These Are Some of the To-Dos From Our Pre-Departure Checklist
We’re four days away from leaving and feeling pretty good–but man have there been a lot of logistics involved to get to this point. Trip planning aside, here’s a random collection of logistics and to-dos we tackled in prep for our departure, in no particular order:
- Swim lessons for the kids because we’ve somehow slacked on this front
- Fly to west coast to see friends, family and new babies
- Take Spanish lessons (tried Babble, Rosetta Stone, Duo Lingo and Verbling – best by far for us was Verbling).
- Get all shots and endure ten post-shot days of cranky 4-year-old
- Put on simple wedding band, lock up diamond ring til 2020
- Secure visas
- Return the Fios cable box
- Pull trigger on new camera (Sony A7R III) and GoPro
- Grow short hair long to more easily wear in a ponytail
- Switch to Android (Pixel 3) to use Google Fi phone plan, which gives data and phone for low fee in 175 countries.
- Re-take CPR
- Find awesome new Olukai flip flops, but forget to separate them out and have movers pack them up into storage til 2020. Vow to buy new flip flops on the road.
- Learn WordPress
- Re-learn Instagram after many-year hiatus (Stories!!)
- Buy comically small Briggs + Riley suitcases and whittle whittle whittle the packing list.
- Fight with Aetna on the phone for hours to get them to cover all the malaria pills we need to take with us; lose and pay out of pocket
- Replace already-brand-new kids’ passports with even newer ones that have extra pages
- Rethink credit and debit card situation to optimize for this kind of travel
- Watch movies and read books from the places you’re going (Gabriel Garcia Márquez on down to mediocre Peruvian rom-coms, etc.)
- Purge massive amounts of crap (and we thought we were so uncluttered!) and pack up the rest into a storage unit
- Forward mail
- End recurring monthly bill payments
- Log out of work email for the last time
