Baby steps.

I got a little more packing done yesterday. For the most part, our homeschool stuff is squared away. From there, I moved on to some board games. Have you ever noticed how large a game board box is compared with the items inside? I've decided to trash all the boxes and pack just the game pieces, cards, and boards. Honestly, it's saved a ton of room, and when we get there, I'll just get a basket to put them all in. All told, I spent about 3 hours packing yesterday and got a grand total of 4 boxes squared away. I hope I start getting speedier here soon.

When I ran out of boxes, I sat down with my cookbooks to type up just the recipes I use. I have about 2-1/2 linear feet of cookbooks, and there is no way I can take them all. And it seems silly to, anyway, when I only regularly use 3-4 recipes out of each. The first thing I realized in doing this is that I really only use about 5 of the cookbooks ever, so the ones I never use are going to go in the yard sale. I've decided to take 2 of them with me. One is The Joy of Cooking. I only regularly use 2 of the recipes from that book, but it's just such a great reference. The other is my Indian cookbooks, because the curries are so complicated and I have to flip back to the general directions so much that it just wasn't worth it to type out all the information I'd need. The rest I was able to get down to 10 typed pages, which are now in a 1" binder in page protectors and ready to be packed.

A and I have been talking about the places we should be able to visit while we are in the Philippines. The big one is China. We know, given K's obsession with the place, that we will have to visit China at least once. I blame Sagwa and the 2008 Olympics for her obsession, but it doesn't help that almost all her toys have a "Made in China" tag on them. I was telling A that I think she expects the place to be full of talking cats, the sky to be full of dragons, and the streets to be lined with toy stores.