House Hold Effects

Our Household effects, otherwise known as HHE, are scheduled to arrive this morning.  I don't know if I am excited, or if I just want to crawl under a rock and hide.  Either way approximately 7200 pounds of boxes filled with I can't quite remember what will be here shortly and then chaos will ensue. I will be updating as I get a moment throughout the day.

10:30 Three crates unloaded.  You can no longer walk in the kitchen due to the number of boxes.  We will not discuss the number of boxes labeled books.  Dave says I may have a problem, or two.  I disagree.  It is not a problem to like to eat well, or read.  Nope a problem at all.

11:40 Last crate being cracked open.  We have too much stuff.  I have NO IDEA where we are putting all of this. The house reeks of cardboard and I am hungry.  The guys have started coming in the door and telling me where they are putting stuff.  I am not inclined to argue.

11:51 last box in in the house.  We have too much stuff.  Going to go eat lunch and then start unpacking.  Oh the fun.

12:35 Back from Subway (YUM) and ready to begin the unpacking.

4:57 Kitchen unpacked, mostly.  I should say all the boxes I can find so far that are labeled "kitchen" are unpacked.  There are thing missing though, so there is more stuff around here somewhere that will have to be shoved into a cabinet when it does turn up.  Not quite sure how I am going to fit anything else, but I will manage.

Meanwhile Dave has made all the beds, except ours.  Our sheets are missing. I guess they're in a box with the missing kitchen items.

I haven't touched a box of books yet.  I'm afraid to.  I might start reading instead of unpacking and then would be lost.

Kids are home from school and in spite of repeated requests to start on homework they are taking turns making a horrendous amount of noise on the trumpet/coronet/noise-maker-from-hades.  Why couldn't one of them take up trumpet so they could actually learn to play the darn thing?

Back to work.

6:05  Kids fed, decided to call it a night.  Everyone needs to do their homework and then I just want a long hot shower and a cold beer.

We made good progress today.  While I did kitchen Dave tackled the bedrooms.  Clothes are put away in the proper closets, beds are made, the welcome kit burlap sheets are washed and folded ready to be packed away. Bookshelves are put together and ready to be loaded with books for reading.

Tomorrow the kids have early release so we will work hard in the morning then take a bit of a break when they get home then try to put them to work as well.

Made it to Muscat

We made it to Oman. My initial impressions are hot, hotter, and even hotter than that; Sky high humidity, like Galveston in the summer time. Lots of dust, very little green, very stark and basically alien to anything we have experienced before. I know with time I will learn to love (at least aspects of) this post, but right now I am overwhelmed and really just want to go home, or at the very least make like an ostrich and hide my head in the sand for a bit… good thing there seems to be lots of sand around.

We had a fun-filled, but very busy, and very short summer in the states. If you missed it we bought a house this summer, and our short time in the states was dedicated to turning it into a home. Mission accomplished! It is beautiful and I love it. I will blog more details and pictures later, but for right now blogger has decided to go Arabic on me, and I can’t find the button that allows me to change it back to English, and I can’t load the login page, so I am typing this in word then my absolutely fabulous husband will post it for me from work, on break of course.

I don’t know if having my little home in the 'hood made the landing in Oman easier or not, but there have been fewer tears this time than any move before. I don’t care what anyone says about moving to a new country, I don’t do a honeymoon period. Never have, and I suspect I never will. By the time the plane lands, I am depressed, fighting tears, missing our family and friends in the states, and completely homesick for our last post. And that period of time when you are in an echoey house full of strange furniture, but nothing that is really yours, is the worst. That more than any other tie is when I feel like we are really in limbo. It is hard to start turning a house into a home when you don't have any or your things. We are living out of our suitcases until our stuff eventually makes it way here from Malawi, then I can start finding where my stuff will go in this new house, and start making it finally feel like home. Hopefully that will be soon.

Eventually we will have working internet at the house and I will get back to updating regularly and then I can share all the fun we had this summer, as well as our settling in process here in Oman.

Packing: Glad it's his job!

Those of you who know David, know that he's pretty easy going.  At least until he has a job to do.  Then he is.... intense.  Very intense.  There is one big job left to do. The last job before we leave Malawi.

