Currency and Gameplan

As a part of preparing for the upcoming event we decided to have Kalee bring all her piggy banks down stairs. Now I say all because she started with a pig for dollars and a Princess bank that my Mom got her at Disneyland for her Yen....and just recently some friends brought her and Bear each a coconut monkey bank back from Hawaii. See, even friends think my kids rock. Once all 4 banks were in the middle of the room we started dumpin' them. Max responded with "You know Kalee, I don't like sorting your money because I know where it came form." You see any NORMAL family would have a pile for each; quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies. Right? No! Not us. We have the above plus the Yen coins; 500, 100, 50, 10, 5 and 1 (FYI- the exchange rate is about 117.2 per American dollar). Should be 10 piles....acceptable given we do live in a foreign country and use 2 different kinds of currency on a daily basis. BUT...there was more. Since we have lived here, Max has visited more places then you have under ware in your drawer. With visiting different geographical areas comes MORE foreign currency. Yup! We have currency from Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, and Korea. Great! Now we can combine it with our collection form various European and South American countries. You know your a military family when you can recognise which country that coin came form at a glance. Kalee was in charge of the other pile. She liked it because not all coins were round. She took interest in the ones that were a 'shape' (from Australia)...and Bear took interest in one coin. It was a quarter from KY....no, not because his Grammi lives there....because it had a horse on it. That boy can spot a horse a mile away I tell ya. Now, I am pleased to say they are all separated into baggies so we can take them to the bank this week. I wonder how much they have in American dollars and Japanese Yen?

Today's task includes me doing a dry run of packing suitcases. Weird I know. I need to see what and how much of the kids clothes I can stuff in a carry on so I can determine what I need to mail to KY this week. Most of you are probably lost...so let me back up. See, the military sends us form point A to D to E because it's "cost effective" only to find out we should have been at point B all along. That being said, the tentative...and I repeat TENTATIVE plan, because everything is subject to change, is:

• Take a 2 hour bus ride to the place we have to catch a MAC flight from
• Endure the overseas flight with 2 kids in the finest of military aircraft...that may or may not have lighting and serve MRE's. (Yes, the same one I took last April)
• Land on US soil and stand in the long line to get through customs and immigration putting up with 2 whiny kids that just want to run around (because the US is not like Japan in allowing people with small children a head of the line).

This is where it gets interesting....

• Max departs to San Diego to get our HHG(household goods) and POV(car) and heads across country in a moving truck by himself.
• I get to wrestle our two lovely children back into their car seats and fly another 4 hours to Ohio because the first one isn't going to be long enough.
• OHIO? Yeah I see you noticed. remember earlier I talked about point A,B,C,D,E and F? Well Cincinnati, OH is like point F and a half. The finest Naval personnel could only get us to VA...which is great if we didn't have to stop in KY for our other POV. As a result I get to play hookie with the airlines and ditch them at the stop in OH. Which means I can't have any checked luggage...only carry-on's...and 2 kids/car seats.
• No I'm not left there to hitchhike...my Mother-in-Law (MIL) is going to pick us up...
• This time SHE can wrestle the kids into their car seat, and we drive about 160 miles down to KY to visit the family.

...for 4 days or so.

• As Max passes by I plan on meeting up with him and following him another 10 hours to VA...you guessed it....with the kids in the car seat.
• He should be with us for about a week then he takes off to RI for school. Misses both kids birthdays but arrives hours before Christmas Day. A little more leave and he gets to fly out to meet a very large piece of steel, floating somewhere in the deep dark waters here on Earth.

Somewhere in between all of this we close on a house.

..and that my friend is the jest of it. Are your eyes tired of listening? That just woke you now didn't it?