Aftermath of a very busy day

We are all a bit wiped after such intense packing and purging. At one point yesterday we had 7 cars/trucks in the driveway. The place was abuzz with activity of people picking up some very heavy purchases from us like a 500 lb or so clay mixer and about a 400 lb de-airing pug mill. And a huge thank you to friends Will, Chet, Jim, Aaron and Bill who made themselves available to get that machinery loaded!

Friday the advancers sold (I'm keeping the other half to cut down for my electric kiln). It feels good to seeing these things peel away from my "have to pack or move" list, especially since I either won't have room or need for them in the new, much smaller studio space.

In between all that activity my friend Betty, daughter Erin and I were packing and purging fools. My packing starting as soon as I got up, around 6am, and we all quit at 4:30. Erin kept going in the kitchen making us a lovely dinner of Caesar salad with chicken. She even made home made croutons which I skipped since I'm off yeast for a month due to a recently diagnosed food allergy.

But the best part of the day was a huge, delightful surprise from Jim's sister Pat, who surprised us by driving up from central Florida. She's only staying for today to help with packing and join us for our traditional Easter breakfast of hard boiled eggs, a German form of Easter bread that our daughter brought from Munich, and kielbasa and horseradish. And since we're trying to empty the freezer, Erin is making shrimp scampi over linguini for dinner, instead of our usual Easter roast lamb.

At the rate the packing is going, I think we are going to be in good shape for the move without needing movers to pack anything other than some large paintings and mirrors. So far we have 84 packed boxes and from just a quick perusal of the things still left to pack, like books, clothes and last minutes items, I think we will have well over 100 boxes by the time we're finished.