• 28Aug

  Quickie Update

  getting ready, random 3 Comments

  We got our FM3’s and menaje approval on the same day we submitted for them! Crazy! I really, really, hope that there will never be a reason for anyone except customs people to take a close look at the pictures. They are pretty horrifying. At least I hope we don’t really look like that!

  We are heading out this morning to our son’s family in Bellingham. The air is crisp and there is fall in the air. I plan on taking the grandkids school shopping. Paul is hoping that everyone will have fun playing with his new Nintendo Wii. The dogs and parrot are looking forward to the car ride. It will be kind of a preview of our big trip that is coming up soon.

  Almost more than anything, though, Paul and I are looking forward to sitting in a comfortable chair! (Just kidding)

  
• 22Aug

  FM3 and odds and ends

  getting ready, random 6 Comments

  We are getting down to the last couple of weeks in the Pacific Northwest. It has been a very strange summer here – and not just because of the strangeness of wrapping up our life here. The weather has been cold and rainy, which is very unusual for August. It has made Paul and me long for Mazatlan even more, as if that was possible!

  On the urging of a friend in Puerto Vallarta, we decided to go ahead and check into how difficult it would be to get our FM3’s up here. We had been planning on getting them in Mazatlan.

  So, yesterday we headed to Seattle and were told that we needed a notarized “good conduct letter” from the State Patrol. The State Patrol here in Washington are the recordkeepers for all criminal records for all jurisdictions. So, we headed south to Olympia to the State Patrol headquarters, and an hour later had our notarized letters!

  Then I made a bunch of calls to our bank trying to find out how to get a notarized letter stating that our income is sufficient ($1,500/month for both of us.) We got refusal after refusal from everyone we spoke to. So, I decided to call the woman at the bank who had helped me out with our wire transfer hassles when we bought the house in Mazatlan. She’s a career banker (as opposed to some of the people we had dealt with who were younger and probably less committed to their careers – and also less willing to try to help…) and she said she would do what she could for me. So I jumped in the car and gave her the sample letter from the Consulate. An hour later she had a notarized letter ready for me that was everything I could have hoped for! YAY!

  Today we are spending the day at home, pulling weeds and generally taking care of things that we couldn’t do over the last week of almost incessant rain. Tomorrow we head back to Seattle to submit for the FM3. The fellow at the Consulate said it would be ready the same day! We will probably head back there on Friday to pick it up since we will be out anyway going to the escrow signing on our house!

  So, we are making progress. Next week we head to Bellingham for a nice visit with our son and his family. I’m looking forward to taking the kids school shopping and having a nice relaxed visit since it will be a while before we see them again.

  
• 13Aug

  Organized? Hmmm.

  decisionmaking 2 Comments

  I have received a few compliments lately on the way I have organized our move. I think it’s kind of funny, because I don’t think I have been more organized than anyone would be planning a move of this magnitude. I mean you don’t just throw a few things in a box and head out….it is pretty complicated.

  I do think that what my organization has done for us, though, is give us a bit more cash. I have been pretty methodical about selling things and have used Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, garage sales, and passed the word to family and friends. If I had waited until the last minute I wouldn’t have done so well, I’m sure.

  All my obsessive preparation and attention to detail also helped us get our house sold quickly. I knew watching those home selling shows on TV would be good for something! Houses in the Pacific Northwest are selling better than in some areas of the country, but we sure didn’t want to be one of the unlucky ones where a sale takes a long time. We knew our time frame and we did everything we could to hit it. Of course, luck plays a big part in it, too – you need just the right people at the right time, too.

  The long timeframe for our move helped me, too. It’s easy to miss things if you only have a short amount of time. I was able to think about things (and make list after list) so that things didn’t fall through the cracks. Although once we are settled in Mazatlan I bet we will have found some things that we either forgot about or that surprised us!

  We are also making some choices that we hope we don’t regret. We aren’t doing a menaje de casa since we plan on getting our FM3’s in Mazatlan, and are just taking our belongings in our van. So – we have a little tension about the border crossing.

  Overall, though, I am happy with how things have gone so far and can’t wait for it to be time to hit the road!

  

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