Week 1 of logistics

There isn’t much that has to be done right this second, but it feels like a good idea to get out ahead of some things, even though we still have several months.  And there are some things that we have to start sooner rather than later.  We started on two of them this week.  The first is selling our house.  We got in contact with our realtor.  We want to get an idea of the timeline she recommends in order to have our house sold and closed by the end of September.  Her recommendation is to list in late April or May to take advantage of the spring season and to make sure there is time in case the house doesn’t sell right away.  It was a bit of shock since that’s next month, but it makes sense.  It also adds some complications.  If it does sell right away it means we’ll have to hope we can negotiate a rent-back from the buyer so we can stay in the house an extra month or two.  And depending on how fast it sells (our neighbors across the street listed last week and were under contract in three days) we may still need to arrange a short-term rental for a month or two.  We got the listing contract signed with her and she’ll arrange for a stager to look over our house to tell us what needs to stay and go to make the house most appealing to potential buyers.

The other big thing we got started on is looking into what we need to get our dog and cat ready to move.  I contacted my vet who was very helpful and outlined all the tests and medications they’ll need.  It turns out that since they get regular check-ups anyway there isn’t much we’ll need to to until about July or so.  Most of the action comes in the last month and week before travel.  I did request some estimates for transport from a couple of pet exporters but have yet to hear back.

I should also mention one other big (huge) thing we did last week: start breaking the news to our families. Since it was out of the blue for some of them we knew it was gong to be difficult, and it was, but overall we were lucky that they’ve been supportive (at least to our faces :)).  It’s a tough situation since it’s something we’re obviously really excited about and looking forward to, but for them it’s just us moving far away – which is much more difficult to get excited about.  Knowing that we can Skype and Facetime and use Facebook and this blog to keep in touch is an enormous help and I don’t know that we’d do it otherwise.  And Kelly’s brother helped put it in perspective when he noted that we see them once a year as it is. If we’re going to see them only every other year when we move to NZ, that’s 5 days in two years with us they’re missing, and it’s hard for him to justify asking us to give up this opportunity for that.  Hopefully the shock of the announcement will wear off soon, but it’s still tough.