Its not too late to take down the tree

The Christmas tree down... now that it is almost February. I quit refilling the water when it stopped drinking around New Years, so I guess it was dead, but unbelievably still green... of course there was no real green to compare it to. I had de-decorated it many many weeks ago but did not attempt to remove the lights for fear of an overwhelmingly grand population of pine-needles for our poor, most of the time useless, vacuum cleaner. However my brilliant husband and brother came to the rescue with a sheet. They laid it over on the sheet and wrapped it up and carried it out to the untamed property across from the house where they laid it to rest amongst cedar trees. No, that is not where we got it (it is a blue spruce), but it will be a nice home for some small animal.

We have made our first two attempts at packing. Not packing for Malawi but packing our home away. Last Thursday we worked on clothing... didn't realize how much clothing we had until we tried to fit it into boxes. We packed more than half of our clothes and saw that as a great accomplishment. Saturday my (Keah's) parents and two of the four siblings came over to help us pack. We got the kitchen packed away and then loaded the packed clothes and kitchen stuff into my parents van. We then decided to make dinner for everyone... a grand idea until I realized that we had packed some vital cooking utensils in the van. Luckily we have a very detailed filing system for each box and what it contains so we found what we needed.

This weekend we hope to completely move out. We will keep our air bed, blankets, a card table, some cooking utensils, some more blankets, some clothes, more blankets and whatever else we need for the last few days here. The 31st is my last day of work here and then we will be nomads.

We thought about visiting Colorado one weekend and then maybe taking off to Texas another weekend and of course being in OKC for the farewell ordeal, (can't miss that!) So if you can't make it to the farewell ordeal, maybe we could meet up somewhere else, just let us know!

As far a packing for Malawi, it has begun. We have been setting what we want to take into two large containers, and now they are overflowing! We have gotten several things from our needs list! We received our tent, sleeping bags, and my boots for Christmas from our families. We spent our Christmas money on our internal frame backpacks. The Stillwater NewsPress (my work) has purchased our solar panel and accessory kit for us! We Thank All who have helped us out! You have all been blessings to us!