I will never do another yard sale for as long as I live!!

So we had the infamous yard sale this weekend. I think I spent a better part of a month prepping for this yard sale. I feel like I was giving away our worldly possessions. Part of me liked the idea that this stuff was no longer in my house taking up space but the other part of me nearly cried when I sold Liam's cozy coupe for $5 and his golf clubs (that he loves) for $3 amongst many other things. Aidan did well up until the very end when I gave his scooby doo chair to Lindsey (and no Michele, we do NOT need it back). He had a little bit of a breakdown and I think finally understood some of the impact of this move. So I gave in and told him that we could use some of the money that we made to buy him a little something like a game for his DS. He wanted a Funkey (these little computer guys that you plug in and they create a virtual world - I told him no until he can read but after he literally sobbed in my lap I gave in on this one).

Anyways, so why won't I do another yard sale again? Aside from it being a major pain in my ass for very little money? Well, for one, I actually got yelled at for my pricing (note to anyone who has not done a yard sale - do not bother with pricing anything, every single person will ask you how much an item is in the hopes that it is not the price you actually posted) and that I would never sell a thing because of it. Ha ha lady... I sold a good chunk of stuff so screw you. Sorry had to put that in there. Secondly, I felt absolutely abused by how little people wanted to pay for my very good stuff - almost everything was in perfect condition, some things weren't even opened!! I'd rather give my things away for free to those who will appreciate it. And finally, the yard sale is going to cost me more than I made. I made $250 to sit outside from 6AM - 4PM (my time is definitely worth more than that) and in the process I managed to damage Josh's garage door, get rid of our wall unit that I HATED (but didn't manage to sell so I had to leave it on the sidewalk for free), but in the process of moving the tv out of the wall unit, the tv broke (Mike Patkin, if you are reading this, it was the tv you sold to us oh 10 years or more ago...). So I had to not only go out and buy a new tv stand, but I almost had to go buy a new tv (thanks for the tv Sue, you are a lifesaver) AND I still need to repair Josh's garage door.

So in hindsight...no yard sales!! Not worth the aggravation. I think I'm going to wait on more of the purging til we get back from Barcelona in Nov and I have a real feel for what it is that we are bringing or not bringing with us. Not to mention, I'm just sick of purging stuff at this point and need a break. It's not like I can't pull together this move in 6 weeks once I know where we are living. It's more about the details like dog vaccinations, opening bank accounts, selling my car, etc etc that I'm worried about getting done!!!

Ok, I'm off to work on more Rosetta Stone - I've become obsessed with it. Not sure if that's good or bad. And I'm posting my first pic - it's of the yard sale. Wasn't planning to post til we were actually moving but at least it will give you an idea of the scope of how much crap I was trying to get rid of!

Julie

Packing, purging, packing, purging and more!

So I changed my mind on the yard sale - just too much stuff to get rid of and that is the most economical way. I was planning to do one in Oct but didn't think my garage could take it that long. Fortunately Matty Flynn said he's doing one next week so I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and sell what I've got ready to sell. So everyday I purge just a little bit. I've also become obsessed with Space Bags. These are the coolest bags EVER!! I can fit so much clothes and bedding in them it's ridiculous!!! So far the only place I can actually see an impact in my purging is my office. I can kind of see an impact in my closet and based on the garage, I must be doing something!!!

Josh and I are diligently working on our Rosetta Stone as well. I'm a little nervous about it because so far I'm at high school level stuff which I've done before and am essentially just refreshing upon. But people swear by this software so I'm going to go with the assumption that once I get past the first group of lessons I'll see more improvement beyond what I already knew. I definitely swear at the software a lot - I'm not so good at trilling my "r"'s and the voice recognition doesn't particularly like that and tells me I'm wrong all the time. I don't like to be wrong! So it's kind of nice because I compete with the software - I'm determined that it's not going to tell me I'm wrong!!

In the meantime we got our travel plans for our Discovery trip today. We leave Sun, Nov 1 (they originally planned to have us leave on Halloween...um, no way!!!!) and return home on the 5th. So it will be a whirlwind trip. I expect we will be talking more to the real estate people in the next few weeks so I'm sure there will be an update related to this soon. But just knowing the trip is booked makes this more and more real!! I can't believe in a matter of months we'll be living in a new country, meeting new people and experiencing so many different things.

Julie & Josh

Spanish lessons begin...

I took Aidan today on a Mommy & Me day to celebrate the end of summer. After going to the Lego store we made a stop at the Rosetta Stone kiosk. Learning Spanish/Catalan has been on my long list of to do's since we know we were going to Spain. I figure now that the kids start school this week, I have absolutely no excuse but to get my ass in gear and learn! So I bought my very expensive tutoring software.

