Packing - shouldn't this get easier with practice?

Today begins the frenzy of packing. I must admit that I had started a little bit of packing and sorting before now, but really today is the big day of packing-tape-guns (woohoo! lotsa fun!) and the screech of the packing tape, hefting boxes to and fro, trips in the car to the place where things are stored, and the unavoidable reality of all the junk and grunge left behind when you finish moving everything in boxes. Where does that left-behind stuff come from??? (Really, don't answer that, it was a rhetorical question.)

We will be packing all our things into storage since we will not be coming back to this apartment after our summer holiday in the US. Some gracious friends who were blessed with a bigger home have offered us a place to keep things. So for now we will be struggling between the need to pack things, and the need to use things that have already been packed. But the exciting thing is that next Thursday we will be back in the States for the first time in almost two years! Here I come STARBUCKS! Here I come Thai food! Here I come friends and family!! (ok, not necesarrily in that order, but surprisingly close - hee hee) We can hardly wait to see all the people and places we have been missing... and we hate to temporarliy leave behind all the people and places that we have loved here. This week the girls are overindulging themselves by hanging out at a friend's house after their half-days at school so that mom can pack with less "helpers" around.

Pray for us to survive the insanity and all the travel.