Listen up, troops.  We are going to attack this beach in three waves.  First, group, you’re with me.  You lot are a small team, but have the most essential stuff.  We’ll attack right away.

Next wave will be a larger group, but still small.  You guys will follow in 1-2 weeks.

The bulk of the battalion will follow in 6-8 weeks.  Probably closer to 8.  Maybe more.  You don’t really know how freight will be.

The rest of you peeps will stay here.  Until we all come back.  In three years.  Got it?  OK MOVE.

Obviously this would be a terrible battle plan.  Maybe in some kind of time-warped campaign?  I really can’t think of a feasible scenario.  And it would definitely make a terrible movie.

But this is how our packing went down.  We all (including the infant) get two bags of carry-on.  Then about 700 pounds to follow soon-ish.  Anything else will be later, and the rest will go to storage.

James coordinated the moving effort last Thursday and Friday.  (I took kids to the pediatrician and then settled into our airbnb in SE.)  The way it sounds is that James spent two days telling a team of 3-5 people what goes where.  In an ideal world, we would have had a spare bedroom or more room to separate things.  I found prepping to pack particularly tough because so many things to come quickly are daily use items that I needed up until the end.

Our attempt to set aside 700 pounds of stuff was laughable.  We came up close to 400.  That included ALL of the kids’ toys and books, extra clothing, kitchen stuff, diapers, towels, sheets, and pillows.  I hoped to add extra kitchen stuff if we were light (suspected), but at that point it was already packed.  We had been told that they would pack the 700 pounds of air freight before moving on to other things.  Oh, well.

Our place is partially furnished so a lot went into storage.  Even though we pared down significantly, I have a feeling that it will seem that we over-packed later.  Let the culling continue!