Rolling up our sleeves and packing up our lives

The short list of what we did:

1. Arrange for the kids to go away for a while (thank you, mother and stepfather!)
2. Categorize everything as, "storage," "sell," "give away," or "going to Japan"
3. Take a week to clean and put sticker prices on everything that is for sale
4. Put a moving sale ad on Craigslist, with a Friday morning as the starting day
5. Have a pre-sale for friends and neighbors (this is the best idea ever, because they already love some of your stuff and, if they're anything like our fabulous people, will probably pay more than your asking price to show how much they love you)
6. Hold the moving sale inside your house ('cause nobody wants to have to schlep all that stuff outside and back again)
7. Watch the crowds come and your stuff go, and think, "they're paying us, but I'd probably pay them to haul all of this away...."
8. Find a charity that will haul the rest of it away
9. Clean your now-empty house
10. Hand over the house keys and marvel at your completely empty key ring
11. Pack up your moving truck and drive away

Thankfully all of this was hauled away for us

Oh, yeah, simple. Throw in some all-nighters, a few unexpected grief sessions as you watch the baby toys leave your possession, and then there's the anxiety diet that turns food into a revolting idea and makes you drop ten pounds (highly *not* recommended). And don't forget to fit in a "quick" 8 hour round-trip drive to the nearest Japanese embassy so that you can apply for the necessary visas. And the random trip (in the moving van, because what else do you have to drive?) to your father's cabin so you can say goodbye and install a toilet. Yes, we really did.

See? Simple.

We worked hard to balance the load and tie it down well