Biltmore Estate

Everyone that is less than one week from moving out of their house decides it's a good time to take an overnight trip 4 hours away, right? ....Perhaps not, but that's exactly what we did. We've hit a point in our move where everything is really out of our hands so beyond finding 18 million things to try to organize there's not much left for us to do here. We've wanted to go to the Biltmore since we moved here, and figured our anniversary was a good excuse.

Despite the weird timing, I can not state enough how glad I am we went. It was amazingly beautiful, and a great history lesson for all of us. We all read articles I printed about the Vanderbilt family from the Encyclopedia Britannica and the estate website here during breakfast before we went to the house. Once there, the Estate was offering free audio tours which I found isolating and distracting, so I opted to have the kids take turns reading aloud the Biltmore guide for each place we saw to work on their reading skills. Spending time on the history before going, made them much more interested from the onset when we got there, and they seemed to learn and retain quite a bit. The great food for lunch, wine tasting, and beautiful flowers in spring bloom all added to the experience!

Here are a few pictures from our day, note they are all taken outside. Pictures are forbidden inside.



Biltmore Estate

After walking up to the statue of Diana

Garden full of blooming tulips leading to the conservatory

Where has the time gone?

Hard to believe that the end of March is almost here. I feel like so much has happened in the last few weeks, but so much more has to be done. We'll be done here next Friday. I've resigned that everything I want to get done won't, but the important things will.

Medical, despite all the hiccups, roadblocks, and in general craziness, was done on Monday. The paperwork has been sent to Guam, and awaits their approval. They said we should know by next Monday. So glad that's over. Someone at medical told my husband that they hoped it was the last time they'd see him. The feeling is most definitely mutual.

Today we go apply for our no-fee passports, so that will be one more hurdle done. From there, really all we have left to do is wait for the first round of packers/shippers to arrive Monday.

Getting things done!

It feels like there's still so much left to do, but so much has been accomplished since getting back!

The baby's tourist passport arrived (still waiting on the birth certificate), our new generator got here, everything is set up for our 3 personal property moves, the kids overseas screenings are about done and we got rid of more stuff. Only big things left are applying for "no fee passports", my med screening and booking the flights. There's moving packout too, but that's normal for any move.

We are trying to plan out our trip and our stops we will make before leaving the continental US. Looks to be a crazy 30 days!

Getting out

This week, we took a few day trip up to Devil's Fork State Park. This may seen like odd timing given all that is going on with the move, but we booked our villa on Black Friday, when the State Parks system was running a 50% off sale. The cost was non-refundable so had we cancelled and not gone we would have been out the money. So, we went.

Going was such a great decision, and the timing ended up being perfect. We turned off the phones, unplugged and regrouped. We got to spend a few days coming together as a family without any outside distractions and away from all the craziness. We hiked, laughed, played, waded in the lake, stargazed (brought the telescope), read and prayed.  I think it's safe to say we're ready to face all that lies ahead and finish out everything that has to be done before we move.

View from the cabin in the evening

View in the AM. Perfect for coffee.

Hiking one of the trails

Oconee Bells. Rare flower that only blooms from mid-March to early April.

View of the lake from one of the trails

Driving the bus

When I was in the Navy a Chief pulled me aside one day and told me that no one cared about my career more than I did. Being so young, I had yet to realize that this could be applied to more areas of my life than just my career.

"No one cares about this more than you do" has now become our motto regarding the transfer. We have come to realize that some of those who are supposed to help us in this process are not just willing to take their sweet time (that we don't have), but just plain don't care. If we sit and wait things will never happen. But WE care. We care about ensuring this happens the way it needs to for our family. We care about proper execution of the orders in hand. So, instead of waiting on others we work. We look up instructions, ask questions, call people who can help and try to find ways for this to work out.

It's exhausting and stressful, but worth it I think. I'd rather be the one driving the bus than the one waiting on the driver to show up.

Because half the fun is getting there

At least for us. We love to travel as a family. Road trips are a common part of life, and we try to stop and make them as much fun as possible. There's always places to go and things to do, and normally if you look just a little bit there's other things to see in between. Example: last summer I took all 4 of my kids to KS by myself (while pregnant with the 5th). Between here and our first stop in TN I found a state park that was a Revolutionary War site. I got the kids out of the car and made them hike around to wear them out, with an added bonus of learning a few things. Turned an 8 hour drive into a 10 hour journey, but, I think it was a benefit both to them and my sanity.

Since this will be a long trip with hopefully many stops, I made these for the kids:

Travel Journals

Got the idea from the dear friend of mine who is about to have as many kids as I do and is also a miltary spouse about to transfer. I wish I was craftier and could cut straight, but they get the job done and the kids are very excited about them. On the right is a small actual journal part where they can write stories of their adventures, on the left is a small sketchpad of sorts where they can draw pictures of what they see. There is a fold out map for them to mark off our stops on the way with stickers, and on the back is an oversized envelope for them to collect things like postcards. Those passport wallet looking things are stickers I found in the scrapbook section at Michaels (I probably got a bit too excited about them when I found them! :)!) I can't wait to see what they choose to collect, read, and write about.

We won't be travelling by canoe, steamtrain, or steamship (I don't think), but I think that the idea of the journal harkens back to exploration days. My kids will be the modern day Phileas Fogg's (Around the World in 80 days, Jules Verne) or Ned's (The Lost World, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Ok, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but I hope it inspires them to enjoy both the destination and the journey.

Orders!

Orders came in this week (YAY!) meaning we can actually start all this crazy overseas transfer stuff. As of today we only have the household goods shipments scheduled, but we have the game-plan for the rest.

The household goods portion is pretty interesting. A portion of our stuff will go into storage (family items that we don't want to run the risk of destroying on a long journey but that we don't want to get rid of either), another 1000ish pounds will be shipped airfreight, and the rest will be crated and put on a ship.

Next on the list are the overseas medical screenings. For all 7 of us. Adam's is easy, they have a day set aside out at NPTU medical just for overseas screenings for everyone transferring from there to places like Guam and Japan. The rest of us have to go through the Naval Medical center for our shots, screenings, etc. After a few days of being told that we weren't going to even start to get any of it done until April, the patient advocate was able to pull a few strings and get all of us in for everything we need on the 19th. (lesson: it's sometimes all in who you talk to). I'm prepared for this to be one of the longest days of my life and will be packing lunches for everyone as well as schoolwork, games, books and activities to keep them busy. In the mean time have a stack of paperwork to get done, and dental appointments to get through.

The last part left is scheduling the travel, which we can't do just yet because we applied for a tourist passport for the baby a little over a week ago. We knew that he would need a passport to enter Guam (even though it's a US territory) and anywhere else we choose to visit, but that he would not need a visa to reside on the island. Figured because of this he would not need a "no fee" passport and a tourist passport would be more than adequate. As it turns out, the military still requires a "no-fee" passport to PCS to Guam, just in case they have to evacuate you somewhere else for more than 90 days. Can't apply for one without birth certificate the state department now has, forcing us to wait for a bit longer to take care of any of that stuff.