The time has come!

Well my last day at work has come and gone. I said farewell to all my coworkers and had a few last games of foosball (I think they let me win).

Tonight is fairly busy because we have to be ready for the pack & move crew to come by tomorrow morning. I'll be staying home tomorrow and Friday supervising the move while Lindsay and Cavan are out and about.

Tonight is our last night sleeping in our home. Starting tomorrow, we'll check into the Residence Inn. We were able to sell my car, but we decided not to sell Lindsay's Accord. Her folks are flying in tomorrow afternoon and will drive it back to Kansas for us to keep for us until we return. We just thought it will be nice having a car waiting for us when we got back.

Saturday we plan on spending cleaning the house and then Sunday our flight leaves at 6:50pm. It's a 9.5 hour nonstop SAS flight and we'll get in around 1pm local time. From there we have a hotel reservation at the Hotel Scandic Copenhagen for 3 nights. After which we'll move into our temporary housing. The address is:

Bentzonsvej 20, 2.tv.
DK-2000 Frederiksberg

That will be where we'll live for the next couple of months, until we find a more permanent place to rent.

Well, we've got a lot of work to do, so I best get at it. You'll hear from us after we touch down on the other side of the pond. Wish us luck!

Leave date

Okay, and now what everyone's been waiting to hear... when do we leave for Denmark?

My last day of work is Wed 3/21. The movers will be here from 3/22 - 3/23. During that time we'll be put up in a Residence Inn, and will fly out of Seattle on 3/25, arriving in CPH 3/26. After a few days rest I will start work on 3/29.

The house still hasn't sold yet. We hosted an open house yesterday but no one even came out to look at it. That was kind of depressing. :(

We're hoping it will sell soon so all we have to worry about is the closing while we are overseas.

Lindsay is working hard to get her car in shape to list it for sale. We're hoping that will sell quicker than the house.

Not so fast my friend...

Well, we thought we had the house sold, but the buyers backed out the day the inspection was due. Yeah, that really stinks. Because we live in a buyer-friendly state there's not really anything we can do to get the earnest back. Apparently the couple buying the home is going through a divorce and couldn't agree on the house. Kind of strange if you ask me.

After recovering from our anger and disappointment, we put the house back on the market. Well, it's a little harder this time around. We haven't had many people look at the house since then and of course no offers. We've decided to hold an open house this Sunday in the hope that it will draw in a few more people.

Now for some good news... our visa applications just got accepted yesterday from Danish Immigration! I FedEx'd our passports to get the stamps so we can be legal to reside in the land of the Danes. We should have them by this week.

So... when do we actually go? Well at first we thought that the sale of the house would hold us back, but our agent says we will still be able to sell or close on the house while we are overseas. Also, my new boss suggests that I start work by 3/29. So now we are looking at a departure date of the weekend of the 24th. Oh my gosh that's less than 4 weeks away!

We've got a lot more to do between now and then, but with a tangible date in mind I think we are both a little saner.

Gone in 60 seconds

Well that was quick. We put our house up on the market on Friday, and by Saturday received an offer for our asking price. We accepted the offer on Sunday and today our status changed to "Pending Inspection." The closing date is March 22, but we will be able to rent back from the new owners until April 7, if we need to.

Such a relief to get that out of the way. One less thing to worry about. And not having to worry about keeping the house spotless 24-7 is nice, too.

I definitely recommend Redfin if you ever want to sell your house. Currently they are located only in Seattle and San Francisco, but they are looking to expand to other cities in the future. The only problem we had was getting the for sale sign up in time, but other then that, things have been going smoothly. We're saving a bundle on not having to pay a commission to a listing agent.

This week will be the 4th week since our paperwork was submitted for the visas. 4-5 more weeks to go...

A Farewell to Wings

Tonight Jazmine went to a new home. We decided that taking him with us to Denmark didn't really make sense. It would probably have been too much strain on the little guy, especially having to travel on a long overseas flight.

He was adopted by the mother of one of Lindsay's colleagues at school. We know that Jazmine is going to a great home and will get lots of love and attention as his new mother recovers from breast cancer surgery.

Jazmine joined our family over 5 years ago, not long after we got married and soon after arriving in Seattle. Since that time we've gotten to know and love his traits and eccentricities. That's why it was hard letting him go. He's been through a lot with us, from an initial case of mistaken gender, to getting his toes chewed off by a macaw, all the way to helping us raise a puppy and a baby. He's made a lot of kids smile and will continue to do so, I am sure.

Good luck Jazmine! We'll miss you!

Redfinned

We were pleased to have Grama Joanne and Grampa Ed drive up from Oregon to visit us this week. They arrived Sunday and left to go back this morning. They were very helpful in helping us rearrange furniture and "frame" the house so we could take pictures to put on our listing.

This afternoon we ventured down to Pioneer Square to the startup-ish office of Redfin to speak with our assigned selling agent, Kelly. Things seemed to go smoothly enough. Except after a while Cavan got tired of being cooped up in a meeting room with nothing to play with but dry erase pens and highlighters. I don't blame him - I've been tired all day. We are scheduled for an appraisal on Thursday, and by next week we should have enough information to go live with the listing. Then the fun begins! We haven't decided whether we want to have an open house. It seems to be more hassle than benefit and Kelly told us it's really just a way for buying agents to pick up clients more than anything else.

Right now we are just packing away our "clutter" and finding some other place for it and sorting out the stuff we want to get rid of at the garage sale. Step by step we are making the house sellable. Actually Lindsay is doing most of the work on the house while I relax at the office all day (hah!).

Superbowl Sunday is this weekend. That's something American I'll definitely miss while we're in Denmark.

Departure delayed

Well, it doesn't look like we're going to leave when we thought we would. It took until last week to get the passports and papers ready to submit to apply for work & residence visas. And unfortunately the legal people are saying it's taking up to 10 weeks for the Danish Immigration Service to process visas these days.

So that puts us into Late March/Early April for our leave date. Kind of makes it difficult to know when to put our house on the market and sell our cars, but oh well. We'll get there eventually.

This Friday we're scheduled to meet with the movers at our house so they can do a pre-move survey. I guess they want to know how many boxes they need to bring to haul our junk over there.

The die is cast!

(written by Tom)

Back in November I flew to Copenhagen, Denmark for an interview for a position as a software tester with the Dynamics NAV division of Microsoft. Well, they offered me the job, and finally after reviewing the contract, getting numerous tax consultations, and lots of discussions with our families, we decided to accept the position and move the fam to Europe.

I am scheduled to start on 2/12/07, but before that we will have to sell the house and the cars, get the necessary paperwork done for working and living there (through a relocation agent), and say our countless goodbyes to loved ones.

Microsoft will handle all the details of actually getting there and put us up in an apartment until we find a place we want to stay.

Most likely we will want to stay 2-3 years. It will be an unbelievable experience and one that comes at just about the right time in our lives. Cavan is just over 1 year old and is just learning to speak. He'll have no problem picking up the native language. Lindsay is intent on finishing her dissertation after we move there and later possibly finding a job.

We hope to use this blog as a means to keep you guys updated with the latest goings on and detail our exploits in the land of the vikings.