It's that time again, everything left in the house has to fit into a suitcase.  Understand that not once since we have been married has Dave ever been satisfied with how I've packed a suitcase.  He always rearranges and and repacks it for me.  Fun!  I will give him this, he is the champion of stuffing "just one more thing" into a suitcase.  A talent that has more than once found us rearranging the contents of suitcases at the airline check-in counter so that no one suitcase exceeds the weight limit.  You would think that since it all equals out to the same weight for our family going onto the plane, the airlines could just take the average of all our luggage and move on, but apparently that would be too easy.

This morning he asked me to get started on the packing so we are not scrambling to get it done over the next couple of days.  I just sat there sipping my coffee looking at him until he finally said "WHAT?"

I suggested that this time we skip the whole I pack, he unpacks and repacks everything routine.  So today I went through all the rooms and put everything that needs to be packed into one room.   Tonight he gets to deal with this:

He is going to need every bit of his "I can fit just one more thing"  super power to make it all fit.  Glad it's his job!

Green Camp and the Great Purge of 2013

This week the kids are off at Green Camp.  In many, many ways Green Camp has been the highlight of our time in Malawi.  It is, I am almost certain, one of the things the kids will remember long into the future.  This week they will be celebrating all things nature, as well as preparing for the upcoming Earth Day celebration at Four Seasons. They will have a busy, fun-filled week, and I am happy for them.

In the meantime I am alone in the house, completely alone for the first time in months.  The house is eerily quiet.  For the moment I am enjoying a blessedly quiet cup of tea, but in just a few minutes I will be even busier than the kids.  This summer is pack out.  That means packing everything we own and preparing it to go to our next post in Muscat, Oman.

The movers will show up sometime in June and everything we own will swathed in miles of paper and bubble wrap, sealed in mountains of boxes, and loaded onto trucks.  If everything works the way it is supposed to we will see our stuff again in about 4, maybe 5 months at our new house in Oman.

That does't sound too bad does it?  It sort of sounds like the packers will do all at the hard stuff. Of course there is a catch.  There is always a catch.  The trick is that everything we own must weigh less than 7200 pounds.  Everything including clothes, toys, books, towels, any furniture we own, dust collectors, pots, pans, cutting boards, and everything else  that turns an echoing house into a functioning home must weigh less than 7200 pounds.

This week I will be going through every closet, box, cabinet, and drawer purging our house of all that is needless weight.  FUN!  More fun than you can imagine.  It is both totally necessary and totally incompatible with homeschooling, so it must be accomplished this week.  While the kids are at camp.  So much for my dreams of hours of reading, lazing about enjoying the quiet.

I will be posting the weeded out weight each day.  I know you are thrilled to know how much trash, junk and broken toys I manage throw away each day.  There you have it, the oh so glamorous life of the foreign service spouse.  Jealous?

Almost Gone

This was not the post I meant to write this morning. I had planned something else entirely. It will have to wait. Today was our last full day in Frankfurt. The last day the kids would go to the Metropolitan School. The last day we would wander down the Zeil. The last day we would walk from our house to Rewe to grab a doner from the Kabab guy. The last day we would eat dinner at the field house. The last day we would sit in the yard with our neighbors watching our kids play together while we talked.

Dave finished up at work yesterday and spent the day with me, he always does when we move. He knows I do not embrace change the way he does. I find change difficult and upsetting. Good choice in lifestyles, huh?

We took care of a few things we had been meaning to do. We walked through the big cemetery down near his work. I like walking through old cemeteries, I find them peaceful, at least in the daylight. We had been meaning to do that since we arrived. We hit up the kitchen supply store downtown, the fancy one that puts William Sanoma to shame, and bought a very nice new knife for the kitchen. We were supposed to do that for our anniversary a few months back since the eleventh anniversary is steel. We always choose a gift together that we will both like, and the last few years we have been trying to go with the traditional gifts, but somehow this year we got busy and didn't get to it until today. We also checked out the new Apple Store to check out the ipads, they are cool but really just seem like a super sized ipod touch. It isn't for me, not right now anyway.

Tonight we are finishing off what has turned out to be a very good, if emotionally charged day, by packing and cleaning. I am glad to have this time to say goodbye to the house that has been our home for two years while the kids are in bed. I can cry tonight, and tomorrow I will (hopefully) be able to stay calm to help them through their tears.

Tomorrow we will wake up in this house for the last time and walk to the bakery down the road for one last pastry. We will say goodbye to our van, which will be heading back to the states to live with Dave's brother. We will board a plane that will take us to Texas where we will visit with old friends and family for a bit before heading out to new adventures.

