After five years of saving our pennies and several months of planning, we found ourselves down to the final days before leaving on our big trip. Departure day - Monday, February 11, 2008 - was creeping up very quickly!

We had our going away festivities on Friday, February 1 and thanks to Shauna's planning, it was a phenomenal party!! It was held at the Speakeasy in downtown Appleton and over 100 friends and family came to bid us farewell. We went home that night on cloud nine feeling so fortunate to have so many amazing people in our lives. Thank you to all who were able to attend!

"So, exactly how do you pack for 10 months?" This is a very good question that we were asked several times before we left. We were finally forced to confront and find the answer to it in the final days leading up departure day. In the end, we left alot of things behind and ultimately fit everything into our packs. (See "Packing List.")The rest went into a storage unit in Appleton, thanks to the help of friends, Jason and Amy.

It just wouldn't be a trip abroad if it wasn't pure madness and chaos in the days leading up to our departure! My final day at work was Friday, February 8th and although I still had about 12 hours of work to do, we opted to go out with friends for a final farewell party instead!

After staying out, we had to get up and finish packing up and cleaning our apartment. And of course, this always takes four times longer than you think it will!! Since I still had those 12 hours of work to do, I headed back to the office on Saturday afternoon to tie up all of the loose ends. Finally at 5:40am on Sunday morning, we left the Coalesce office and hit the road to Michelle's Mom's house in Monroe, Wisconsin. This is normally a 2.5 hour drive but it turned out to be a long and dangerous journey. The temperature kept dropping and reached -45 degrees F (wind chill) with blizzard conditions and ice-covered roads. After five hours of white-knuckle driving and sliding all over the road, we were so happy to arrive safely!!