Canada Born-Alaska Grown-On The Road

 From June 1st to Nov 13th the "we are moving to Italy" felt like a bit of a hypothetical - a maybe.  While Facebook reminds us of 9 years ago when the house was being built it went up for sale! Later in the day it snowed. The reality check came as we watched our belongings - things we won't see for five years and things we we won't see until March - be packed into crates, nailed shut, and driven away. This is just one moment in a string of moments leading up to us boarding the airplane and looking down at Fairbanks for the last time for a long time. But this was a pretty big moment in that string of moments. In typical of our DoD international move experience, the date of our move changed. Apparently the contracted moving companies don't care that I literally wrote the second quarter lesson plans around the two moving dates that we selected months earlier. My Type A, planning, organized, and practical self is learning to be more flexible which, apparently, is an ...

 Good Morning November!  Precisely 5 months ago we woke up in someone else's world which, somehow, is simultaneously a glittery fairytale and hellacious fire laden journey - yes, glitter 🧚🏼‍♀️ and fire 🔥 all rolled into one, giant, overseas move! 🌍 As we wake up to November, with its below 0 Alaskan temperatures, Halloween candy hangover, and a calendar with every weekend already booked, we THINK we can say, "Next month we move to Italy." MAYBE. There are a lot of moving parts, but if the behemoth that is the military industrial complex bureaucracy continues to turn as it should, we are expecting to leave Alaska on December 11th - as in NEXT MONTH . Per typical of the DoD we are waiting for someone, somewhere, to put a second picture in a red passport and stamp that picture with a magical seal, which most people call a visa, that qualifies us to be in Italy for more than 90 days. (then apparently upon arrival there's another process to get another piece of paper t...