Wordless Wednesday - Consumables Shipmment

A Bloggy Break

I am just taking a little bloggy break and playing on the net.

The movers are here again. They are still making good progress. Yesterday was hard for me. After what seems like an eternity of being busy busy busy trying to get everything ready there really wasn't much for me to. And yet I couldn't relax either because my house was full of strangers packing up all our stuff, including the TV. Mostly I wandered in circles and annoyed the packers, except when David sent me to go get some lunch.

Today at least I have something to do. The packers are done with the upstairs, completely done. They are still hard at it downstairs and in the basement but the upstairs is empty. Empty, echoey and remarkably dirty. I swept and vacuumed on Tuesday as part of the final prep. I swear I did. You would never know it from the number of dust bunnies running around up here. David is still supervising downstairs while Dakota and I are cleaning upstairs. A total cleaning. Vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, polishing, window washing, the works. Why? Because we have been told that if the powers-that-be need to call a cleaning crew as part of the make ready for the next family we will be charged, so the floors need to be mopped,the carpets need to be vacuumed, the base boards cleaned, and all the dust bunnies captured. At least I am not annoying the packers today.

We still have no idea what our total weight for the shipment will be. No idea if we are over or not. We will not have any idea until probably early next week. It is so FRUSTRATING! In Jakarta they weighed the stuff as it went into the truck so when the last box was loaded the head honcho in charge sat down with his list and his calculator and 15 minutes later we knew how much everything weighed, how many boxes, ect... Here they box it up and take right out to the truck. It will be weighed on an official scale somewhere, no idea of where. No mountains of boxes sitting around waiting to be loaded, which I must admit is nice, BUT I have no idea how many boxes we are up to now, or how much weight all those disappearing boxes represent. Hopefully it is all under the magic number of 7200.

They are HERE!

The movers arrived promptly at 7. IT is now 8:30. Holy Cow! They are kicking butt and taking names. There are at least 3 dozen boxes aleady packed taped and sealed. There is no way they are going to take the full three days to pack us out. At this rate they will either be done late today or early tomorrow. More later. I am going to try to take a picture of our consumables before they pack it up. I may already be too late!

We Are Ready, I Hope.

Almost time now. It feels as if packout is all I have been thinking about forever. I know that isn’t true. It has been the major focus around here for only the last month. It has been a long month. In less than 8 hours the movers will be here to pack everything up and send it on it’s way to Malawi. We are way more ready than we have ever been for any previous move, and yet I am still completely freaking out. I just don’t do change well.

I like the status quo. I like knowing that when I open the cabinet I will see my favorite coffee mug waiting there. I like seeing my pictures on the wall where they belong. I like my clutter. I do not like moving. I hate when everything around me is chaos and not much seems more chaotic than having nothing in the house where it belongs.

Right now our suitcases with just enough clothes to get by for the summer are packed away upstairs in a locked room so they don’t accidentally get shipped leaving us with only the clothes on our backs. There is a pile of stuff heading back to storage in another room. We don’t have an air shipment from here to the next post this time because Dakota is flying the nest so everything in his room will be heading back to the states as UAB (unaccompanied air baggage for those of you not fluent in foreign service acronym). If we were to take it to post or send it to storage he would have no access to any of his stuff, so we are sending it to his uncles house where it can sit in his garage until he wants it. Hopefully all the hard work we have put in getting ready will mean that the move goes smoothly and easily. I just can’t shake the feeling we have overlooked something major, but I have no idea what that could be.

WHAT??!? A stomach virus, NOW! Are you kidding me?

Late last night after the kids were all tucked in, David and I were still busy working when Colin appeared downstairs holding his stomach and crying. Once he got close it was apparent from the stench that he had been sick, very sick. I went upstairs to see what the damage was while David cleaned up Colin. Upstairs I found Alonzo still fast asleep while Colin's bed and the carpet between the beds was covered in the most revolting mess. I scooped up the bed linens and headed downstairs toss them in the washer and get some lysol, old rags and gloves to deal with the rest of mess. David met me upstairs and took the cleaning supplies from me and handled the rest of the mess. I really do love him. How many men would clean barf for their wives? Alonzo slept through the whole thing even though his bed is less than two feet from Colin's How anyone could sleep through that stench is beyond me.

