The logistic of moving

  Unprepared might be an understatement. I had only been back from my house hunting trip for 2 weeks. Matt wasn't back in the USA yet. I tried to be organized & know what was going where but soon realized I was up a creek! My mom totally saved me that week. She came over whenever she wasn't working to help watch the kids, pack, even clean ( I am sure it was just how she wanted to spend her days.) My sisters and neighbor Katie also were life savers. The kids would just go back and forth between our houses. EL even told me I needed to mow the path because it was too long for her I guess.

  Back story: We have moved 3 times with work so i thought it would be very similar. WRONG!! When you move domestically, they come and pack everything, load it all up into 1 truck and it meets you at your new home in a week or so.
  We decided to sell our home when we moved internationally. Naturally, it made things a bit more complex. Here is how our belongings would need to be divided: luggage on the plane- 3 pieces per person @ 50 lbs a piece, 100 cubic feet air shipment- 5ftx5ftx4 ft- no furniture would fit. & 1 sea container- like the ones you seen in shipyards or on trains. Everything else--> storage. And mind you we picked our house in Australia after seeing a lot of houses and spending maybe 30 mins in the one we picked. So it was hard to know what would fit. What needed to go into which shipment. I distinctly remember telling the movers, " I don't care what goes in which shipment. Just pack it!" I was stressed and beyond caring. If we could live without it for 4 weeks we could live without it for 8 weeks.
  They won't pack any food, so all my stockpile of American food was coming in our luggage. And it was heavy stuff. Something I didn't think about when i was filling all those carts at Sam's. My mom probably cut her grocery shopping in half with all the stuff I ended up giving her. We just didn't have enough room for everything. My sisters probably thought they were at the wrong house :-)
  Professional movers pack fast! Mom and I were packing our luggage in DB's room. As we went in to pack MA's clothes and her closet was empty!! So i did what any logical person would do...waited until the movers went to lunch and ripped those boxes open and grabbed a few articles of clothing out for MA. Carefully putting the tape back on the boxes and pretending I was never there.
  After we quickly grabbed everyone else's clothes it was time to tackle the food. Our process was this: I brought food to my mom. she packed it into the boxes. I lifted the boxes and stood on a bathroom scale (Thanks Morrisons) and we figured out if we were close to the 50 lbs limit.

  Finally everything was packed and loaded. The house was clean. I wasn't sad to say goodbye to the house but will miss the location and some of our neighbors!