Last week we started counting down in days, rather than weeks. I think I made the girls rather nervous, so I kept the counting to myself. Yesterday, I started counting down in terms of "This is the last Saturday!"
The last two weeks have been jam-packed and I have been continuously busy. I have been pretty calm and easy-going about it all up until the 14th when I began to realize how much I had left on my list and how many other non-Germany related activities were going to be taking up my time. It was time to start taking things off my list that were "I'd like to get done before we leave" rather than "I need to get done before we leave". I hate to cross things off my list that didn't get done. I have had my anxiety moments, but I have had friends, and Tom, come through to lend me a hand through child care, running errands, or just saying "tell me what to do".
We were blessed with lovely weather the past few days, just enough to melt and dry up the snow and ice so we could finally take down the Christmas lights and do a frantic clean-up of the yard. I had to cut back all the spent perennials, prune shrubs and berry bushes, and clean up all the toys that had been hiding under the snow. I even found a hat O lost months ago! I was rather hasty and was more liberal with my pruning than usual, so I will be interested to see how things look when we return - and how much the weeds are going to take over. I'm a bit disappointed that we will be missing our raspberry and blueberry harvest, but our house sitter has said she will send us pictures of my flowers!
So, now we are getting down to the actual packing! I have all of our bags down in the basement where O is less likely to unpack and redistribute things about the house. A just took her rolling duffel to her room to start packing and, having left the safety gate open, which keeps him out, O took the opportunity to start rolling it around. He was about to take it down the stairs before he was apprehended!
I have packed all off the off-season clothes for myself, O, and R. Since R wears her clothes out pretty quickly, I have a whole new set of winter/early spring clothes already packed for her. I bought these in the fall as I was scouring the thrift and resale stores for off-season clothes for O. The hard part now is trying to time the packing and laundering of current season of clothes the rest of us are still needing to wear! As much as I don't want to leave things to the last minute, it may be inevitable that I will be doing loads of laundry the night before we leave.
The rest of the "packing" has been mostly piling things into the extra large duffels that will serve as our second piece of checked luggage. This has been all of the nonclothing items and I have not been organized about where I am packing them or how they are all going to fit. I have been having second thoughts on the wisdom of using these extra large duffles rather than hard-sided suitcases; the items we are packing in them are mostly ridgid and not uniform in size, so they are not well padded or protected by the sides of the bags. Also, these duffles are expandable, but I realized that, when fully expanded, they are going to be too awkward and heavy for us to manage. Too late (and too expensive) to purchase anything different. I have bought some extra large ziplock storage bags with the hopes of keeping things more contained and organized within the bags. I am going to have to put my 3-D thinking skills to the test to get it all to fit just right. We may end up taking linens with us after all so we will have something to pad the insides of the bags.
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