DAY 0 - Monday, August 5th, 2024 When I last left the blog, we had been picked up by my in-laws for a ride to Phoenix Sky Harbor.  If you prefer the TL:DR version, here is a video re-cap of our travel day: Traveling 13 hours and 3 flights with 3 cats to Belize Since we had cats/pets, we weren't able to check in online, we had to check in in person. That upped my anxiety as while we are alw ...

Saturday, a.k.a. DAY 2, more panic hit as we were not receiving text messages now that our numbers were ported to GoogleFi. Kind of important for us to be reachable on our last few days in the U.S.! I'm not a techie and tried following troubleshooting tips. There was a note that it may take 24-48 hrs from porting a number until a customer can send and receive texts. In hindsight, I should hav ...

Thursday evening, we headed to the Mejia's home after work. They were neighbors to my inlaws in their first apartment, their kids were - and still are - friends. We had an Italian feast and our kids (plus Lilly!) and Nathan's cousin, Joseph, came over as well. Perhaps we should have taken a family photo before the sun went down, and maybe I shouldn't have parked my keister under the misting s ...

DAY 7, part 2: Dinner with Shauna As I mentioned in my previous blog, I had a Happy Hour/Dinner date with a former sales partner/great friend, Shauna, on Tuesday. We met up at Talking Stick Resort and Casino (surprise!) and it was great to catch up, we both have a lot of changes going on in our lives. I also earned some redemption gambling - I played one machine only, got a game maybe ten sp ...

DAY 8: Monday Our last "Guest" at our villa checked out on Monday, closing out almost two years of heavy use, and likely, with a bang!  San Pedro hosted the Belize International Music Festival this weekend, and our guest (1 on the reservation) had a revolving door of visitors in and out, courtesy of our Ring cameras. We routinely have a camera triggered by a cat or the many raccoons in the ...

The days are flying by, I can't keep up! DAY 11: FridayI made a drop-off at my mom's house of an extra TV, some cat things, and cosmetics while picking up cat pheromone collars to calm them. We also set a date for our last meeting. From there, I washed our car and took it to CarMax to see what they would offer for it. It's an okay offer, not offensive, not knock-my-socks-off, and we did agr ...

Now that the "Major Events" have concluded, we're working through ticky-tack things that aren't nearly as important, but still need to be finished. For example: We have gift cards and free meals and such from loyalty programs, so we're trying to map out maximizing those. I started day 12 by cashing in a free acai bowl at Nekter; after all of the fast food and fried things my body needed som ...

Day 13 - the day that our home closes escrow, so it was a good day! As much as I'm saddened to leave it, it did its job and more for our family, and allows us to move a little more comfortably financially. I was notified at 11:35 AM that the sale had funded and recorded, and that our check was ready for pickup. This was ten minutes after our U-Pack driver called to verify the delivery info ...

What a run..! I grossly underestimated how long it would take us to pack up the U-Pack trailer, get everything out of our home, and have it ready for the buyer. We took all day Monday to complete the loading and Tetrising of our goods, and again, ran into some hiccups: -Ethan never came on Sunday to pick up more items we had for him, plus everything in our fridge and freezer. Nathan and Cl ...

After a lousy night of semi-sleep, we were up at dawn; Nathan was soaking in the tub, trying to loosen up his body. The U-Pack haunted us every time we passed the foyer; it was visible from our front door. At 8 AM, I requested a tow to the tire shop I had booked an appointment with the night before, for my 9 AM installation appointment. It was due to arrive at 8:50, which would work perfec ...