A huge job list today, pretty much all of which we got done. I did quite a bit of managing though as Davies and Scarlett were prone to meander about a bit if not guided and Ady has a tendancy to clean frantically while not actually achieving much. He spent ages on the draining board and kitchen windowsills today, valuable contributions both but perhaps not the best use of time… 😉
So I directed Ady to the bedroom to pack up his crate of clothes, empty the bed drawers into boxes and so on, while I wrapped up a couple of ebay parcels, made some phonecalls, typed up a How to guide for the house and chickens and emailed it across to the letting agent. Then Scarlett and I nipped out to post the parcels, drop the keys and payment for the hall hire off at the party hall, get petrol for my car and collect a small fan heater we’d reserved from Argos. I plugged that in in Willow to dry out the last of a small patch that had been wet in the kids bunk – we’ve had loads of heavy rain since getting the van back and no further leaking has happened so hopefully it is now sorted.
I packed up my clothes crate – mine seems fuller although I am maintaining it is because my clothes are bigger than everyone elses! 😆 and emptied the wardrobe completely boxing up the last few things that are not coming with us but we’d still needed til this point.
Then, to coin a phrase, we had lunch 🙂
Davies managed to get pretty much everything he is bringing into two rucksacks and his clothes crate so we issued Tarly with the same challenge and Davies pledged to help her while Ady and I went to start loading Willow properly. There has been some ‘shoving’ going on with stuff getting put in there so I insisted that everything was pulled out and then put back in properly so we all know where everything is and it is all logical with things we will need regularly in easily accessible places and things we won’t tucked away more. We put lights up around the van, stowed tools away, created a little bookshelf in one of the cupboards and have packed up about half of what will need to come along with us.
We then loaded my car up with rubbish from the house and garden including all the recycling from the weekend and headed for the tip then went on into town. We wanted to check out Millets to see if anything sprang out at us as useful to spend Ady’s vouchers from work on (it didn’t) and to get Tarly another rucksack. She has one but it is quite tatty and as Davies has two and has managed to contain all his stuff within them it seemed sensible to get her a second one to do the same. We did that, wandered round Poundland for a while lured in by the bright lights and then came home.
The kids had tea, finished packing up Tarly’s rucksacks and watched more taped stuff on TV while Ady and I went through all the kitchen cupboards and the freezers. We had a late and ecclectic meal consisting of food still in the freezers, packed another five or so boxes full of kitchen stuff, created another two boxes of kitchen stuff to come with us in the van and then emptied the chiller too and turned it off to defrost.
I read the kids the first couple of chapters of How to Train Your Dragon, most of it with them mouthing the words along with me they have listened to David Tennant reading it so many times on the audiobook and then they went to bed, Davies with the kindle tonight, which he brought back to me having bought Mr Gum using a combination of the text to talk function along with a bit of reading and typing in 😯
I’ve emailed our first hosts to confirm our booking, arranged places to stay on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week and am hoping we can have Saturday night parked on my parents drive before heading off to a campsite midway between here and Devon for Sunday night.
Tomorrow is van hire and moving day – off for my last sleep in my bed…
Eeeks! Good luck and safe travelling and hope you all have an amazing year. Looking forward to reading about your adventures from my warm and comfortable sofa while simultaneously feeling envious and wondering if you are mad.
Comment by Liza — 22 February 2011 @ 1:02 am
did you find the cupboard full of lentils then 😉 . sounds great, glad that you are nearly there, and will be v happy when you finally post that the adventure has officially begun 🙂 it does feel a bit like waiting for a caesarean 🙂
Comment by HelenHaricot — 22 February 2011 @ 4:31 pm