You Always Read The Instructions After the Fact.

Carly and I have now submitted our ITA to the NZ government. Of course, after we sent it out, we realized we'd sent the wrong type of birth certificate for Carly, but thankfully, our VERY nice and helpful contacts at NZ immigration have told us they will process the rest of our application so long as we Fed-Ex the right one out ASAP.

So now we're back to waiting. This time though, I'm considerably more up-beat about the whole situation. In fact, the only thing really stressing me out is that we won't have enough time to finish up all our "fun" stuff before we go on our grand adventure. Here's the list of what we want to do before we head out:

• Trip to Toronto including Geeky.Net User BBQ
• Trip to NYC to visit my mom
• Trip to Halifax to visit Carly's parents
• Trip(s) to Montreal
• Camping with friends x 2 at least

Maybe I should just resign early :) I'm sure I'm missing at least one major trip on that list, but it's a good start. I think we might try and get a multistage plane ticket when we fly to NZ, so that we can make stops in Vancouver and Calgary before heading over there (also, that would guaranty we don't fly into the States, which I'm not crazy about doing)

Well That Certainly Was Fast.

House has been sold. In fact, we got a conditional sale approx. 36 hours after it hit the market. All the conditions were cleared up this week, so that's one more thing on our list. What's truly awesome about the sale is that the buyer was totally OK with our closing date of August 28th, meaning we're on track for a September 1st departure date.

Right now we're waiting on a few answers back from NZ Immigration and finishing up our application. I'd hoped that it would get done sooner, but real life got in the way.

We've arranged to have essentially infinite free storage (thanks Jess!) for all our stuff, so that's another thing out of the way. It's looking like the month of August is going to be nuts. We need to get rid of the car, decide what's coming and what's going, move all our stuff, find new homes for our two cats and probably a 100 other things that are currently slipping my mind. I'm going to have to go update my wiki with all these steps and what's been taken care of....

It's starting to feel like a real project now, which means there's milestones, todo lists and a lot of well defined work. That's a complete change from only last month, when we hadn't yet put the house for sale and there were so many maybes and conditions to worry about. Now there's only 1. Are we going to be allowed into the country or not? Yeah, kind of a big one granted, but we're hopeful.

The Sale

Pretty much everyone who is likely to read this probably knows by now, but today is the day our home goes for sale. Prepping the house has been one of the most stressful and difficult tasks Carly or I has ever taken on. Carly's been doing the lion's share of the work. If we sell the house quickly or for close to our asking price, all the credit goes on her feet.

The timing is a little nerve racking. We haven't exactly been accepted to NZ yet, so selling now is a big risk. But with the state of the Ottawa real estate market and the dates we're hoping everything is done by, this was the most logical way of doing it.

The fact that we might end up homeless in Canada while waiting for our paperwork to be complete doesn't exactly fill me with happiness, but we've had a few offers for temporary housing should we encounter delays.

Selling the house is also the first tangible act that solidifies our moving plans. We've been chasing after the paper work required for our ITA in the mean time, but that's again just a fart in the wind compared to the harsh reality that we will not have anywhere to go back to if we don't make this immigration work. The whole concept of a backout plan has been tossed in favor of giving the move all of our attention and dedication. My guess is for something this big, you pretty much have to.

On the driving across Canada front, I'm sad to say I don't think it's going to happen unless one of us lines up a job in NZ before we go. It came down to cost and neither of us liking the idea of being exhausted from a 5000km trip before we even landed in NZ. If we're going to make a major trip in a jalopy, we might as well do it in NZ rather then here.

Hopefully we'll have more of an update on the actully move soon. I'd like to get the paperwork done by the end of the week, but both of our Universities haven't been the most helpful, so that might get pushed back a week.