"TIME TO BREATHE"

Packing Day

The container on the truck that's going to India
Packing in progress
What a nightmare....

Wow, what a busy few weeks we have had. I am very happy to say we are now homeless.

Last week the movers spent two days packing up our lives and boy do we have some "STUFF". It's really a very embarrassing thing to have 7 people come into your home and in what seemed like a never ending task, pack a 20 ft container filled to the brim with all our worldly possesions to send to India for the next 2 years. And then they started packing the other 20 ft container for storage and that also was choc-a-block. We have been so well looked after by the company(that will remain nameless for security reasons) to be able to have the luxury of the removal company pack for us, if we where doing the job we would still be at it and I would certainly be a crazy woman by now. Getting back to the embarrassing bit, we had the pleasure of meeting the very wonderful ladies from Finishing Touch, a company that work with the removalists to pack all your fragile household items. One of the women spent the whole day in the kitchen and I now realise that I have far too much "STUFF". By the afternoon I was ready to cull my vase collection a wee bit more (DP you would be proud of me) so with the help of Andrew and Kerrie (the beautiful hippy who was a breathe of fresh air in what was a crazy day) 5 more vases went to vase heaven, otherwise known as the op-shop (but don't tell my Mum because it's her fault I have a fetish for them. A girl always needs a vase for every occasion) along with a box full of odds and ends that had been needlessly filling my kitchen cupboards. A very cleansing moment.

We managed not to lose a child in the kaos and can only think of a couple of items that have been misplaced. One of which is my Pandora bracelet which I am desperately hoping to come across in the air or sea shipment as 2 years will be a long time in storage. The other thing that went to storage was my rain coat which we will need upon arrival in Chennai as we will be heading into the monsoon season. Yeah(not). Oh well I guess a trip to Ray's is in order.

Poor Sam had celebrated his birthday 2 days before the big pack-up and we had talked him into putting some of his gifts into the air shipment, that we will have only about 5 days after arriving, but he turned up at the house with Kerrie my wonderful babysitter for the day (Not to be confused with the hippy Kerrie) to see if he could get his new helmet and skate gear, at this point we thought the air shipment was all packed so we had Sam in tears and me tearing up feeling like the most awful mum in the world, but to our delight that was the last box to get packed and it hadn't been taped up yet. Thank you God. No more tears. And also to our delight they told us we still had not filled the air shipment and we had 2 big boxes to fill. Safeway here we come!!!!! $300 later we filled the boxes with more toilet paper, coffee, corn chips, twisties, salsa, lollies, tissues, more cleaning products etc.

So that all said we have just had a call from the moving company to say the ship left yesterday on schedule. Everyone please pray for smooth seas from here to India.

The kids are all well and are having a holiday with Grandma and Gramps in Newcastle visiting their cousins and having a hoot. It sure is quite around here without them. Grandma and Gramps are having major Grandchild catch-up time, they will really need a break when we leave as we have been at their house since last week. The good news is tomorrow we head into an apartment in town till we leave so look out Geelong here come the Purdys. The kids are looking forward to swimming and going for walks and scooter rides along the waterfront and the coffee shops are calling my name. It will be great to have a break after the hectic time we have had and will have in the near future. So anyone wanting to "do coffee" we would love to see you.

Now we can BREATHE...................................................................