lilwhiskey(s): Packing Fini-ing and a Sick Baby

I am not an organized person. I get by without it being apparent what a mess I am because I have a good memory and can remember where things are in the disorganized mess. I bought these Christmas colored containers for our Christmas decorations this year, and I was so proud of myself for being organized I took a picture. Later, as we were moving stuff to go on the trailer I found two more boxes of Christmas decorations that I forgot I had and are now not in the coordinating Christmas colored containers. So much for the memory helping me get by. I decided that when we get to Florida I am going to get organized.

3 yrs ago, when we moved from Idaho to Virginia by way of Florida with a then 6 month old Hailey, I learned that Jon and I approach packing up and moving (and most other things) from COMPLETELY different directions. He overplans and overanalyzes, and I wing it.

Jon and I discussed many plans for moving our belongings. We own a 7x16 trailer that can carry approx 5000lbs, and we went into this hoping to make two trips with the trailer and let the movers take whatever was left. There were many iterations, but the final plan was to load the tr

ailer with the first load in the week after Christmas and unload that stuff into our friends garage. Load the second load before the movers arrived on January 7 so that they could take whatever was left. We pretty much succeeded and the movers were left with about 3000 lbs, most of which was toys. There were several glitches along the way, but nothing drastic and the most complicated part was loading the second load after Hailey and Aubrey came down with terrible colds and high fevers.

In between the first round of packing, Jon and I had to work. My last day was January 5th and Jon's fini-flight was that week as well. I took the girls with me and Hailey was so excited to see Daddy get out of the jet. She told me she was going to run up and give him a big hug. Then she overheard the guys talking about the water they were going to spray and got upset. She didn't want her dad to be wet and cold, and she remained upset for the whole time.

Aubrey thought it was pretty funny that Hailey was screaming though.

Back to the moving episode...

My plan to load the trailer was pack everything we could into it and hope we make it to 5000lbs. The goal is to hit the weight limit so that we can maximize the amount of money the government pays us for each trip. I figured if we filled it up, we would be pretty close, and this plan worked perfectly for our Idaho/Virginia move.

Jon's plan was to tape out a square on the garage floor the size of the trailer and stage the items before actually loading them into the trailer. I know him well enough to just go along with it, even though every fiber of my being wanted to point out how much time it was taking and that we now had to lift every box/item at least twice if not 4 times. I was quiet and went along with it - for the most part it was going smoothly, and eventually he was ready to actually put the stuff on the trailer. At this point we have to unstack each stack so that the box on the bottom can STILL be the bottom item. I had already thought of that , so I had already come to terms with it and went along with minimal fussing.

I lost it when I walked outside to help with Phase 2: Load, and found him weighing each piece on the electronic bathroom scale and writing it down. Now everything was being lifted an additional time. His reasoning - we need to know if we are close to reaching 5000 lbs. My theory - it doesn't really matter, because this is what is going on the trailer, so just load it up and hope we are right.

Whatever. It was an extremely stressful week and we are not even half way through with the entire process. We had to be out of our house by Jan 10 so the family who is renting it from us could move in. We can't move in to our new house in FL until Feb 2, so that leaves us a lit

tle bit homeless for 3 weeks. Originally we planned to head to Panama City and live in the TLF's, but then decided our time would be better spent visiting our families. We drove to Jon's parents house on Jan 10 and have been here turning their lives upside down for a week. Fortunately they have a huge house with more than enough room for us, and Nana and Papa have had plenty of time to play with the girls and spoil our dogs.

Making everything more interesting was Aubrey's mysterious fever. It started when both girls came down with bad colds, so we used Tylenol and Motrin to keep it under control. The colds passed and she was fever free the day we left Hampton. By the next morning she was running fevers between 102 - 103 and pretty miserable, but no other symptoms. I was hoping it was just the end of her cold, but it stuck around and we eventually had to take her to the ER to figure out what was going on.

Of course, she didn't act sick at all while we were at the hospital and the staff probably thought we were nuts as our happy smiley baby laughed and cooed at them. It was a good thing we went though, as she had a UTI.

And now some pictures of the fun we have been having at Nana and Papa's

Lots of board games. Hailey is a gamer and wants to play a game first thing when she wakes up and all day long. I have played so much Uno Moo and The Ladybug Game...