This morning Colin is tucked in on the couch watching Scooby Doo while the other kids are off at school. I am trying to stay on schedule even though I am dealing with waves of nausea. I simply do not have time to be sick. I managed to survive 4 pregnancies with morning sickness and still get done what I needed to, I can do this. There is one problem. Today is the day I am supposed finish up the kitchen, clean out the fridge so all my dishes and good storage containers are clean and ready to pack when the movers arrive on Wednesday. Cleaning the fridge when you are already nauseated is not a lot of fun. Plus if this runs like pas stomach viruses the rest of them should be sick in bed barfing while the movers are here. This could turn out to be a very interesting week.

Oh God! Help Me!

I have lost the notepad that has all my notes for pack out on it. What still needs to be bought for the consumables shipment? All I can remember is we still need to buy booze, specifically tequila and triple sec for margaritas, what does that say about my state of mind? What still need to be done and before Wednesday and by whom? Beats me but I am afraid the answer might be everything and by me alone. What do we need to buy this summer when we are in Texas? Spices, cereal and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can't remember that all will go UAB from Texas to Malawi. It also has all my notes for this next weekend: graduation, raingutter regatta, Alonzo's birthday. Basically I have lost my ever loving mind. Now what?

On a happier, or at least funnier note yesterday we were heading down the autobahn behind a Porsche Carrera when we hit a bit of traffic and had to slow down. The rear spoiler on these cars goes up and down according to speed. Grayson was watching the car, as like all the other boys he has car fever, when the spoiler retracted leaving the back of the car one smooth line. He freaked out and started yelling and pointing, hitting his brothers to get their attention. It took me a few minutes but I finally realized what the commotion was about. He thought the car was transforming, as in it was a TRANSFORMER like Bumble Bee. I think he was waiting for the aliens to arrive and the big battle seen to take place.

Duck Pond

It is 5 days until packout. I should be working at getting ready for the movers. I would be except for some reason when we scheduled all this it didn't occur to us to check the school schedule for holidays. The kids had no school yesterday or today. A four day weekend with only 2 days left to finish up afterwards. (Insert four letter word of your choice here!) I tried to get stuff done with them home yesterday and today, but it was a loosing battle. They are trashing things faster than I can organize. I think my brain may explode if they get into one more area or pile that I have decided is ready for packing. I really wish we were allowed to pack some stuff up in boxes ahead of time just to keep the kids out of it, but we have been told absolutely no packed by owner allowed. (four-letter word here) In Jakarta they actually gave us boxes ahead of time so we could organize stuff. All we had to do was leave them unsealed. Here, forget about it!

The weather has finally warmed up. It is gorgeous outside, so before I totally lost my mind I decided to take the kids to the duck pond. My logic? If they are outside they aren't messing things up inside. After the winter finally ends and everything greens up it is so pretty that it almost seems as if Germany is apologizing for the long grey winter. I don't know what these pink flowers are, but aren't they gorgeous?

The boys and their friend enjoyed feeding the ducks and geese while I played with the camera.

Pay no attention the beer bottle. Honestly I don't think the kids even noticed it. They were having too much fun trying to get the baby geese to eat the bread from their hands. Every time the little ones would get too close one of the adult geese would fuss at them and make them back of from the dangerous humans.

I love this shot. The mother goose looks like any mom chewing out one of the kids. I have no idea why it came out all dark in the background like they are in a spot light. I wish I knew why that happened, but honestly I was just shooting in idiot mode like always. A bunch of pictures came out like this. Maybe someday I will learn how to really use my camera.

This may be my favorite shot of the day. It looks like a post card. They look so sweet sitting there together feeding the ducks.

Some of the ducks looked like mallards back home and some looked almost like mallards but the colors were wrong. I noticed that none of the ducks we saw were females. Perhaps they are still nesting. We saw the goslings but no duckings.





We also saw these little birds. They are much smaller than a duck, black, with such a bright beak it almost looks fake. The ducks and geese never let these little guys get much in the way of bread crumbs. They drive them off every time they come close. It is hard to get close enough to get a picture. I am pretty happy with this shot.



Of course I managed to take a few flower pictures too. Wild irises growing along the ponds edge in a few spots and some tiny blue flowers. I hate not knowing what they are.




