Today was officially scheduled over a week ago as ‘Free Day’, meaning my goal was we would have all the packing finished and everyone could relax and do something that was fun for them.  It wasn’t a free day.

But – dd15 spent the entire day at Six Flags amusement park, a surprise planned by her very close friend, and had a fantastic time.  Dh went out for lunch with a close friend.  I gave ds12 the job of taking care of the littles for a few hours, and he was amazing – I don’t even know all that he did but he took them all out for hours and brought them home very happy.  Then he asked if he could go to his best friend’s house a couple of hours early (he was invited to a birthday party and sleepover afterward).  Dd10 had a sleepover at her grandparents, and so the house was very quiet.

I really appreciated the chance to work in a quiet house; there are so many details in my mind all the time and right now everyone needs my constant input in order to do anything constructive.  It’s taking a constant conscious effort to stay calm and speak quietly when I feel pressured, and I’m not always successful.  But overall dh and I feel it’s been amazing that until yesterday, we’ve both felt very calm about the move.  (Yesterday the closeness of our departure and the massiveness of what is still left to be done hit us!)

Today I sent out my final order for my nursing pillow business, and liquidated my inventory.  The only part about this that wasn’t positive was that I took care of it during that precious quiet time when I would have loved to have been plugging away at home.  But every other aspect was good and I’m so happy that everything went so smoothly.   With that done, another door has now shut, which means there’s room for a new door to swing open!

I’ve been busy selling stuff on Craigs List, and it’s been gratifying that things are selling nicely.  However, there are lots of odds and ends, things that are too small to post, but add up to a lot of stuff, and I was delighted when friends came today and left with boxes of stuff.  If I’m not going to take something with me, I want others to enjoy it!  Ds18 did a thorough cleaning of the garage and he and dh went to the dump with just about all of the stuff.   Then he took a full van load to the local Goodwill.  If you go to the store in our neighborhood, you can assume that a significant portion of their inventory came from our home.  🙂

We were supposed to sell our van tonight, but a) we were invited out for dinner – which was delicious and relaxing and wonderful! (thanks, Alisa!)- and wouldn’t have had a way to get home, and b) dh wants to take one more load to the dump in the morning (there’s a limit of a load a day).  I tried to do all the errands that need to be done so that when we don’t have the car anymore, we won’t miss it.

I’ve been doing laundry non-stop since yesterday and have just one small load left.  This is really important since I can’t tell how much room we need to leave in the luggage until everything is clean.  We’re allotted three boxes per person, and I was delighted tonight to realize that though I thought I only had two pieces of luggage remaining to fit everything into, I must have miscounted because I actually have only twenty seven boxes packed, out of thirty!  An extra available piece of luggage is a nice thing to discover towards the end.

Well, I better get back to packing now – I needed to take a break, so I combined my blogging with my break.  🙂

Upward and onward!

Avivah