Christmas in July?

It's finally here -- starting to get 'real' and starting to do the 'lasts.'  On Friday the packers came and were done in a matter of hours.  We've spent three years filling our apartment up with housewares, antique furniture, art, textiles, photographs, clothes -- lots of clothes, baby items and more books that we will be able to read for the next year!  And it all fit in 43 boxes packed by five efficient men in under five hours.  It's a leap of faith that it will all arrive in Minneapolis sometime in July-August of course, but what isn't a leap of faith these days?  By the time those 43 boxes make it to our house in Minneapolis, how many individual people will have a hand in moving them along?  How many times will a customs agent check it?  How many times will they get scanned for banned items (like the cheap spices and medicine we had hoped to ship home).

Does each person how handles our stuff know what it all means?  Please take care of our stone Buddha head - it means a lot to us.  Same with Daniel's hanging cloth birds from The Shop.  And Rachel's painted cabinet from Rajasthan.  Each item we shipped means a lot to us but in the end, it is just stuff and 'things.'  Still, I hope it makes it.

Our global society feels very small when you consider the shipping of our household items back home. We don't even know the route our stuff will take.  Will it go to Singapore, on to Hong Kong, through Taipei and into L.A. and over by truck to our house?  What a journey indeed.

So, a huge thank you to the hundreds of people that will carry a box or two across two oceans and through so many ports, not to mention the 1000+ miles Minneapolis is from either coast.  Please take good care of our stuff, it means a lot to us.

Judging from the smiles and the personalities of our packers from Writer, I have every bit of trust in this process and look forward to "Christmas in July."