After we ran out of bread for the ducks the kids amused themselves by rolling down a hill. I love when they just act like kids, not all caught up in computers or video games. After snapping some pictures of the kids I left them to it while I amused my self by stalking the big heron that hangs around the pond. He is gorgeous and almost impossible to get close to, I managed to get a few decent pictures.


Tomorrow David and Cody will be home and we will tag team back and forth so we can a get a few more things taken care of before Wednesday. Fun.

Quick Update

Things are still crazy around here with packout looming in a week, plus Cody's graduation, Alonzo's 10th birthday, and the last big cub scout event of the year all in a week and a half, all on the same day mind you! YIKES! The good news is yesterday Dave had the day off, but the kids had to go to school. Memorial Day is an American holiday, not German so, no day off for the kids. Well, Cody had the day off, but he went to Europa Park with JROTC to ride roller-coasters all day, so he was out of the picture too. We had a good day. Got lots done and still managed to make it to Koi Samoi for some Thai. Crispy duck in red Thai curry, Yummmm. Really going to miss that place.

We went to Ikea for some last minute shopping. We bought some cute plastic plates, bowls, and cups so no more paper plates at birthday parties. I don't know about Malawi but those could be hard to come by in Jakarta. Also, new bed linens for the boys in nice bright colors. Of course we picked up a few other things and browsed the kitchen displays because some day we are going to build ourselves a little vacation get away and I am always on the lookout for ideas. I love how sleek and modern their kitchens are. We managed to drop off boxes and boxes of donations at the resale shop on base and fit in some quick shopping there. We even finished up the seed order for the garden. Fingers crossed that everything grows because seed has gotten a LOT more expensive since the last time I ordered from Burpee.

Most importantly we finalized our consumables shopping! A consumables shipment is a special shipment alloted when you are assigned to some place where food supplies are limited in quality or selection. The foreign service doesn't pay for the groceries but they will pay shipping up to a certain amount. It is up to the employee to figure out what they can't live without and go buy everything. We have been budgeting for this since we found out we were going to Malawi but it still hurts to drop all that money at once. It is all ordered and will be ready for pickup this weekend. Doing the consumables while prepping for pack out is an added stress now, but will make it much nicer this summer when the bulk of the shopping is done. Most places we wouldn't have the luxury of arranging our consumables while still at post, but in Frankfurt we are lucky to have access to the commissary on base with all the American products, so we took advantage. I am so relieved that it is done and I only have a small bit of shopping to do this summer. That means more time to hang out and have fun!

It's a Monday

Well no, it's a Tuesday, but Monday was a German holiday so Dave and the three younger boys had the day off. We went bowling then played outside the rest of the afternoon. A week ago it was 52 and raining. Since Friday it has been in the mid 70's and sunny. What a wonderful change! I worked out perfectly because this weekend was the Cub Scout camp out, but that is David's story to tell.

Today I am back to cleaning. I am TIRED of cleaning, so very very tired! To keep me moving I am setting the timer for 30 minutes during which I work like a dog, then the pay off I get to take a 1o minute feet up break. I am almost done with the dining room and it isn't even noon yet. Whoops there is the timer. Back to work for me!

(Not so) Wordless Wednesday--After

The laundry area is finally clean. It is a laundry area not a laundry room. Not so long ago there was one room with all the washers and dryers for the whole building down in the basement and you would have to drag all your laundry down to the basement to wash it. Did I mention that all large family housing is on the 3rd and 4th floors a LONG way from the basement? So the powers that be came in ripped out the cabinets at one end of the kitchen and made a laundry area. I can say that I prefer my laundry room hidden away somewhere not in my kitchen, but it is better than having to drag umpteen loads of laundry down four flights of stairs everyday.

OK back on topic, and sorry about going off on a tangent there. This was the kind of cleaning I hate most. Fussy cleaning. Not much to throw away cleaning. Yes the piles on the floor were thrown but they were from the book clean out yesterday. They don't count. The teenager was SUPPOSED to take them out last night when he (sort of) cleaned the kitchen. I thought about dumping the cat's litter box in his bed, but decided I better not. I would just end up washing the sheets.

There wasn't much to throw out because this is the place that everything gets dumped. Find a monopoly piece? Throw in the laundry area. Lost a button on your shirt? Toss it on the dryer. Bought some stuff that needs to go to Malawi? Shove it on the little shelf. The laundry area functions as a catch all. There are several areas where junk collects, but this is by far the worst. Mostly because it is so easy to ignore and it just keeps piling up.

