Preparations are moving forward

About a month ago, I ended my Facebook contract and have been working full time on preparations for moving.  Scott will be joining me in this effort as he recently gave notice to bebe – his last day is December 7.  His coworkers are mostly very excited for him, which is nice.  You never know how people will react when they hear of the Ecuador plans for the first time.  His manager is already asking when he and his wife can visit!

Several things need to happen before we make our first move to South Dakota, then our second move to Ecuador:

1. Sell or donate all furniture in our house.  I visited a consignment store with pictures of a bunch of furniture and they will take a lot of it to resell.  They also gave me tips on which charities will come to our house and pick up the other stuff.
2. Complete the few portions of our house that still need remodeling:  Master bath & entry way being the two biggest. I spent days going to granite/marble places & discussing wall colors with designer.  We selected and ordered a new entry door.  Waiting for quotes from contractor.  Lots of other smaller things…
3. Hire realtor (already selected the one we want) & sell house.
4. Find a new home for our cat, Cleo.
5. Obtain and have apostilled our birth certificates, marriage certificate, police records, etc.  Also need them all translated into Spanish but we can do that in Ecuador if necessary.  They all need to be within 90 days of applying for permanent residency (cedula) so until we have a date, I’m putting this off.
6. Sell my car.
7. Go through the paperwork filling the office & shred or scan into electronic form.

One of the things that we knew we needed to do was get less “blingy” wedding bands.  Today, I wear this beautiful wedding ring:

When we are in Ecuador, Scott and I will be wearing matching simple wedding bands:

We picked them up yesterday from the jeweler and I have been wearing it since.  It feels like I am not wearing a ring at all it is so light and comfortable.  Our current wedding rings will go into a safe deposit box and we may wear them on trips back to the US.  I wear a sapphire ring on my right hand that will go into the safe deposit box.  We will not bring anything screaming “rich folks – rob us!” to wear since simply being gringos already screams that to enough people.  As much as blue eyed, blonde, white people can blend in, we will try to blend in with locals.

Now that I am no longer at Facebook, I have joined the Ecuador groups and am getting so much awesome information!  I love meeting all of these folks who have either already done what we are doing, are in the middle of doing it, or planning on doing it down the road someday.

Scott and I have really appreciated all of the people before us who have blogged about their experiences.  We learn something new with each blog that we read.  My hope for this blog is that someday someone stumbles upon it and finds a useful piece of information.  As we continue down our path, I plan to update this blog with any issues or successes that we encounter.

Until next time,
Emily