When I posted about our move to Hawaii, no one asked, “Gee, Kris. Eight suitcases? How can you possibly move a family of four 2,500 miles away with only 8 suitcases?” It surprised me that nobody asked, because that piece of the puzzle was so huge in getting here. Do we pack the things we need into a shipping container and pay freight to get it here? If so, what exactly constitutes “need”? And when it gets there, where do we put it? Do we take very little and buy what we need there? Is our stuff – after 20 years of living with us – really worth shipping? Gah! This was the most crazy making part of moving. Just how do we do it?  As you know, we opted for the suitcase option. To get to that point required some serious thought. We each asked ourselves three questions: 

1. Is it important enough that I need to take it? (take)
2. Is it something that has sentimental value or that I will be really excited to see when I return in a year? (store)
3. Is it something that is not that important to me and I could probably do without it? (chuck or sell)

As you might imagine, most of our stuff fell into the number 3 category. When it comes right down to it, it’s all just stuff. And man, did it feel liberating to purge! Our “must keep” stuff is stored on our property, awaiting our return. We had a huge garage sale to get rid of the stuff that was deemed not worth keeping. And the stuff that was important enough to bring fit into 8 suitcases. One was, as I mentioned before, filled entirely with Legos. The others included my husband’s work gear, an accordion file for my paper files, schoolbooks, a chess set, and all of our clothing.

In preparation for living here, we tracked down a furnished condo online. We rented this in advance of moving, sight unseen, planning to stay for two months while we searched for more permanent living quarters (this is HARD to do from out of state). This temporary home became known as the Tacky Tiki. It was in substantial disrepair, the mattresses were more spring than fluff, and the cockroaches were abundant. BUT! We were here, and there was an ocean front pool, and hell, we can surely deal with imperfect conditions for two months.

And we did. It was funky and many of the condos were rented out on a weekly basis to partying kids who kept the noise level well above our comfort level. But it was here that the kids discovered the joy of gecko watching and learned to build Lego traps to catch them. They learned to distinguish the sound of a ripe mango falling from the tree outside from all of the other noise, racing each other to be the first to retrieve the prize. They discovered a star fruit tree in the parking lot and built a homemade fruit picker to reach the fruit. They swam, and explored the coastline, and watched dolphins, and listened to the palms sway in the breeze, and watched the sunset nightly hoping for a view of the green flash. Really, what’s a few cockroaches thrown into the mix?

(I don’t know why this post is refusing to format into paragraphs - sorry - trying one more time…)