Let the packing begin!

The packing adventure has begun!  I've definitely always done the moving thing before, pack, move, clean, unpack, blah blah.... but I've never had THREE moving phases before. Let me explain the schedule:

1. Weekend of August 25/26: we move all of our big furniture items that we aren't taking to Switzerland to a storage unit in NH
2. August 27: movers come to pack/ship all of the items that we want to move to Geneva
3. August 31: we pack the remaining stuff into 3 huge suitcases that we will be living out of for at least all of September and October until we find a permanent apartment to rent in Geneva.

So needless to say we've started the packing adventure already to try and create three different moving "piles", which is actually pretty fun because we've been digging into old stuff that we haven't seen in awhile and having fun laughing and remembering everything.

Anyone recognize these Elvis glasses from summer 2007? And note the tight, old sweater which Ryan decided to wear once I chopped off the arms of the sweater to make a wreath :)

 Also, one of the funniest revelations that we've come to realize is that Ryan is a TOTAL packrat, case in point above... why does he need THREE TI-83s you ask? No idea, folks - no idea.

And finally, the best revelation of all during the packing process: SPACE BAGS! We are only allowed to ship 8 cubic meters to Geneva, so we decided to use them to make the most use of our space.  Here are the before and after pics of our comforters, how cool is this?!

Guess what? :)

We would like to officially introduce ourselves as Mr. and Mrs. S! Yep, that's right - we got married. It was sudden, unexpected, dramatic, but we loved our little wedding #1/visa ceremony/elopement/whateveryouwanttocallit!

Most everyone who will be reading this blog will know why we did what we did, but just to recap for those who don't - we needed to find a way for Ryan to live in Switzerland with the least hassle and in a way that would give him the greatest opportunity for being able to find future employment. The solution was a quicky marriage of sorts that allowed him to obtain a residency visa as part of my residency visa/work permit approval process. The residency visa can subsequently be converted into a work permit upon finding an employer willing to convert the residency visa to a work permit (more to come on that topic in a future post).

So our dilemma was that we needed to find a way to get married in just a few weeks. I know this is going to sound slightly ridiculous, okay probably a lot ridiculous - but we were upset by the fact that we wouldn't have our perfect wedding where ideally the legal wedding happened on the same day as the party/celebrating with the family/friends part of the wedding. Needless to say, we found a way to refocus on the bigger objective (actually getting married!) and the result was an amazing, laid back, special day. While we definitely wished everyone could have been there to celebrate with us that day, we did the best we could with our circumstances and had a 5-minute outdoor ceremony at a beautiful park in Jamaica Plain (Arnold Arboretum) with a JP officiating. We then went out to a nice dinner in the North End of Boston and spent the night at a swanky hotel downtown. And you know what? At the end of the day we were happy, because we are ready to start two of the greatest adventures of our lives together (marriage and Switzerland!). I know I have said it before, but I will say it again - I am such a lucky girl to have such a supportive, loving, adventurous, and fun HUSBAND. I love you with all of my heart Ryan Michael :) And to everyone else, I can't WAIT to celebrate with all of you during wedding #2!!