How to Kill 23 Acres of Precious Forest

Just move with a moving company! Seriously, we got our HHE shipment last week. That stands for Household Effects, and is the "big" shipment, the one that comes via, well, ship, and takes the longest. Now, the government is kind enough to provide us with a furnished home away from the states, so we put pretty much all our furniture in storage or got rid of it, but somehow ended up with 5,000 lbs. -- yep, you read right, FIVE THOUSAND pounds in our HHE . Well, we did bring a couple of dressers, which we definitely don't need, as well as two really comfy chairs...which we don't need...and our bed, which we DO need...and the babies' beds...But that's still a dinky amount, apparently, compared to what more established families end up shipping.

When the guys were unloading our 5 huge crates full of boxes last week, we couldn't for the life of us think what we had packed that would take up that much space. Books, clothes, TV, rec. equipment, kitchen stuff, etc...As we've been unpacking, however, the situation has become oh-so-clear. About half of the weight has got to be the boxes themselves and the miles of paper included.

For example, this is a picture of 3 sturdy sheets of paper that were crumpled in a puffy, protective ball around FOUR Starburst candies and a basketball sticker. Other fun surprises included well-wrapped packages of batteries, some old Popeye's napkins (clean, thank goodness), frugally saved pieces of used aluminum foil...I guess it's our fault, we threw out a bunch of stuff before we moved, and apparently weren't thorough enough...but please! I wouldn't have expected such a well-cushioned little package of Starburst!

Side note: these candies and the sticker were left over from goody bags I made my YW basketball team the first year I coached them (ahem...that would be 2004...), but the Starburst were still extremely fresh and delightful to the taste. Gotta love preservatives.

Anyway, we're pretty embarrassed at the hugely gigantic stack of boxes and paper we are slowly piling up as we unpack comparatively meager amounts of items. The moving company is going to come and take it away for us...I really hope they reuse or recycle somehow, it really is sickeningly unfriendly to the environment.

It's dangerous, too. We almost tossed Nuala out with this pile of paper, and I'm pretty sure that forlornly sinking bib is gone. I haven't seen it since these pictures were taken. Sigh. It joins the trees as a casualty of The Move.

But hey! I got my Crazy Richard's All-Natural Crunchy Peanut Butter!