned :) This one is about our Florida trip, packing up our stuff, and saying goodbye to lots of friends.

We possibly would have moved to Singapore sooner, however we had a trip planned the second week of August to Seaside, FL with our dear friends the Sealocks for months that we obviously weren't going to miss. Max and Ellie didn't get their Dependent Passes (like a visa) approved until that week we were on vacation, so maybe this is just how things were supposed to go anyway.

It's tradition to get pizza from Bud & Aly's the first night you arrive. Our house had a fantastic screened in patio!

Getting all the stuff to the beach is hard work

Can't beat the sand and surf in Seaside!

First ice cream cone at the beach is always special!

Our trip coincided with the Eilerts family vacation and it was so fun to watch all the kids play together!

So special to get some time with our neice Cora!

This girl has always been way too cool for us

We could just eat her up!

Fancy snow cones are also a must when at the beach for a week!

It looked like CPC wanted Travis to begin his new position by mid September, and with the current 2 week quarantine rule in place that meant traveling by September 3, so we based our plans on that. We had movers come August 24 and 25. I thought I tried to minimize what we were packing, knowing we'd be living in condo that was smaller than what we were used to, but we still managed to have 145 cartons 😬. That does include furniture though, unlike our Saudi moves which were approximately 110 cartons without much furniture, except for a few bookshelves and dressers.

In the middle of all this the kids started school!

Poor (3rd kid) Max started school on a different day and apparently we missed taking any pictures.

Having already accomplished 4 international and 1 domestic move post kids, I thought I would be a lot more prepared for it than I was. I thought since I wasn't traveling with babies anymore that maybe the stuff would be less? Maybe it is less stuff but it doesn't feel like it. This time I had to fit preparing for this move in between all the kid activities and play dates, and I guess that's why I felt so unprepared. 

Aside from a few boxes of toys in the kids rooms and the furniture, this is all we took. Is this unreasonable?

I know from experience you gotta bring Rotel with you or you regret it. And boy are we excited about that giant costco sized jar of nutella and the mac and cheese!

I'm sure the sight of this will give some of my more organized friends a coronary, but it seemed way easier to move the stuff we were packing into one location than pick and choose from certain rooms.  It's a selection from the kitchen, most of our clothes and shoes, medications, Easter baskets, a few Christmas decorations, baskets galore, several picture frames, and some hangers. Only packing up ~25% of your house was more challenging than I thought! We'll see what I regret bringing/what was totally unnecessary in about 6 weeks.

What a blessing that someone else had to pack it all up though!

This was the best moving crew we've ever had. Also I found it interesting that instead of loading our stuff directly on the container (this is how our previous moves happend) our stuff was loaded into crates and I'm assuming then into a container later.

After we got that giant pile of stuff out of our house we could focus on saying goodbye. Which was not easy. We had been living in Creekside since March of 2019, and despite Covid felt like we had only recently really found our niche. But it was a great niche! The girls requested an early birthday/goodbye sleepover party, and even though sleepovers weren't something we were totally comfortable with, knowing we were moving the kids across the world soon absolutely guilted me into saying yes. Needless to say they had a wonderful time and made some good memories. Can't promise we'll agree to another sleepover anytime soon though 😂 

We also thought we were supposed to be leaving the weekend of, or shortly after this sleepover took place. We found out Thursday that our entry passes weren't secured, which was a relief because we had a LOT more work to do and people to see.

I hired a company called "Glam Dreams" to do the set up. They did a great job!!

Lucy of course wanted a Harry Potter theme

Ellie had a hard time choosing between rainbows, mermaids, unicorns and horses

Between the goodbye meals and parties (I did not take NEARLY enough pictures of these events!), wondering exactly when our entry approval for Singapore was going to happen, and trying to pack up what was left in our house to make it organized and liveable for the short time period we (might) be home in the summers, AND packing our alloted 10 checked and 5 carry on bags, the short time between August 28 and September 11 went by way too quickly. 

The Winters and Hernandez's welcomed us into Run Club and we had lots of fun celebrating Chiefs and Royals victories with them!

Max and his special friend Jackson have been in the same preschool class since 2018. The mom guilt for separating these boys is high.

Saying goodbye to Travis' car 😔 I'm excited for Adriana to drive it but I will miss this car a lot!

Ellie's friends from preschool (3 years ago!) made her this precious poster. Looking at it still makes me tear up! These girls have remained friends despite all going to different schools and even played soccer together the last two seasons.

We frequently took walks around the lake outside our house. Ellie was less than impressed with this cicada emerging from its exoskeleton, but I thought it was cool. Are there cicadas in Singapore? 

The Raileys are super special friends whom we've known since we first moved to Saudi in 2013. They have seen us through all the subsequent moves, welcomed us when we were home visiting for the summers, and sheltered us when we couldn't live in our house due to the "Freeze" last January. We will miss you, Raileys!

Ellie with her friend Celine from KG and a new friend. It's hard to leave the new friends too!

Couldn't let the last week go by without getting Chick Fil A take out one last time. 

We had only been playing together since May, but it was so fun to get back into tennis again! What a lovely group of ladies!

I don't know how we will find a violin teacher like Ms. Patricia! 

Max's last day of preschool was WAY harder on me than anyone else. KOK had welcomed our family since Lucy was 4 and Ellie was 2. You can't see me sobbing behind the phone camera here.

Love our forever vecinos the Caraballo's!! We will miss you so much!

There were so many other people we didn't get pictures with and I'm sad about that. You know who you are, please share with me if you have them!