I found:

• A pile of pencils, pens and markers that needed to go to the art room.
• Two glue sticks a bottle of glue and a pair of scissors-art room
• Some construction paper-art room
• Some Easter art construction sets left over from an event at the fieldhouse Easter week- probably should have gone to the art room but by now I was fed up with the art room. Threw it away. YAY.
• Lots of soda bottles. A coke costs about 130 euro and about 25 cents of that is the bottle return fee. I probably have 3 euro worth of empty bottles, but the cub scouts are collecting them as a fund raiser so will pass them onto the boys to take to Rewe and get some money.
• A huge pile of egg cartons. Not sure what the story is there so I moved them to the art room until I can get clarification.
• A thimble, assorted buttons, patches for blue jeans and some thread. Packed that all away in the sewing box and button box. Mom I have Dave's grandmothers button box, it is almost as cool as your mother's, almost, but not quite.
• Lots of kitchen towels. Sorted those by still nice and frayed and stained. Put the still nice ones aside to ship and will use the beat up ones from now until July 2 when we are wheels up, then will toss them on the way out.
• Assorted screws, nuts, super glue, nails, picture hangers, sand paper, paintbrushes, ect. Tossed those in Dave's green basket that functions as his tool box.
• Two game pieces from monopoly, 7 marbles, two game pieces from trouble and a jenga block. Actually located the games and put them up like should have been done in the first place.
• 13 dead batteries waiting to be taken to the recycling bin which is nowhere near our house.
• 2 beer bottles and a jelly jar waiting to be taken to the glass recycling bins also nowhere near our house but also nowhere near the battery recycling bin either.
• A brown plastic flower pot half full of trash and dirt. It is ugly I didn't buy it and don't know where it came from. Tossed it.

I am sure there was other stuff, but I am blocking it at this point. I am done! I am going to eat some lunch before I take Alonzo's piano music up to the school. About 10 o'clock this morning I noticed it still sitting on the piano, DRAT. Then I am going to come home and drag all the books up to the book swap, buy a Big Red and relax while I watch my books go bye bye. Sweet!

Wordless Wednesday--Before

A Response to Advice From Mom

I received a new message from Mom today:

I checked the blog and was flattered that you thought my note was good enough to post. However you left off the last and most important sentence....Ok, now get serious and sort out what you don't absolutely need to survive. I know you don't want me to come over there and clean your room! You know I clean rooms with a trash bag! By the way, I recall that your boys (and probably you too) brought home some rocks from your recent holiday. Rocks are heavy. Get rid of them!

So sorry I lost the last line, it wasn't intentional, I promise! So lets look at the new message shall we? Lets start with this line:

"I know you don't want me to come clean your room!"

Well yes, actually, I do. Would you please? How soon can you get to the airport? I will have a ticket waiting. And while you are cleaning could you please clean the boys rooms and maybe the living room, oh and the dining room too? I will clean the kitchen, I like my pots scratches dents and all.

Then there is this:

"You know I clean rooms with a trash bag."

Good I will buy the bags! Is there a particular size or brand you prefer? Will Hefty do? I think they carry that brand at the base.

And finally there was this:

"By the way, I recall that your boys (and probably you too) brought home some rocks from your recent holiday. Rocks are heavy. Get rid of them!"

Maybe you shouldn't have let me take that geology course way back when 'cause I like rocks. We are are going to allow the boys to keep a few fossils each, with a weight limit of a couple of pounds per kid, then the rest gotta go. Some one is going to be very puzzled some day to find iron pyrite and ammonites in Frankfurt.


Update on cleaning: I know most people could care less how much junk I managed to get rid of today, but it makes me feel like I have accomplished something to put the numbers out there.

Today was books. First let me say, "My name is Shannon and I am a book-aholic" and before you fire off a new e-mail Mom the only person I know with more books than me, is you. Apparently this is a hereditary condition.

So anyway books, two large standard FS issue bookshelves full to the top, two folding bookshelves from Target, and two smaller bookshelves, plus two small closets holding the over flow from the bookshelves. We got books people! Five of the six of us are confirmed book-a-holics. Dakota cleaned his shelves not long ago and I was impressed how many books he got rid of, until today that is. I found all the books that used to be in his room in the boys rooms and on my bookshelves. They weren't gone, just relocated. Brat! I went through every book in the house one at a time. It took hours, hours and hours and lots of chocolate and cappuccino.

