Packing

Wow, packing for this move has seemed very stressful but for happy reasons.  Not only am I having to prepare our house for movers to come and pack everything up, I'm also having to pack suitcases for a 2 week N. Europe cruise (slightly cold) and 5 weeks in the USA (very hot).  So I have to make sure everything for this trip is left out of the house packing and that it fits into 2 suitcases.  Well, I made it happen but it sure isn't pretty.

Preparing for the packers took up a lot of my mental capacity and was starting to drive me crazy so I was very excited when July 2 finally came and the movers were here to start packing up.  Micah and I got up early to finish up some last minute things and then we sat and waited, and waited, and waited.  Apparently they don't arrive until after 9:30am which seems pretty late but this is Saudi.  First I had them pack up our air-shipment which fit a TON more stuff than what I expected.  Micah and I had to keep running around the house to find more stuff.  Then they started on the rest of the house. They left promptly at 4:30pm.

The next day I decided I could handle it alone so Micah went to work.  This time they didn't arrive until 10am.  No wonder they said they needed 3 days to pack up!  Whats funny (insert sarcasm here) is that I had one room upstairs set up as my "to pack last room" and thats where they decided to start.  I could have argued but I didn't feel like dealing with it so I just prayed everything would fit. The one benefit to their order of packing is that we were all able to sleep in our beds another night and have our couch.

When they left on day 2, they told me it would be 2 more days.  Our estimated packing time was 2-3 so this would mean an extra day over the estimated time.  Micah was not too thrilled with this since it would cut into his last weekend with us in Saudi.  A polite email ended up lighting the fire and they showed up on day 3 determined to finish.  Those guys worked 5x harder on day 3 than they did on the first 2 days combined.
Day 3 was a LONG day.  As I said, they showed up with the goal of finishing.  They worked until 8:30pm.  It was amazing. Every time I would think to myself that they must be almost done, an hour later they would still be going.  Micah was kind enough to let me leave him at home while Jacob and I went to our companies 4th of July dinner.  Micah was sad to miss it but happy to have the packing done that night.  At last, the trucks were loaded, our house was empty, and away they went.  It was a very bittersweet moment.