Off to Dubai!!

The pet Exporter arrived at 7am to pick up Osiris. Our poor kitty was scared to death. The exporting company was very good to work with as they made the process easy for us. Emirates Airlines picked us up at 8am. It took 2 cars to get all of our luggage and us – but hey we were under the allotted amount of luggage per person.

The Emirates Airline lounge is very nice. We had fun sitting there talking. We even had a champagne toast to our new adventure!


This is us toasting to our new adventure. We all had a little champagne. :)














This is Ozzy at JFK airport.













This is Elle, me and Dani on the airplane.












This is a view of Iran from the airplane, beautiful mountains.











This is a view of Dubai from the airplane.




























This is our luggage in the Dubai airport. We had to stop at duty free to buy some beer but they were out... ugh.

Leaving West Hartford

Today was a very rough day. I don’t know that I have ever felt so much stress. The passport office did give us some home when we called them at 8am. Larry would be able to get another passport today, however they advised that we arrive before 1pm. The passport office is 1.5 hours from the house and we had a TON of things to do before we could leave.

We tackled the list with a vengence. Several friends came to our rescue and I am sure more would have had we asked. The Kumpas took the girls for the day and the Bowins helped us run errands. It was a rushed day and it left us no time to tell people goodbye. We finished the list around 2pm. Larry drove (way too fast) to the passport office in Norwalk, CT. We arrived around 3. We were EXTREMELY lucky to get a very nice passport agent who turned his passport in less than an hour. I wish that we would have gotten her name and sent a thank you to her! We all cheered when she told us she could do it.

We then drove to the Raddison at JFK. We found an awesome restaurant called…. A very nice Italian place not too far from the airport. It was a great last dinner before leaving the states.






This is one last picture of our house as we were pulling out of the driveway. Sad :(









The girls with Osiris driving to the airport hotel.

Passport Troubles

We drove home from Ohio today. While picking thru the mail when we got home we realized that my passport arrived but Larry’s did not. Panic set in! While tossing and turning in bed Larry realized what caused the problem. We were having Larry’s mail forwarded to Dubai via USPS. It hasn’t worked well at all (only one piece of mail has ever gotten all the way there). Since it wasn’t working we decided to use a private mail forwarding service, but we were waiting to sign up until we could sign all of us up. Any how… we never canceled the USPS forwarding so we are assuming that Larry’s passport is on its way to Dubai. We HOPE that it will arrive eventually.

Darlene's Wedding

Darlene's (my youngest sister) wedding was a ton of fun! The food was great and we danced the night away. Darlene and Dave were headed to the East coast for their honeymoon, no destination in mind just going where they felt like. Best of luck little sis!! :)





The pretty flower girls.













My parents, Darlene and her new husband Dave and Dave's parents.











Our family with our friends the Scibonas. They are a ton of fun to hang out with. We always look forward to seeing them when we go to Geneva. Hi Katelyn, Rachel, Morgan, Ben, Chris and Jill.









This is my sister Mindy (2nd from the right), her partner Melanie and 2 of their friends doing a hoola dance for Darlene and Dave. It was very funny. They mooned them in the end with signs that said Congrats Darlene and Dave.

Winery Hopping in Geneva

My best friend from college came up to Geneva to hang out with us. We went to a couple of wineries. It was such fun. My mom used to work at one and I used to baby sit the owners kids. We spent a lot of time at that winery. They had a guy playing music. The girls and their cousins, Will and Cody had such fun dancing.

Fun at Geneva-on-the-Lake

We took the girls and their cousins, Will and Cody to the lake for some fun. We did rock climbing, go carts, water bummer cars, mini golf, water slides and icecream. Can't beat that for some summer fun!

In Geneva

More to come later. My baby sister's wedding is on Saturday so lots of stuff to do to get ready for that and we will be spending time with my other sisters, family and friends. I am quite sure it will be a lot of fun but I will have to tell ya all about it later.