Just took some time to install it - pretty easy stuff. Then the lessons began. I actually really like the software so far and think this whole immersion thing will be good. But the pronunciation thing is what is going to kill me! The "rr" sound is so hard for me! I got 110 right the first time with only 8 wrong the 8 wrong were ones I no joke, tried at least 50 times. Don't ever ask me to say "un hombre" EVER!! I know it's a man, no doubt about that... definitely know the meaning now because I said it a gazillion times! I made it thru lesson 1... only a lot more to go. The woman at the desk said I'd be fluent in 6 months - I told her I have less than 4 to learn so she told me I should get to it! Looks like in addition to work at night, I know what I'll be doing! Josh said he's going to give it a try tomorrow - can't wait to hear how it goes!

Julie

Shit what were we thinking?????

I had that ah ha moment last night... you know the one where you actually digest everything that's happening and think, oh my god, what the F**k have I done? Yup, that was me last night. I was going to write about it last night but I just didn't have the strength and wanted to digest a little bit more first.

First let me state that I'm still fine with moving, it will be a great experience for all...blah blah blah. But that doesn't mean I don't have the occasional panic attack here. It was like each time I found out I was pregnant - both were planned pregnancies but once I actually found out I was pregnant I freaked. And that was last night (not the pregnancy part, just the panic). Josh and I have searched websites before looking casually at housing - all before we knew for sure we were going. Maybe I just wasn't thinking realistically? Or maybe I just had fantasies of finding exactly the same thing there that we have here (which I know is completely unrealistic, but one can always hope). But it came down to actually starting a casual search (nothing we find now will be available when we move so it's more to see what's it going to be like in our budget and what areas do we like).

Well let me tell you that casual search with our actual budget was not like my casual non budget search of a few months ago. It threw me completely for a loop. I feel like we are going to be living in a cramped 2 maybe 3 bedroom place that someone with very very poor taste decorated. I know that's not fair... it's someplace new in a culture that I'm not familiar with. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to live somewhere that meets my tastes and style. Again realistically probably not going to happen. I think that it just hit that wherever we go is going to be temporary and not really home - this is a good and bad thing. Good because home is here with our family and friends in our house in Attleboro. Bad because this isn't a weeklong vacation - this is still two years and I think I've realized that that isn't a short period of time. Sure it's not long in the span of my lifetime but to be somewhere I don't feel like is home is going to be a challenge. It's a challenge I will embrace and am determined to come to terms with. And by no means does it change my decision to want to go on this journey with Josh and the boys. But it certainly,understandably makes me ambivilant - its unchartered waters for me and by being so, scares the shit out of me every now and again. This isn't some move to another town. I'm moving halfway across the world...

Now that I'm done venting about my panic attack I should mention that I've begun the BIG PURGE as I'm calling it. Most stuff has made it home from the cape since we will be renting out that house the moment construction is complete. The rest of the items will come home at that time. It's all in the garage in various buckets to determine if (A) it stays, (B) it gets donated or (C) it goes in the trash - believe it or not, I'm excited about the prospect of getting a dumpster to get rid of some of this stuff.

The house in Attleboro is about to go into that state as well - as soon as the kids get back to school. Part of me would like to have a giant yard sale but I just don't have the strength for it. Today I was thinking if I could scrape together enough cash from a yard sale that we could afford a bigger prettier place in Barcelona - it would have to be beyond a giant yard sale to make this happen I'm thinking now. But it was a though, albeit a passing one. As much as I don't mind donating the goods to charity or giving items to friends, part of me watches some of this stuff go and thinks, geez, I've spent a shitload of money over the years on all this stuff, I really need to recoup it someway. But since I don't have the time or the patience or even the space to organize a yard sale, I'll just have to cut back on my shopping (big gulp!) if I have hopes of saving some $$$$ or increase my sales at work (in my free time lately). Regardless, we will be together as a family and that's really all that counts right? We're going to learn that things are just that - things...and that there is more to life than a pretty house.

Julie

The cat is out of the bag... we've told Aidan.

It went surprisingly well. Almost too well. I don't think he was paying attention. Maybe telling him at bedtime was the wrong thing to do? We showed him on the globe where Spain is in relation to Boston. He took it pretty well. His big concern was if we could put a Santa Claus guy on the north pole on the globe and if so will the globe still spin? I thought I'd have so much more to write on this topic but have surprisingly little. He had very few questions other than how do we get there and will we be keeping this house. I guess we'll wait til it gets closer to see how it really hits! My guess is that this is not the end of this topic...

Julie

Where the hell did this all this crap come from?

As kind of a follow up to my last post, as I look around my house getting ready to move, I have to wonder, where did all this shit come from? Seriously, in almost 9 years of living here, I don't know how we accumulated all this stuff! Now I need to figure out what goes, what gets donated, what goes to friends, what gets trashed, what goes to storage, etc etc... It's the most overwhelming process no matter how I look at it. And everytime I do start to look at it, I think...well, the kids will be back to school in "x" weeks. Procrastinating much? I do work best under pressure but I imagine the fall is not going to be a pretty sight! Going back to my last post, I guess it's giving me an opportunity to recycle and reduce the things we want and only buy what we need and I'm certainly not buying much these days knowing I'm just going to have to move it soon anyways.

