Packing Up. Moving Out.

So the time finally has come around to pack up and move out. Our first year here in Charlottesville has really been amazing. We have made wonderful friends, loved getting involved in the community and our church, enjoyed the beautiful landscape, and wonderful food, but we are so excited to head back west. It was a long a tedious process (as packing always is) but we were blessed to have a lot of help. I did a little on my own last week leading up to this big event, but most of it all happened the day before we left. Joe's mom came to help me pack up the kitchen and teach me how to properly pack my dishes. I am pretty sure she got thrown into more than she expected. 

AJ really wanted to help so we gave him a few boxes to pack up and line up for us. 

 We have been blessed to have wonderful missionaries in our area. All our scheduled helpers from the ward didn't show so we called the elders in a last minute panic. We had 5 of them show up. They helped Joe move the furniture out in a jiffy. It got done so much faster than we expected. The two sister missionaries were also there helping Jean and me with all the cleaning. We were able to get most of it done even before dinner time.

AJ wanted to be packed into everything: boxes,  bins,  and this (my favorite choice) 5 gallon water container. 

 We had a lot of cleaning to do because of the terrible pollen problem in VA. I couldn't believe how much loose pollen just floats around in the spring. Every morning you come out and your car is yellow. We had some furniture out on our porch and this is how we found it...

If you look closely and can read upside down you will notice the word "Pollen" written in. Yes that table is normally white.

We said goodbye to our dear Sis Barney. She has been on our area the entire 9 months we lived here. But we will see her soon. She is being released in a few weeks and has promised to come see us in Boise. 

After all the missionaries left I made a drop off run to our storage unit. What I didn't mention before is that we decided to take practically nothing with us to Idaho. We are going to live on the bare minimum. So what do we do with all our stuff? Well, we have found a house to live in next year, but it isn't available until the beginning of June so we had to find somewhere to keep all of our stuff. Our best option was to get a storage unit. When I got back from my drop off run I found this waiting at the door for me.

He watched every little minute of the move. He was such a good little sport. 

 We took a break for dinner, and we were so excited to go meet Joe's Aunt Ginny at a fun little local restaurant. You see she is a restaurant critic for a publication and was doing an article on restaurants that use mainly locally grown food. She took us to this fun little restaurant in the down town pedestrian mall. We enjoyed some soup and sandwiches. After we took a nice walk through the mall and were pleased to find this little trio serenading the strolling crowd.

They were playing a lot of jazz classics. I sung and danced close by. I was very impressed with how good they were. the crowd loved them. I wanted to stay longer, but it was time to get AJ to bed. 

We also had to say goodbye to our good friend Darby O'Gill.  All drains lead to the ocean...right?

Jean was so nice to reserve us a room at the hotel that night. We had planned on just sleeping on the air mattress and taking off in the morning, but she wanted to be sure that we got a good nights rest before our long journey. After our nice walk we dropped Jean and AJ off at the hotel and we went back to the apartment to finish up. We loaded the car and cleaned up the last little bits, and said our goodbyes to our first Cville home. We can't wait for the next adventure to begin!