Update

My how time flies! As we have gone through all the preparations these past few months, moving to Denmark never seemed all that real. At least for me. And now, we are moving out of our house here in Hyrum tomorrow, and there are only 19 days left until we fly to Denmark. Scary! The whole process to get to this point has had so many ups and downs, but I finally am starting to feel very excited about the move and I think we all just feel anxious to get there. Lexi asks almost every day, "Are we moving to Denmark today?"
I haven't been very good about writing in here about our preparations, so I'll try to do a little update. In our last post, Chad started writing about his trip to Denmark. He never wrote part 2, so I'll sum it up a little. One of his main objectives over there was to find a place for us to live. This is something we have been very worried about, but Chad was able to find a place that we think will work for us. A couple of things about housing in Denmark. First, it is very small. I think all of Europe lives this way, on a smaller scale. The house we will be moving into is about 900 sq. ft. It has 3 bedrooms and 1 bath. We were actually very surprised we were able to find a place with 3 bedrooms, although 2 of them are very tiny, it will be nice to have the extra bedroom. To put this in perspective, our Condo in Logan was 954 sq. ft. and it had only 2 bedrooms. There are no closets in the house and all of the appliances are about half the size of what we are use to here. Luckily though, it does come with a washer and dryer! The second thing about housing in Denmark, is that it's VERY expensive. This little tiny apartment we will be living in cost twice as much per month has the 2000 sq. ft., 4 bedroom house we are living in right now. All of the utilities are included in the rent though, so that is one nice thing. But the biggest thing is actually getting into the apartment. The country has set standards on housing deposits and they are very high. Our deposit was equivalent to 3 months of rent, PLUS we had to pay the last 3 months of rent up front. It felt like we were making a down payment on a house! It should all even itself out in the end, but it was a lot of money to come up with in the first place.
Speaking of money, it is expensive to move out of the country. Not only was there the issue of housing, but we also had to pay for our residency permits. These are the equivalent of Visas. This cost us around $3000 and then tickets to fly over to Denmark with 5 people are a little pricey as well. Luckily they weren't round-trip tickets. =) Not to mention a lot of little things as well. After all of this, we are just grateful that Chad has a job over there and his schooling is free.
So, now we've made it past all of my craft shows, Thanksgiving, me getting a kidney stone and needing surgery, Jordyn's wedding and Christmas. All we have left is to finish packing, then we get to spend a few days with my parents and a few days with Chad's parents before we are off on this great adventure!
Packing has been a challenge. We've moved plenty of times before, but it is so different knowing you are packing things up for 3 years. Luckily, Chad's brother, Blake was able to come and help us out for a few days and that helped out so much. We have decided to not ship ANYTHING over. All we will be taking is what will fit in 5 large suitcases and a few carry-ons. The kids have been great about not getting too upset about leaving things behind and I really think they will enjoy this great adventure.
So for now, I need to get back to packing. The end is always the hardest. And then we have all of our good-byes. It seems like everyone we see now, we are saying good-bye too. None of them have been easy. And some of the worst are yet to come. And then, we'll get to say hello to all the new people we'll meet in Denmark. 19 more days and counting....