We did get some potential good news last week too - we accidentally found a renter for our cape house. We have a verbal agreement from her and that's all I'm going to say before I jinx it. I'm hoping to have it all tied up within a week or two. But that means getting all the crap out of the cape house now too. The good thing is that we believe she's going to keep all the furniture and stuff so it will be more about getting out our personal crap. At least with us moving forward on construction this week I've been making several trips down over the last week and bringing stuff back with me. But now it sits in the garage and in my office waiting to be "relocated" to their new homes - where, I'm not quite sure...but at least I'm slowly clearing out one house (only to add content to the other!).

On another note, we got our travel plans late last week. We are doing our "discovery" trip the first week of November where Josh and I will go to Barcelona for a few days on a house/apartment hunting trip. I've very excited about this part, not only to look for a place but also to become more familiar with the area so that when we get there with the kids we won't be going in completely blind. I was really nervous about not getting a discovery trip and showing up with the kids and dogs and not knowing where in the world to go. So this was a major relief on my end to know that I'll hopefully be able to tell the kids when we get there, "this is where we will play in the park and this is where you'll go to school and this is where we are going to live". Let's keep our fingers crossed that we find a place while we are there.

If we don't find a place while we are on our Discovery trip, Josh will need to find one on his own. He will be leaving us around Dec 1 to start the process of transitioning to the BCN office. He will come home for the holidays around Dec 22 to which I am enternally grateful. Besides being worried about going into a new country and city blind, I was also concerned about how we were going to handle the holidays with the kids in a new country. Thankfully, I now don't need to worry about it since we'll be here. I'm sure it will be on a smaller scale since we'll be leaving a few days later but at least we'll be able to take part in the traditions from previous years like making Christmas cookies with Aidan & Liam's friends, making reindeer food, Chinese food on xmas eve with friends and the luminaries. And of course, celebrating with our families!! I'm so glad we don't have to miss that! We will leave for BCN as a family shortly after the New Year.

In the meantime I'm slowly making progress on other items. School applications have been submitted, wires in the process of transferring and passports being renewed. We're close to being done with the most time sensitive items, at least as far as I can tell. My notebook now has 3 pages of "to do" items, so while they aren't all as time sensitive as those, I'm far from done and really just getting started!

Finally we're planning to tell the kids about the move this week. Once again I've been testing the waters with Aidan. Josh and I went to VT over the weekend and I showed Aidan where that was on the map. He said it wasn't far. So I pointed to Spain and asked him if he thought that was far. He said, "well, I think we can walk there". I told him we'd have to take a plane. He reconsidered his answer then. Tonight we were reading a book, UP, and part of the book essentially stated that possessions aren't important, it's people who are important. So once again I said, "even if we don't live here or have a lot of toys, we'll still be a family and be together." Both he and Josh looked at me like I was a little on the crazed side. Not me!!!!

Will post as soon as we tell Aidan so you can hear the agonizing details of telling our 5 year old that we are not just moving but moving to a country where none of us speak the language. Wish us luck!

Julie

Going green, reducing our carbon footprint and getting skinny in the process...

One of the more interesting things, for me at least, will be the fact that more than likely we aren't going to have a car in Barcelona. You see, if you don't know it already... I'm a driver. I love to drive. I offer to drive anywhere with my friends or family - not just because I like to be in control, but simply because I enjoy driving. My friend Kath and I were supposed to drive to PA today to go to the Boden warehouse sale and by no means was I intimidated by this drive, unfortunately we had to cancel. My 2006 Sienna that is just about 2 1/2 years old and has over 57, 000 miles on it - that says it all.

Anyways, you get it... I like to drive. So not having a car in Barcelona is a little initimidating for me. I'm going to need to walk everywhere or take public transit (which I hear is fabulous over there). But I'm trying to look at this as a positive thing. While I will certainly miss driving terribly (notice I didn't say my car which I'm not particular fond of), I'm kind of looking forward to the challenge of having to walk everywhere. It will be a great chance to get in shape as well as to reduce our carbon footprint since we won't have any gas emissions (ok, I can't speak for Josh!). It will also help us to reduce our carbon footprint because I think we will be more cautious about the things we purchase since we will need to carry them back home with us - we can't just throw the items in the back of the car and go. This holds true for groceries, toys, clothes, and more. I think it will be an excellent opportunity to differentiate between needs and wants. What do we really need to survive here and what do we want that will generate pleasure and is there a happy medium? Maybe this is a habit I can bring back to the US with me - I know Josh will certainly be pleased if this journey also reduces my shopping habits!!!

To me the biggest bonus will be my fantasy that I will be not only skinnier upon my return to the US but in much better shape because I've had to walk everywhere and not sit on my butt in the car. Realistic? Not so sure... but I've set the expectation so now I've got to rise to the challenge.

Julie