Quick life update: We’ve been sick, very sick. We are now healthy; it feels really really good. Aydan and I spent a few days in LA with my cousin and her family. It was great! We are now in Walla Walla with a bunch of family. I’m very thankful for this time with our family before we head out. I do miss Patrick very much, as does Aydan. She lights up every time we talk with him on the phone and Skype. It’s very cute.
I just started a few google doc lists. One is a to do list while Aydan and I are here in Walla Walla the next few weeks while Patrick is in Washignton DC. The other is a list of things to buy from Amazon and have shipped to post in a couple of weeks so that it will be there when we arrive.
Here is what I have so far on our To Do List:
Patrick:
Go through books label: sell, give away, ask Kim, HHE and storage
Put the books on Amazon that are to be sold
Find out about dental insurance and make apts
Get RAV4 detailed?? I’d like to do this before shipping it
Finish vacinations
Pick up, sign and give back passport for visa
Kim:
request medical records
order new glasses/contacts
change of address to our perment address here in WA
order perscriptions
renew license
sign up for absentee voting
follow up on our air tickets
sign up for air miles
change banks and fix all auto with drawls and deposits
hire moving company and ask them the million questions I have
list of what to ship and how to ship
start Amazon and Diapers.com orders, list of what consumables still need to be purchased and what other things we need to purchase that we can’t buy through pouch
sign Passport and send back for Visa
If anyone out there who’s done this already please let me know anything else I should add to this list of things to do a month out.
Here is what is on our Amazon/Diapers.com List:
- Toilet Paper
- Cereal
- Mac and Cheese
- Paper Towels
- Cockroach Killer Things
- Diapers
- Baby Wipes
- Snacks
- Pasta
- Formula
- Top Ramen
What more should we order? It’s been a long day so I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of things.
A Diplomat's Wife 
I would highly recommend NOT putting roach stuff in your consumables. If they don’t pack it great (as in closed, sealed, etc.) the smells will permeate everything nearby and make it taste like roach stuff. You should be able to get roach spray/ powder where you are at.
We did our first consumables — purchased items individually, and put any detergent items in plastic containers, and put non-food items in the boxes with them. Doing that worked.
I don’t know how many books you have to sell, but I went through the same thing last summer before we went to post with several hundred, or a thousand… ? Anyway, with lots of books. 🙂
I used bookscouter.com. Instead of selling them individually over Amazon, bookscouter gave me the buying price of each book from a variety of used book dealers and I put them in piles based on the highest prices. Then I mailed them all in pre-paid boxes. It was a LOT easier than when I tried to sell individual books on Amazon. Of course, I may have made slightly less money, but the postage was paid for by the buyer, and had the simplicity of only sending out 20 or so boxes of books, instead of hundreds. (Yes, I had a lot of books. An equal number went to the library sale and to local children…. etc.)
Great suggestions! We’ve been selling books on Amazon for a few months now. We don’t have many books but we have enough to sell them and make some cash. I’ll keep this in mind if we ever decide to sell our library. : )
Oh, and they probably have it in Cameroon, but you might consider mosquito coils as something to buy on Amazon, we go through them like hotcakes here in Dhaka.