Packing and Philly

Well I can honestly say that Tim and I did start packing earlier than some. We began our packing expedition on Sunday morning. Can I just say I really dislike packing! We decided to take everything out of the packaging prior to packing it in the suitcases for space saving reasons. By the time we had everything out of its original packaging and into properly labeled Ziploc bags, we had one 30 gallon trash bag and one 25 gallon Rubbermaid tub full of trash/packaging AND we had gone through an entire box of gallon sized Ziploc bags.
We had an interesting time playing the shuffle game with our luggage. Our goal was to pack everything into two pieces of luggage. Well that did not go over so well :) By the time we got most of the toiletries packed into my blue suitcase, it weighed nearly 50 lbs! We then proceeded to pack some books and some of the clothing into Tim's big backpack traveler luggage. Well that one was interesting too! We had the bag entirely filled and it weighed approximately 45 lbs and took up more than 57 ins of the total 107 ins that each of us was allowed to take. So after packing two bags and still having more stuff to pack we called Chris and had him bring his own smaller traveler luggage. Now at this time Tim has roughly 50 ins left for an additional bag and 35 lbs. I have roughly 52 ins and 30 lbs left for my allowance on packing.
Once Chris' bag arrived, Tim and I continued to pack. After filling that bag, we still had more stuff left over to pack! Well to be honest, by this time, I'm feeling a little down. We were only going to take two bags, then three, and now FOUR! Geeze I was starting to think that we had over packed. Oh well, Tim and I added our final choice piece of luggage, a sturdy black duffel bag. We finally had everything packed: YAY!!! Well we measured and weighed each piece of luggage and tried to figure out who was taking each piece. Disaster! The two traveling luggage bags from L.L. Bean were costing us too much space and weight. So Tim and I proceeded to unpack things that we were not going to us right away. We also started taping pockets down on these bags to get them within the linear constraints. After much finagling, we were ultimately able to pack everything down so that Tim's two L.L. Bean travelers backpacks were within the limits and my two bags didn not exceed weight.
This was one very long process. I have not been this stressed out about something since college. Oh we also had fun picking out what would be in our carryons besides our important papers. Packing actually took us two whole days.
Getting to Philadelphia was not too terrible. We did experience a flight delay of a little more than an hour after we had boarded our Chicago to Philadelphia plane. Our meeting was long, but full of useful information (some of which has caused us to repack our carryons and luggage). Later after the meeting was over at approximately 7:45 we went to dinner with five other volunteers. We had a great time and enjoyed some more ice cream!
Well I think that's all for now. Plenty in my opinion since my hand is starting to hurt a little :)

Love you all
Becky and Tim