S and I have had over a month to procrastinate our moving and packing. The nice thing about our move is that the State Department sends a moving crew to pack and load all everything. The trouble with that system is that you cannot pack anything and must leave it in piles until the movers pack it for you. We currently have a large pile of stuff in our living room that we will not see again until we get to our first overseas location. Our poor baby shower attendees will have to endure the mess and may even need to bring their own chairs…

S and I have to sort all our belongings into five categories: 1) Stuff that will travel to DC with us in the car; 2) Stuff that will fly to DC and arrive 2-3 weeks after our arrival (450 lbs max!); 3) Stuff that we want overseas with us, but won’t see until we arrive at our overseas location; 4) Stuff we want to store until we are posted to DC or leave the Foreign Service; and 5) Everything else (Goodwill, garage sale, Craigslist, etc.). Some of our family members are better at sorting than others, but I won’t mention any names.

I can’t believe we have less than three weeks in Seattle left. The last few weeks have been filled with goodbyes already, good thing we started our goodbye dinners already!