The countdown is on. We will be leaving for Italy (Lord willing) in 17 WEEKS!!! The children and I are home for the next couple of weeks and then we travel until the end of April. That leaves one short month to finish up. Jon will still be traveling. We are getting so excited. I have pulled the kids out of school for the rest of the year as we will be traveling so much. We have been homeschooling again for a week. I really have missed it and with the experience from last year it can only get better. I recieved an email today from the bilingual school we are looking at enrolling them in. The fact that there are no missionaries in Italy makes it harder to decide how to school the children. (since homeschooling here is not an option). I am starting to get excited and overwhelmed. The packing has begun. We will be living in a furnished apartment the last month so we can get ourselves together and get everything sold (we won't be crating) I don't have a lot that is going to be hard to let go of. I talked to Cheri Eastin the other day and she said that they had storage but when they got home there were only a few things that she was glad that she had saved. It really is after all just stuff. I have started the process of making lists for things unavailabe or highly expensive to take with me. I have been told that Long underwear for the children is a must simply because of the way the heat and utilities work in the winter. There are also cold marble floors. I of course will be arriving in June in the summer where air conditioning will be hard to come by and I will be unsure why I brought all of that long underwear. (which by the way is on sale at wal mart for $5. Just in case any of you want some for next winter or the rest of this one. ) I won't however be needing 80 boxes of cake mixes and 75 boxes of brownies that a church gave to us. I might take a few but not all of them. I wonder if wal mart would take them back? I was also given 200 toothbrushes. It was fun. We were given quite a few drugs like tylenol claritin and excedrin and vitamins. Meds are very expensive. Tylenol costs I think $7 for 12 capsules. Well sorry I keep babbling on. I would appreciate your prayers for our family as we get closer and closer. Jon buys our tickets tomorrow!!!