Packing, moving, then moving again, then goodbye

I’m tempted to start writing about Japan, but in an attempt to keep this orderly (somewhat), I’ll keep the posts chronological.

The last days in Hoboken were spent doing more than any sane person should ever do.

First, THE PACKING.

No matter how I explain this, there aren’t adequate words to describe the slow agony of the packing. We started around 9:30pm, after a full day of driving all around the city in a series of last-minute errands. The easy part, I now know, was the boxes. It’s when you get down to random socks, and yoga balance balls, and bottles of shampoo, and unopened cans of soup, and all of the…minutia that you never pay attention to unless you know that in couple days you’ll be leaving the country and if you forgot to pack that stuffed bear, you’ll never see it again.

The other hard part was getting our bags within the weight limit allowed by Japan Airlines. We had 70 lbs. to play around with, and the process became this endless dance of: get on scale, get on scale with luggage, quick calculation, take out a t-shirt or two, repeat. 

The warning on the plastic tubs we used for storage. Where am I supposed to put my baby then?

This is one of my bags. We bought a ton of medicine just in case, but in retrospect, we probably didn’t have to.

One of our errands before leaving was becoming tourists in our own city; meaning that we went to all of those nyc tourist shops that we never go to, so that we could by gifts for our future Chinese friends. Not shown are the nifty subway map playing cards I bought, and cole’s many NY pencils.

The packing lasted all night, and then all morning, right up to when the movers arrived, and even up until they were done and waiting for us, around 11:00am. I left for an hour to pick up a Budget rental truck because we were giving away most of our furniture to Amy, Nicole’s sister; only she lived in DC, and we had to drive down. In the process of picking up the truck, I got lost in Jersey City for about half an hour. Due to lack of sleep, I had little to no fine motor skills or coordination left, yet I somehow managed not to run anyone over. Fun times.

Sometime into the afternoon, the moving was finally over. In the process we had to get rid of our bed, a few chairs, and a desk, because our storage space was much smaller than expected.

Jam-packed

Goodbye Hoboken. Goodbye, power lines of icky birds.

Goodbye sketchy guy that looked into our window for like two years from the top of the parking deck across from us.

So, after the Hoboken/packing for China/storage space fiasco, we were ready to die. Honestly, I think I’d rather run another marathon than face another move like the one we just had. But I couldn’t die yet; instead, I had still had to drive down to Washington DC to drop off our couch and various shelves.

The drive down was smoother than expected, and I only took out a few branches (and maybe a pedestrian or two, but who’s counting?). We arrived, the stuff was deposited into Amy’s apt, and to celebrate our near done-ness we went out to dinner at this good Italian restaurant.

We’re smiling? Maybe to hide all of the pain inside. Eh, no, we’re actually smiling. Across is sis/Amy.

This is cole being happy in our DC hotel room because we were done with moving.

Time to rest right? Not so fast buddy. Nope, instead we’re going to a wedding the next day, ha! bet you didn’t see that coming.

Kristin Henny’s New Jersey wedding, as opposed to the one in Scotland.

It was in Allendale, our old hometown, so we saw a few of our old high school friends, like Laura DeGeorgia, aka Laura Haley.

Nicole’s parents showed up too, hi Barb and Lou.

Ok, so now can we rest?…er not yet. We had our own goodbye party to go to the next day, our last full day in the US.

But, the party was great, and we got to see all of the relatives we hadn’t seen in awhile, all of the ones that we’ll really miss when the holidays come.

Aunt Joan and cousin Kim.

Barbara, or Mom, getting excited during softball.

Cousin Stacy.

 There were many more people there, but I didn’t spend much time taking pictures because I wanted to talk to all of them. Seriously, even though I’m sitting in a hotel in Japan right now, it still hasn’t quite hit that I won’t be seeing everyone until next year. We’ll miss you.

Next, our flight (in brief, because cole is writing a monster post for that), arrival, and first full day in Tokyo. Yatta!