Ready or Not!

I mistakenly thought that the three-week buffer between ending work and leaving for Lisbon would give us plenty of time to hammer out the last few details needed to see us off. We leased our house furnished, so only had to remove personal belongings, which I grossly underestimated. Turns out we have a lot of stuff hidden in drawers, cupboards, and closets! Thankfully, we built a large shed in our backyard last year, with two-thirds reserved for a future home gym and one-third used as garden storage. The home gym side was insulated so that we could use it for storage during our travel year. It was so nice to lug boxes out to the backyard shed as needed and retrieve things packed up a bit too early. Sorting, packing, and moving was a major focus of our last three weeks in Canada.

I also did not wrap up work as expected. A last-minute situation came up that required my attention and extended my work into the first week of July. Then there were carpenter ants, a broken washing machine and a sick child to deal with.

Farewell gatherings were sprinkled in over those three weeks, and we are so grateful to our families and friends who made time to see us before we set out, and to those that literally helped us get out the door (the door we forgot to lock, by the way!) We undoubtedly have the best family and friends who rallied to help see us off. We never would have made it out on time without them!

-Melanie