The Big Day

Moving Day finally came on October 1st.  It was the day we had been both looking forward to and dreading all at the same time.  Travelling with 2 kids, 2 cats, 9 pieces of checked baggage and 6 carry-on bags for 24 hours couldn't be anything but magical, right?

Huge thanks to my mom and Julie for carting us to the airport in the wee hours.  Because of the amount of "stuff", we needed 2 vehicles to get there.  Upon arrival, we said goodbye to my mom (sniff) and made our way to the Delta International counter.  And stayed there for over an hour.  The biggest obstacle of the trip would turn out to be our cats - because we were flying different carriers on each leg of our trip, we had to reclaim and re-check our cats in at every layover.  The gate agent in Minneapolis had never seen this before (which always breeds such confidence for a customer), so she was busy making phone calls to confirm how it would all work.  At last, we were finally released and wheeled Sam and Rocky over to Security.  I got teary-eyed as we left - I was stressed out for them!  And really hoped we'd see them again.  Here we are with our mound of luggage, the cats are on the left.

 

 

We made our way to the gate and bumped in to 2 friends!  Chad, our friend who flies for FedEx, and Jerry, who works for Compass Air.  It was fun to see familiar faces just before leaving.  :-)  Eventually they called our flight and we said goodbye to Julie (more tears). 

Our first leg flew from MSP to Washington D.C.  The kids did great, we watched shows and colored and read books.  Piece of cake so far.  ;-)

Upon landing in D.C., we needed to go to baggage claim to get the cats.  They finally arrived by a handler, and then we were off to go back to ticketing to get them on the next flight to Paris.  This process took about 2 hours and by the time we were done, we had just enough time to grab a few snacks and board the next flight.  This plane had tvs in each seat, so the girls were excited to be able to get to watch their own shows.  We had dinner and breakfast served to us on that flight and we each logged a few hours of sleep over the 6.5 hour duration.  When we landed in Paris, it was about 10:30 pm Minnesota time.  We had left Woodbury at about 6:45am so we had been moving for about 16 hours then. 

Watching movies, snoozing...





In Paris it was the same thing, we had to hoof it down to baggage claim, get the cats, and then go back to ticketing.  That airport was something else, there were people everywhere.  We finally found the right counter and had two very nice agents helping us with the cats.  We were exhausted and thirsty and really looking forward to the end of the trip.  Same thing, it took about 2 hours to do all of that and then we were off to the gate where we had a short wait before the bus left for the plane to Zagreb.

Pooped out in Paris...


The flight from Paris to Zagreb was about 2 hours and we all crashed for the entire flight, as it was about 2:30-4:30 am Minnesota time then.  And then we finally landed!

In Zagreb, we were met by Scot's new boss (Troy), his wife (Susan), and the woman from our host family (Kim).  Troy and Susan are both from Minnesota coincidentally and just moved to Zagreb from their last assignment in Romania about 3 months ago.  Kim is from Virginia and has 2 boys (5 & 8), her husband is the Navy attache at the Embassy.  They live just down the road from us.

The cats appeared near baggage claim again (yay!) and 6 out of our 9 bags arrived.  We were unfortunately missing our carseats and Scot's garment bag (which had all of his dress clothes in it).  We filed a claim and then left for our house!  Susan ordered some pizzas on the way so they'd be at our house shortly after our arrival.  They stayed and ate with us for awhile and then left us to get settled. 

24 hours later we were in our new home.  We will have just what was in our suitcases for the next 6-8  weeks (maybe longer!) before the rest of our belongings arrive.  Fortunately, the house is mostly furnished and has some basic kitchen stuff.  Here we go!