We are in the midst of a rest day here in Colorado, so now is a great time to catch up here on the blog! With the gracious help of friends and family, we were actually able to wrap things up in Seattle by the end of the 26th of July. It took about two weeks straight of sorting and packing to get everything done. We went through a lot of stacks of boxes like this to get everything out of our apartment! It really is amazing how much we were able to fit in a place that was about 500 square feet.

Our biggest task was definitely packing up our six full-sized bookcases. Leaving the vast majority of our library behind in the US was hard. For book lovers, it feels like leaving necessities behind. We are shipping a few boxes to Mongolia, but for the most part, our books are going to chill at Eric’s folks’ place in Oregon while we are gone. Here would be a great spot to take a moment and shout from the rooftops how amazing the in-laws are. Without them, I do not think we would have made it here to the next phase of our journey to Mongolia. Scratch that–I know we would not have made it here without them.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words and there is really only so much else that can be said about packing, here are photos galore for you to peruse to your heart’s content. I expect we will have more content up in the next few days, but enough chatter from me for now.

Ta!

The first load that went down to Oregon.

To clarify: 1/3 – 1/2 of the stuff we sent down will go in an upcoming yard sale.

Some of the belongings that are not going with us.

Vacuum packing larger items for suitcase space.

These are a few casualties from the move. 😦

Tetris-ing the suitcases!