Typical planning and prep: purchase plane tickets, purchase new suitcase (if needed), purchase travel size toiletries and what nots, purchase culturally appropriate clothing, purchase, purchase, purchase...noticing a theme here?
We've also been purchasing some clothing for Ephraim. We have a couple pairs of pants and a few short sleeved shirts (he's wearing sweats and crocs in his photo). I hate crocs. Hate. Have you ever been in a crocs store? It gave me a headache. They're great for kids but even then only when going to the beach or pool. They always go flying off when the kids run, how is that safe?! Anyways, I had a hard time figuring out what size to buy him. I did a facebook pole and GEESH! Ok, friends that know your children are giants, don't even bother to tell me their size, seriously. And I got a lot of "just buy him flip flops or crocs" Or "buy them there". Yes, flip flops and crocs are forgiving in size and yes, Africa does have shoes to buy. BUT, I want him to have shoes he can run in without them falling off. AND we see him on our first day for a few hours and don't know if we will see him after that. SO, we need to bring the shoes with us. I decided on one pair each of size 11 and 12. So we are bringing him pants, shirts, shoes, socks and underwear. All of these will be left behind when we bring him home so we'll have to do this again in a few months! We are also bringing him a small photo album of the family, our house, his room not sure if we'll put the dogs in there yet (cultural thing, new blog post). As well as a recordable story book with us reading it.
Other preparations include getting necessary immunizations. In our case yellow fever is required. Other recommended shots...typhoid, hepatitis A and B, tetanus, polio, meningitis and for high risk areas, rabies. Well thankfully, we're not going to a high risk area so rabies is out. Hep A & B we got when we moved to Germany, as well at tetanus. Polio, you get that as a kid...that leaves yellow fever, typhoid and meningitis. Chris was deployed all last year so he only needed yellow fever. Punk. Typhoid is only good for two years and I last had it in early 2002. Ugh. Typhoid hurts, I remembered that even ten years later. I yelled when she stuck me with yellow fever...Chris went next and made fun of me. -They put the yellow fever shot in the fat of your underarm (not armpit, granny arm area). Of course I have more fat there than Chris so it hurt me more...even left a purple bruise the size of a quarter.- Typhoid went in the same arm and meningitis on the right. It hurt to move my arms around that day and most of the next (yesterday). Well during the night I noticed that my right arm was really hurting where the shot went in. And I feel like poo. I looked it up, yeah, I'm feeling all the common side effects of the meningitis shot. Headaches, body aches, low fever, sore throat...even as I type I keep getting cold, then sweating. All that complaining I did about how the yellow fever and typhoid hurt, it's the meningitis that is kicking my butt. It should only last a few days. It had better be gone by Sunday, we have tickets to the Bengals game (Who Dey!).
For those of us with dogs, getting them up to date on their shots is necessary as well. We don't usually kennel them so they all needed the kennel cough vaccine. We are placing them with a dog sitter that keeps them in her home without cages. :) We already had her booked for the week of Thanksgiving so I just moved it to the next week.
So, purchases check, shots check, dogs check...online SERE training, leave packet signed and approved, foreign country brief and who knows what else...check? I know Chris did about 3 hours of the wrong online training...then about 2 of the correct one. Leave packet is done but now he's doing a different one?? He got his brief yesterday but if Ethiopia goes up another threat level he can't travel there....
Oh the Army makes things so much funner!!
There are still several things to get done. We will need the most recent update of our home study (because it's being finished now...). We need to print off a gajillion different things. We need to get crisp $100 bills, dated 2001 and sooner to exchange. Oh and I need to do laundry!
But for now, I'm going to eat some breakfast and sit on my butt because, as I said earlier, I feel like poo.
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