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Packing Up & Shipping Out

From Amaia: Around Christmas my dad decided we were going to Costa Rica. Now his decision is reality. Here we are sitting in a hotel doing nothing: My mom is on a laptop. My Dad is reorganizing (more like shoving stuff into) all of the suitcases. My sister, she is just causing trouble. And me I am sitting here writing this. And that is all we (they) do.

Well, it's not as cut and dry and that. We have always had a dream to move out of the country, but it was part of our "5 year plan" that seemed to start over every year. It was always, "Let's save up more before we move," or "Just one more bonus." Seemed like we kept pushing it back, finding excuses, etc.

Eventually, Justin decided he'd had enough of working and saving, so he quit after we got back from vacation.

It was nice to have Justin home those last 2 weeks before the move. We got to workout together, he was a great babysitter, and a huge help while we were packing.

To help prepare for our move, we had to purge a lot of our stuff; after all, we were only taking what we could fit in suitcases. This, unfortunately, included our doggy Scarlett, who we were able to sell back to the breeder where she would be re-homed.

Then in April we participated in the community garage sale. I was up at 4 am putting stuff out, and didn't get all packed up until 6pm.

All while trying to keep the house clean for showings...

seriously....all the stuffs were out

Even with selling multiple things for waaaay less than I wanted (like a ton of stuff for $0.25/$0.50), we made over $2,000.

My little change station

Jam! Come buy your fresh homemade jam!

My snuggle buddy when it was slow

Afterwards, I had 3 bags full of stuff for Goodwill, and a whole ton of stuff left that I was going to try and sell online.

After the garage sale (where we purged almost anything and everything we could get away with not having/using for a few month, including all the girls' toys and books), I set to selling stuff online. Most of the stuff I sold through groups on Facebook. It wasn't uncommon, come July, that I would spend an entire day taking photos of stuff, measuring them, uploading it all to the computer, posting things for sale on 3+ groups, editing prices, and messaging interested parties. It was crazy for a while. Sometimes my porch had up to 10 things sitting out, waiting for a "porch pickup" (people come grab it and leave the $ under the porch mat). A few times people would ring the doorbell and I would have to ask what they were there to pick up, since I had so many people scheduled to pick up at once!

We were selling things up to the very end. July 31st was the last day of our lease-back on the house. Justin's mom JoAnne flew out the morning of the 31st, and helped up pack up. We rented a smallish Penske truck and packed up tupperwares full of our sentimental crap, or stuff that was expensive to replace but we didn't need in CR, etc. A few ladies from the church came and helped us clean the house while I ran around like a crazy person trying to pack stuff.

That night, we drove to the hotel. It was an extended stay, so it was cheaper per night than a regular hotel, but it was in Greenspoint (or as Justin likes to call it, "Gunspoint"). He was leaving the next day with his mom to drive the truck to their farm in Colorado, and he didn't feel comfortable with me staying with the girls alone in that area. So, after we unloaded everything from the cars, we loaded it all back up, and drove to another extended stay hotel up in the woodlands, and re-unloaded all over again.

Justin left the next day, and we spent almost a week by ourselves, going to the gym, selling stuff (still!) running errands, and playing with play-doh. Nothing much changed after Justin flew back from CO, except we had to clean a lot more ;)

Play-doh Blueberry Pie and Blueberry Pancakes

Candyland w/o the cards-just this re-purposed spinner

Painting some plain dresses

Messing around on SnapChat

Playing with the puppies at Petco on Adoption Saturday

Dressing up and face painting to look like Harley Quinn

...and DIY Crayola Tattoos while waiting at the DMV

We ended up packing waaay for the hotel than we were able to fit in our suitcases. We ended up tossing at least $100 bucks worth of soap, shampoo, bug spray, sunscreen, lotions, etc, just to get down to 50lbs per bag. The girls were only allowed to take toys as long as they fit in their backpacks, so Solia had to say a sad goodbye to the poodle she got from the typhoid shot doctor trip:

Sunday the 13th was the big day! Woke up early to head to the airport. We had a friend come pick us up to take us, but all of our luggage didn't fit with us in the car, too, so we had to get an Uber (8 suitcases and 8 carry on pieces don't fit in a midsize SUV very well, it turns out).

Our last Houston sunrise

Apparently check-in was taking too long...

So. Heavy.

Woke up early for the 8:20 flight...

The flight went well, and we arrived at our Airbnb in Escazu, San Jose without incident.

Welcome to Costa Rica!

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