As we approach the one-month milestone in our long journey, it seems wild that we will no longer be residents of Wisconsin; it’s almost too much too take in at times.  In the early planning stages, we decided to make this our future reality, but we always knew that if things didn’t work out, we could always postpone the move.  Even as we moved forward with our dream in January, our “escape route” of delaying the move was always a possibility.  We have reached the point now, however, that backing out is not an option 🙂 It’s kind of scary to go out there without a safety net.  The quotation by Robert Burns “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” really applies.   It doesn’t matter how much you organize or how hard you plan, there will always be something that changes.   It may be a good thing, it may not be so good, but you need to go with the flow and accept it for what it is.

As we approach our 30 days countdown, we thought it would be fun to make a list of 30 things that haven’t gone according to plan:

1. Our first moving date was going to be September 15, 2012
2. Our second moving date was going to be in 2013.
3. Our third (and final) moving date is July 22nd, 2011.
4. We considered renting a U-Haul truck at one point.
5. We thought about renting Pods.
6. We considered driving both cars down.
7. We considered letting Mayflower do part of the packing for us.
8. We considered renting a house.
9. We decided against the first city we picked.
10. We paid much less in a security deposit than we anticipated.
11. We didn’t get the apartment we wanted.
12. We got a better apartment!
13. We didn’t meet our packing goals.
14. Car repairs cost way more than we thought it would ($1564)  Some might question the wisdom of this given the age of our car, but we expect to get at least two more years from it, it purrs like a dream now, and it also means no car payments, which totally rocks.
15. We didn’t sell nearly as much stuff on Craigslist as we would have liked.
16. We considered having a rummage sale but decided the grunt work wasn’t worth it.
17. Disney raised ticket prices so the cost of an annual pass will be higher than anticipated.
18. We’ve gone through 33 end rolls of paper that we use to pack boxes.  We received 5 free, so that totals $56.   We didn’t expect to use so many, and we’re not done yet.
19. All our boxes have been free so far, from either Mayflower or the seafood restaurant, and we currently have 138 boxes packed.  $138 x $2 (average) = $276 savings.  We expected to have to pay for boxes (although we’re not done yet!)
20. We don’t even want to total the cost of packing tape 🙂
21. Our bank decided to drop the Disney Rewards program for our bank cards.  This was a disappointment, however, we currently have $172.44 saved in Disney Reward Dollars, will probably accrue a few more dollars before it ends, which we will be able to use at Disney World.  Good news.
22. We didn’t realize just how much stuff we had.  Let’s put it this way:  we should have our own wing in the Goodwill store!
23. We didn’t think we had so much paper/documents/art projects stored in the house, and it took weeks to go through it all.
24. We didn’t realize how hard it will be to move away from businesses we’ve frequented for years.
25. We weren’t able to sell our oak desk, but we were able to dispose of it a lot easier than we anticipated.  It will not be missed!
26. We acquired a lot more medical bills than we would have liked.
27. We didn’t expect that our son Nick would be able to get one month’s free rent at his new apartment, which saves us on needing to rent him a hotel room for a week, and a storage unit for his furniture.
28. We were hoping to take a visit down to Wisconsin Dells to ride the Ducks, but given the cost of the car repairs, we are unable to do that before we leave.
29. We were also hoping to possibly visit Chicago for a day trip, as our son Ben absolutely loves the city of Chicago, and Mark was born and raised in Chicago.
30. We are fine with putting off the day trips, because it gives us an excuse to come back.  🙂  Not that we need one with Nick here, of course!