This story begins a long time ago, well sort of a long time ago. It was January 6th and I was looking over all of the clothes Maddie and I were planning to take to Belgium. I panicked, thinking there was no way it would all fit in three 50lb suitcases. (Thank you ailine luggage restrictions for the limited amount of stuff I was able to bring). So, I packed a box full of Maddie's precious clothes that she could not fit into yet and our tennis racquets (ya know the important things in life) and headed to the post office. Who knew that a 17lb box would cost $75 to ship to Belgium. With an assurance that it would arrive in 7-10 business days, I sent it off it with the trusty US Postal system.
2 weeks later... no box. 3 weeks... no box. Panic set in and our research began. Our tracking number said it arrived in Belgium on January 13th and had cleared customs. Well it was the beginning of February and there was no sign of our box. My heart hurt as I thought of all of Maddie's darling clothes lost in some Belgian post office. So we did more research and discovered that when a package comes to Belgium the receiver (which is us) has to contact the customs authorities and give the ok for it to come into the country before it is delivered. This news gave us a small glimmer of hope, maybe the box would find it's home.
February 20th we recieved a message that the box would be delivered the next day, but since the contents of the box were new items there was a customs charge of 147 euros! Bummer... if I knew that I would have just paid the airline charge for an extra suitcase, but at least we knew Maddie would finally get her clothes.
Finally, 1 month and 15 days after it shipped, our package arrived. It felt like Christmas in February. And just like after Christmas our wallet felt a little bit lighter as the cost us about $275- but having Maddie's clothes (many of them being gifts from you) seemed well worth it!
The moral of this story is all of you who were planning on sending us nice and expensive gifts this year, think twice! Save your time and money!! 
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