Favorite Things Friday

As I have completely immersed myself in packing for the last week, I have had to come to grips with a terrible dissension that lives within me: my perfectionism vs. my indecisiveness compounded by my need to pack. It is because of this particular inner battle that over the last eight or nine years I have come to loath packing...even for small trips. I think the problem is that I analyze too much...what should I wear, what I might need and should I bring it, where I should pack things, etc. As I have been packing for this move, I have had to laugh at myself for packing and repacking boxes to see if another item can fit better; possibly bordering on OCD with my labeling system; and spending several minutes before beginning to pack a box just trying to decide what to put in that particular box. I know, it's like a disease!

Anyway, all this packing has given me time to reflect on my very favorite 'packing memories' (because, believe it or not, I have not always disliked packing...there was a day when I thought it was fun!).

I remember packing for 'vacation' as a little girl. My sisters and I would begin counting down the days to vacation a few months before vacation. This would include getting out our calendars (we each had our very own), and writing a number in the corner of each day counting down to the day we would leave (and when we were within a week, we would start calculating hours, minutes, and seconds! HAHAHA!!). Then, about two weeks before we actually left, we girls would start getting so excited for vacation that we felt a great need to prepare...just to be sure we would not forget anything. ;) So, we would begin making lists. They would be something like this:

1. Dianna
2. Maryanne
3. Clothes for Dianna & Maryanne
4. Paper horses (we drew, colored, and cut these out ourselves; we had whole herds of them!)
   
5. Barbies & accessories
6. Braiding equipment (I know, this sounds weird; but that's really what we called it! It was actually just 3 long pieces of yarn in a baggie. We used to make really long braids and use them for...nothing! Haha!)
   
7. Fun box (This had stencils, colored pens/pencils, etc. in it)
   
8. Trapper-keeper
   
9. Stuffties (stuffed animals) - Puff, Pinkie, Mama, and Kisses
   

Dianna and Maryanne were my dolls. I always packed a different outfit for each of them for every day of vacation (of course, they could share), and I would even make a list of what they were supposed to wear each day (if you didn't notice, I loved making lists!). Well, making all these lists would take us at least one whole day. Then, we would spend a day packing our bags to make sure everything would fit. Mom and Dad limited us each to one backpack of toys that we could bring (if they had not limited us, we would have brought our entire toy room, I am sure!). We girls bought matching blue & pink backpacks at the Dollar Store (wow, we felt so grown-up to have our very own backpacks!) and we stuffed those things so full! When I look back, I am amazed at how well those bags held up! Haha! Of course, we still had over ten days before we were actually going to go on vacation, so we would unpack and repack our bags at least five or six times before the day we actually left.

Yeah, back then, packing was fun!!!