traveling | august update and packing

Here's what we've been up to since the last update:
We've driven about 1,700 more miles - which is more than 28 hours in the car.  This brings our total up to approximately 5,200 miles and 84 hours of drive time.  Now that's what I call a summer road trip.  We've done a lot more day-time driving this half of the summer since our trips have been shorter.  Elise continues to be a mostly happy traveler, though she has moments/hours where she totally loses it, and it reminds us why we love overnight drives with kids.

We're currently listening to Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas.  It's fantastic and loooong.  We've been listening to it for a month off and on, and we've barely made a dent.

Amazon

Isaac leaves for Germany in less than a week (with Elise and I following a few weeks later). It's hard to believe the summer has passed this quickly, but here we are packing our bags for Germany.  We're having a little party on Sunday to celebrate Elise's birthday (only a tad early) with our Michigan friends and family.  It's also our opportunity to say one last goodbye before we leave for Germany.  I've been getting more interested in graphic design because I need to have some competency for the business side of things, but I've been wanting to try a more fun/colorful project.  I designed this invitation for Elise's birthday using Pages on my Mac:

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Besides work, my constant project lately is deciding what items and how much overall we should pack for Germany.  My philosophy on packing has changed a lot as we've been traveling this summer. When I first packed our bags for our travels back in June, I gathered what I thought were only the absolute essentials.  Turns out we had so many "essentials" they hardly fit in the car.

We had three huge bags of clothes, and I packed for all three of us, so really the blame falls squarely on me.  Yet, I was so proud - only one bag apiece for the ENTIRE summer! I was significantly less proud when, at our first stop, we carried three clothes bags, a bin of toiletries, a travel crib, a diaper bag, two laptop bags, a camera bag, and a purse inside. Did I mention we were only going to be there for one night?  We surveyed the giant pile of luggage completely consuming all the available floor space in our room, and we decided we had to find a way to travel with less.  So at our next stop (my parent's house), I started sifting through our bags to see if there was anything I could eliminate.  I ended up buying two large rubbermaid bins to hold the stuff we decided we didn't end up needing, and my parent's graciously offered to store them for us.  I crammed 2+ weeks worth of clothing for all of us in one of the large bags, and we got back on the road.

Fast forward a few more weeks: we were still traveling with a lot of laundry, and it was getting rather burdensome lugging all our stuff from place to place.

I've heard one thing repeated on travel blog after travel blog: you should pack the same amount of clothing whether you will be traveling for one week, one month, or one year. So I finally decided to try it, and I packed the three of us, two adults and one child, in a 40L travel backpack for the rest of the summer.

It's been over a month and a half since we started traveling with only a week's worth of clothing, and for the most part it's been great.  There isn't a lot of wiggle room for laundry, and I don't always get the timing quite right.  Isaac may have had to wear the same shirt he wore the day before a time or two because I forgot to switch the load around before bed. Whoops.

When I first started reducing our stuff I wondered if I could be just as content with one week's worth of clothing as with two or three weeks worth.  Could I be even more content with less?  Every time we have reduced our luggage life has gotten a little easier.  Less to carry, less to unpack, less to wash, less to deal with.  I haven't missed anything we left at my parent's house, and if I'm completely honest, I can't even remember exactly what we left.  I have my favorite pieces with me and apparently the rest wasn't too important.

We've been using these packing cubes, and they have been great for the constant packing and repacking that has been our summer .

The large one holds Isaac and my jeans, shorts, and long sleeve shirts, the medium one holds our short sleeve shirts, and the small one holds all of Elise's clothing.  The mesh bag holds undergarments, and the loose items you see top left are our sweatshirts.  We each have a fleece jacket that we keep out because they're pretty bulky and would never fit in the bag.

This is how everything looks tucked into the backpack.  The large and small cubes fit perfectly in the bottom while the medium cube and mesh bag sit on top along with the sweatshirts.

All zipped up.  This is legit carry on size for all major airlines!    

Please keep us in your prayers as we finish up our preparations for Germany, and for Isaac as he travels on Monday and Tuesday.  He will be flying out Monday evening, and arriving at his final destination in Oberursel sometime Tuesday evening.