Jan 11-12th, 2011- Last Minute trip to NY, NY to obtain residence visas for Belgium

About 7pm on Monday Jan 10th, Greg got word from the immigration attorney's that they received the work permit and have all of the remaining paperwork...Greg was online booking flight and hotel at 10pm to fly to to NY on Tuesday as they law firm would send all of the required documents via Fedex overnight for 8am arrival on Wed, Jan 12th at my hotel in NY.  Given the last minute Greg took a chance and used priceline and ended up flying Airtran for the first time ever and got a good deal on a decent hotel for Tuesday night next to Rockefeller center in NY.  On the way to NY the flight attendent was talking about the big storm heading to the East Coast in the next couple days and how they will get stuck their....Not a good sign for events to come!    On Tuesday night it started snowing and snowing...Wednesday morning getting worried about package arriving at 8am!  Well....No package at 9:30am and Belgian Consulate is only open from 9-12:30pm to accept the visa paperwork!!  Thanks to the supervisor from the mailroom in our corporate office he was able to find that the package was finally arriving at the Fedex Hub in Manhatten to be put on a truck for delivery, but i would not have gotten package in time...Thanks to some quick thinking he got Fedex to freeze package at facility for pickup.  At 11:00am Greg dashed downstairs hailed a taxi and off to Fedex facility he went..picked up package and dashed in another cab at 11:30am (consulate is closing soon!) and off to the building with Belgian consulate...after getting thru security up to the visa officers he went!  After learning that they were missing the "visa pics" from the rest of family and paperwork for insurance verification they had to put file on hold until next day.  Greg left in pretty good shape as BCBS was faxing them a letter in that day and immigration attorneys were sending photos overnight......However, after getting in cab to head back to hotel and aiorport to fly back to MN, Greg was informed the attorneys sent those photos to partner law firm in Brussels for the residence process when we arrive...Aghhh.  After picking up Aidan at school, Amy jumped into action and got new photos of everyone andd sent them to Belgian Consulate overnight.  Since Monday, Jan 17th was MLK day they could not assure we would have them on Tuesday, so we booked our flights to Brussels for our big move for Wednesday, Jan 19th.    Alas, we received the visas and my work permit on Saturday afternoon and we were set tp go!!