19 YEARS!!

Yes Larry and I have been married for 19 years now. Our anniversary was spent golfing, having a nice big lunch with his family, driving to Geneva and then spending the evening with Tabby and her husband Steve (a friend from college) down at Geneva on the Lake. :)

Visiting Larry's Family

We weren't on the stick about taking pictures! Hopefully Larry's father will send us some that we can add to this post. Larry's sister Jackie graciously invited us to stay with her and her family while we visited. She lives in Rushville which is outside of Lanacaster, Ohio - about 45 minutes from Columbus. We had a great time swimming and just hanging out with everyone. We went to the Heath Pool one Monday - very nice with a lazy river, water slides and diving boards. On Tuesday all the guys went golfing at the same course that they played the day that Larry and I got married 19 years before.

Here are a few shots of goodbyes after lunch just before we left to come up to Geneva to visit Renee's family.

Reflecting on Our Adventure

It’s been hard being apart with Larry living in Dubai. This past week it has been nice to be together again despite all the stress of moving. Its hard to believe how much came together in the end – selling my car at the last minute, getting all of the paperwork completed for Osiris to go with us, Lou offering to keep Seven and Cassie at the house for 2 years, and more. We’ve heard that experiences like this really bring a family closer together – we are all looking forward to that.

New Family Mascot – Ozzy Goes on Tour

We have adopted a goofy looking opossum stuffed animal that Dani won in a machine at Friendly’s in a town south of Akron, OH. His name is Ozzy. Stay tuned for more updates of Ozzy’s Tour locations.
















Our waitress, Alicia was extremely nice. Dani and Elle even took their picture with her and we gave her the address of our blog.

Leaving for Ohio

We left for Ohio on Friday night. The plan was to leave around 5, but it was 7pm before we got out of there. We made a short pit stop at the Connal’s to return their car (aka the red pimpmobile) that they so graciously allowed us to borrow – lots of tears. We sure will miss the best “old” neighbors in the world!

We (or rather Larry) drove for about 4.5 hours. We stopped at 5 motels until we found one with a vacancy. It was a Days Inn with a night club – weird heh? It was icky but it was a place to sleep and shower in the morning. We took off again about 9:00 the next morning. Here are a few lovely pictures of Larry having a great time driving, driving, driving, Dani sitting in the back seat looking like a budha and Elle hiding because she didn’t want her picture taken.
Larry plays silly games with himself while driving – going thru the alphabet seeing if he can name a band for each letter, calculating how much farther we have to go, telling us random bits of information about the cars that we pass, etc.

We sold Renee's car

We sold my car! Now when you see someone driving around town in my familiar orange Murano it won't be me, actually you won't see it anyway. We sold it to a couple in Abilene, TX. Dani and Elle were happy that it went to some Texan's like them.

The Bowin’s are HOME!

Hurray that the Bowin’s are home! We got to see them briefly on Thursday and Friday. Bummer that our overlap was not longer.

An Empty House and Sad Dogs

All of our "stuff" is gone. The house is oddly empty.... We're ready to get the show on the road and start our new adventures in Dubai.

We are camping out in our house tonight and tomorrow night then we head off to Ohio to visit Larry's family in Columbus and then mine in Geneva. My youngest sister is getting married on July 26. Larry and I will celebrate our 19th anniversary on the 22 too! Wow, that is a lot of years. We've been on many fun, exciting adventures together, but this one is by far the wildest.

I remember a few weeks before we were married we went camping and had several mishaps - I cut my head and head to get stitches and Larry fell over a waterfall and scraped up his leg. We said that we were putting the capital A in adventure. Who knew almost 20 years later we would really be putting the A in adventure.

Packing day

The movers arrived on Monday, July 14 (which also happens to be my good friend Karen's birthday and I forgot - :( ). Here are few pictures of our boxes. The house seems to empty. They will take the boxes away today. Our stuff will put on a truck and driven to a ship and then off to Dubai. It will take about 45 days to get our things. The girls will start school before our the shipment arrives. But that is ok, we will be just fine on minimal supplies and our adventurous attitudes.

Elle's 9th Birthday

Elle's birthday was on July 1 and her party was on July 13 with her friends. Some of them could not come because they were on vacation but it was still a blast.