Well, it’s been a few weeks since our last posts and a lot has happened!

For starters, Martin and I both left our jobs after the second week of April, which ended up being a little bit later than we had originally been anticipating. Those first two weeks of April were pretty busy with a trip to Universal Studios (me), lots of nights out with friends (Martin), finishing up some projects at work and training our replacements (both of us), starting a consulting company (Martin), and an engagement (our friends Allie and Scotty!!!). We finished up working and then started packing up our apartment.

After we officially left our jobs on April 14th, we celebrated Martin’s dad’s 70th birthday in Davis and then headed to Fresno to spend Easter with my family, and then up to Seattle for more birthday events.

We took Martin’s dad up to Seattle as his birthday present, and spent a whirlwind but fun four days there. Martin’s sister lives in Seattle with her husband and their daughter, my brother lives in Seattle with his girlfriend. We had a lovely family birthday dinner, and spent a lot of time watching our niece Lyra toddle around which was very cute and endlessly entertaining.

We also got the chance to spend quality time with some of our good friends who live in the Seattle / greater PNW area. And we spent one morning driving up to Skagit, WA to see the tulips which were absolutely stunning! All-in-all, It was a really great trip and a wonderful chance to see our friends and family up there and say “see you later” to them.

We got back from Seattle on Monday afternoon and then spent all of Tuesday packing up our apartment. As it turns out, we have a lot of stuff…surprise! We decided it made the most sense to get a storage unit so we found a convenient one in Berkeley. We also hired movers and a U-Haul to help with the move, which was a great decision. The movers met us in San Francisco at noon, and we were pretty much completely moved out, with all of our stuff in storage, by 4pm on Wednesday.

We stayed at my parents’ house in Berkeley Wednesday through Monday. Our time was spent running last-minute errands at Target and CVS, hanging out with family, eating delicious home-cooked meals, doing the final cleaning and arrangements for our apartment, and packing / organizing our packs and our lives! My parents were great hosts (as always) and allowed us to be frantic and crazy, and fueled us with plenty of yummy food and wine. We had a get-together in Berkeley with our friends in the Bay Area, which was a really nice chance to see everyone for one last “see you later.”

Sunday was spent actually packing our backpacks, making final clothing decisions, and remembering all the things we forgot to get / do earlier. Martin and I are each taking our backpacking packs and one smaller personal bag. Martin of course was done packing before me as I was still second-guessing and adding things (I think I still packed too much…oh well, it’s too late now).

Sorry for the rambling––I think my head is still spinning from a crazy last few weeks at home, and now we’re off for five months!

Next up: exploring Dublin!