I found three lost library books from school, a couple of duplicate books, a book I borrowed from a friend and never gave back, a bunch of board books for toddlers, piles of magazines and a handful of books that I have no interest in reading again, ever. There were also more than a few books that were beyond being taped back together so these were condemned to the recycle bin along with piles of papers from school, out dated catalogs, odd pieces of crushed oragami, and German junk mail.

Totals from today:
Books to be returned, donated, or dumped at the books swap: 86 pounds!
Magazines to be dumped at the field house so someone else can enjoy them: 55 pounds!
Books, papers and assorted junk tossed in recycle bin: 44 pounds!
For a grand total of (drum roll please) 185 pounds WooHoo!

Here are the books and magazines we are getting rid of minus the ones I tossed in the recycle bin. Even I don't generally take pictures of trash.


In case you are wondering we still have plenty of books left.

more books

and even MORE books

And No Dave that doesn't mean I am going to quit ordering from Amazon. In fact if you look carefully the paperbacks are piled up by author so now I know which books I am missing from which series, I am already working on my shopping list for when I visit Barnes and Noble or Borders or Half Price Books this summer. Those ORs should probably be ANDs because I am so totally going to all three. Is that a bad thing?

Advice from Mom and a Clothes Update

I received this e-mail from my Mom today after she read on the blog how overweight we are for this shipment. It would have been better if she had flown out to help me but at least she was thinking of me and offered her sage advice. I feel loved.

What? You don't have any furniture or appliances to take. You don't need winter clothes. The boy's last year summer clothes are too small anyway, so get rid of them. Throw out all Dave's ratty old jeans and shirts with frayed hems and holes. Get rid of all those frumpy dresses in your closet. All shoes with run down heels goes out, any underwear with skid markes goes (do you wnat your new maid to see that?) All single socks go. There is a whole new play ground where you are going, so get rid of the miscellaneous toys. Keep the bikes. You have used up all the board games anyway so they go. All the music and pictures are on computer so any loose hard copy of that goes. Go through the videos and throw out every other one, better yet have Dave put them on computer too. Clean out your makeup tray, most of it is too old to use anyway. Keep one towel per person, one washrag per person, and one sheet set per bed ( you are going to have a maid to keep them clean and anyway and there probably will be some very nice stuff really cheep where you are going). Now get rid of all the plastic crap in the kitchen. Throw out any pot that is dented, scorched, or stained. Flower pots and vases go out unless they are good enough to send to your sister-in-law for Christmas then you can keep them.

Easier said than done! Oh, and I am keeping my board games for rainy season! I did make some progress today. All the kids clothes that are torn or stained are gone. All the clothes that were outgrown have either been passed down to the next little brother or are bagged and ready to become hand me downs at someone else's house. At the end of the day each boy has one laundry basket of clothes. Total weight eliminated today? 65 pounds! I hope I can get rid of that much again tomorrow.

The declutter/spring cleaning bug must be going around. One of my favorite blogs Scribbit had a post today on how to throw things away complete with handy flow chart to help you decide what to keep or and what to throw. Maybe I should print it out and tape it to the fridge. No, never mind that would just be more trash. I will have to memorize it instead.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Could someone please explain why 3 rather smallish boys have enough clothes to dress an entire orphanage? On second thought make that three orphanages. Seriously even one of the boys has at least twice the clothes I have. Maybe I have kids clothing OCD and I don't know it.


By the end of the day each boy will be down to a reasonable amount of clothing. What's reasonable? 10-12 Shirts, 5-7 pair of pants, 1-2 pair of pj's, and a couple of jackets, and 1 swim suit. At least that's the plan. I have a lot of work to do. Better get cracking!

Weight Woes

The official estimate from our pre-packout survey came in e-mail this morning. Apparently, according to this guy's expert eye, we are close to a thousand pounds overweight. Ack!!! How can this be? We arrived at 900 pounds under weight (in case you haven't been paying attention we are allowed to ship 7200 pounds) and we haven't bought hardly anything. We can't afford to buy anything here, it is too expensive. Ok so we bought a cuckcoo clock, a stand mixer, and a toy box, but that is barely a hundred pounds, much less a thousand. What gives?