Farewell Party

Last night my lovely friends Danna and Joachim hosted a farewell party for us! Everything about it was perfect. :) Even my three-year-old and one-year-old (mostly) had a good time. And my best friend, who lives in Oklahoma, even managed to be there!

My friends put together a photo book of memories of wonderful times together. I could not have asked for a more marvelous gift. Y'all are awesome, thanks!

I WILL start adding pics to this blog once we arrive in Tbilisi next week! It's too hard now, in the hotel, on the move, with two toddlers!

Lasts

This week has been really bittersweet. Sweet, because it's been an amazing week filled with family and friends and natural beauty and delicious food. Bittersweet, because it's the last time we'll do these things for quite awhile.

This week we visited family and watched the kids play with their cousins, which was so marvelous--and also sad, because they won't get the opportunity to do that again for quite awhile.

My best friend flew in from Oklahoma to see us, and we had a delicious dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, which was lovely--and also sad, because we won't get the opportunity to do that again for quite awhile.

My kids love my in-laws' dog and cat. The dog and cat are really old, though, so they're extremely unlikely to live long enough for my kids to see them again.

Our farewell party is tonight and I'm feeling sentimental and homesick already! I'm SO thrilled to be heading off to Tbilisi, but I love (and will miss) all the reasons I've made this my home for the last decade-plus.

Preparation

Tomorrow is B's EOT (end-of-training test) in Russian. Which means tomorrow we can officially begin preparations for the packout! (Of course, I've been preparing for the packout for months, slowly moving bits and pieces from one area to another, sorting books and clothes and household items into categories...) But this weekend is the REAL prep for the packout. The movers come on Tuesday!

We have the following categories:
1. Luggage (everything we'll bring with us, packed and out of the house before Tuesday!)
2. UAB (Unaccompanied Air Baggage) 700 pounds of our most important stuff
3. HHE (Household Effects) 7200 pounds of all the rest of our stuff we want to bring to Post
4. Storage items (Almost all of our furniture, books, infant items, etc)
5. Stuff to go to our in-laws' house
6. Stuff we're leaving in our house for the renters

Six is a lot of categories to have. We're simplifying as much as possible by moving items into designated areas (ie, this room is all Storage, this room is all HHE), but our house is tiny so there's not any extra room for staging. I've had to do it piecemeal without disturbing daily life too much.

It will be exciting to finally be allowed to turn the house into chaos in furtherance of the final goal of it being organized!