Adventure Awaits

Well the countdown is well and truly into single digits, the week ahead is planned out and today, as I start writing this post, is probably our last completely 'normal' and relaxed day before the adventure begins. It has been our usual Monday with a home gym workout, followed by a sauna and then a lovely two and a half mile walk to our favourite coffee shop. A couple of coffees and a little time for Simon to get some art done and for me a little bit of port research and writing time before heading back home and the mundane tasks of laundry and grocery shopping.

The early part of this week is all about getting things prepped ahead of the end of week madness. I am determined to get the majority of the packing completed over the next few days rather than it all happen at the last minute!

And now as I come back to this post my hair has been refreshed... 

Back to my nice and bright pink hair!

...a segment for my podcast has been recorded, my nails have been 'Disneyfied'...

Cute nails...a touch of Disney to hopefully last a tad over four weeks!

...Simon has had his haircut and the majority of the packing is done! 

This does mean that our last full day at home can be taken at a fairly relaxed pace. We have enjoyed a breakfast out followed by a treat of coffee and cake as we walked the 3 miles home - hoping the 16000 steps walked by lunchtime has burned off the shared cake!!

Brekkie at one of our favourite local spots

And a little stop on the walk back home for some carrot cake!

The Uber has been booked to get us to our local train station, e-Sims have been bought ready for use when we get to the US, last minute jobs around the house have been done (always nice to come back to a clean and tidy house), check lists have been checked, checked again and checked once more just for good measure.

I'd achieved my goal and managed to get the majority of the packing done before the end of the week by getting everything in compression packing cubes which meant on Friday all I had to do was to get the cubes into the cases! I'd been a bit clever by making sure that one of the cubes had the clothes we would need for our first couple of nights in Southampton so that we wouldn't have to 'unpack' prior to boarding on the Monday. Next it was getting the backpacks sorted with all those things we wanted to have close to hand...and then everything was all done...which meant packing paranoia set in and I began questioning whether we had everything we needed! Or it could just be that taking our third big trip in around 18 months means that I'm now getting better at packing?!

All that remained was to grab some takeout food with our son and spend some time with him before we disappear for a few weeks. Oh and before I forgot I remembered to paint my toenails!

All that was left was to get a good nights sleep ahead of our first travel day!