Farewell Bend

Yesterday two of my kids asked me "Dad, what if nobody comes to our going away party?"

It's happened before, that we put ourselves out there and hoped for lots of friends at an event ... and ended up eating our own party food. I don't know if you've seen the newish cartoon movie, Home, but as I'm writing I think of the pain that "Oh" had when he invited everyone to his housewarming party. We recently saw that, and I wonder if my kids could identify with that character in their anxiety?

But friends came!  And our hearts are full.  And we've farewelled many good people at Farewell Bend Park, and now we're down to not many hours of final packing and details.

This post has a picture of the Chases with all but two of our luggages.  But we think if we keep putting ourselves in each picture we take along this journey, that will get boring.  "And here is Tim in front of the school building where he teaches..."

So we're going to be changing it up.  We have created the first draft of a family of stick-figurines for the purpose of tracking our journey in Vietnam.  Maybe they'll be replaced by bamboo figures when we're there, but for now:

And at the park, we had everyone take pictures with the stick-figure Chases.  In a convoluted way it's a little like taking a picture of a selfie-stick, don't you think?  :)

Good pics of the going-away party: FAREWELL BEND PHOTOS

And now we pray that the visa paperwork gets here on time.  I have to print out the Visa Invitation Letters from an email (that the university hasn't sent yet) and bring them with us to the airport, or we don't fly.  Or maybe they'll forget to check in Seattle, and we'll get to Saigon and be a family trapped in the airport like Tom Hanks in The Terminal.  But mostly I just need the email and a printer.  The university apologizes for the delay and says that they'll be sure to get the paperwork to us on the day we go to the airport to board our flight.  Yeesh.