The long goodbye...

It's been a whirlwind of parties and send offs over the past couple of weeks. One last get together, one last playdate, one last girls' night out...

This has been the furthest in advance we've ever known about a move. It's like this giant life event just looming out there and the closer it gets the more my anxiety builds. The past couple of months have felt a lot like being in limbo. Our friends here are talking of the future and making plans we're not a part of. We haven't had a chance to start our new life yet or really make many plans for that. We're just passing the time and playing the waiting game.

On one hand it's been wonderful to spend so much time saying goodbye to our friends but it also makes me sad because I know just how much I'm going to miss them when we move. It takes a while to establish yourself and make good friends and it's the one thing I never look forward to with a move. I've been so blessed with such great friends here and I will miss our little chats and girls outings.

Good friends of ours hosted a Canada Day/going away party for us. The weather was gorgeous and we had a ball being outside, laughing and just enjoying each other's company.  We had our sitter meet us at our house at bedtime so our kids could go to bed, then we walked back to enjoy more of the party. We have such a great time with our friends here. We're really going to miss them!

We decided to leave the boys at home with their dads and do a little outing with just the little girlies so they could have one last playdate with their friends. We took them to the Devonian Botanical Gardens. The gardens were gorgeous and it was peaceful just strolling along the paths, taking in the beauty of nature. It was probably also peaceful because our rowdy boys weren't with us! We packed a picnic lunch so we could sit on the lawn and soak up the sunshine.

The goodbyes continue this week with one final girls' night out, more playdates and a going away party with Dayven's work friends. Just one more week left before the moving madness begins. We're already in a flurry of activity over here. Even though we have professional movers that do all the packing, there is still a surprising amount of things to do. I'm removing pictures and decals from the kids walls, removing hooks and hardware that we're taking with us, organizing things in baggies. Somehow this helps settle my nerves and make me feel like I'm doing something productive. The hardest part has been figuring out what is going to our temporary housing and what goes into long term storage. We won't have access to these items again until our house is completed in 3-4 months so I'm trying to really think through what we'll need. I have been making a giant pile in the dining room of items to be loaded on the truck last that the driver will deliver to our rental townhouse. We're calling it the "summer house" to try to make it more exciting for the kids and also explain that it's just temporary. Even though it's furnished and has a fully stocked kitchen, I'm sure I'll find it lacking many things that we need so for now I'm loading up rubbermaid bins to be dropped off. Random kitchen items I love and can't cook without, toys/books for the kids, all of our electronic items and corresponding chargers, clothing (both summer and fall since we'll be changing seasons), the list goes on... I'm sure I'll forget something but we'll either buy it or do without. One more week and we are out the door!!