Today marks 54 days until we depart on our around the world trip. And we have found we are in the midst of our first round of goodbyes.

As we prepare to head out on this trip, we are aware that we have so many goodbyes ahead of us. So, it really shouldn’t surprise me to find ourselves in the midst of our first round of significant goodbyes.

One major task that we need to accomplish is finding a family to rent our home. To that end, very soon we must put our house out on “the market” for rental activity.

As any modern person who has sold a home in the last 10 years has learned, what this means is that you pre-pack about 60% of the junk, stuff, in your home. Then the space of your home is staged so that other people can imagine themselves and their families living their lives in your space.

While this pre-packing is immensely helpful since we have needed to purge our belongings and simplify for quite some time, in many ways, this pre-packing brings up a sense of “pre-goodbye-ing” for lack of an English phrase to capture that concept.

We are already having to say goodbye to the normal way that we have lived in our home for the last 10 years.

Our girls are already having to assess things that have been a part of their infancy or childhood. They have already needed to say “see you later” to things that are truly special to them as those objects and memorabilia are placed in our storage facility. The girls have each also said “goodbye” and set aside possessions and books to be sold at a garage sale so they can earn their own trip spending money.

As we consider what home goods, toys and books get packed, I am keenly aware that when we return, our youngest daughter will be 8 1/2. Our oldest will be 15 1/2 and ready to learn to drive a car!

We no longer need those children’s plastic cups with lids. My girls can now be trusted with glass cups. Goodbye children’s dishes in my real kitchen.

So many hours of my mothering have been spent playing house at the pretty pink wooden play kitchen.  So many “delicious “meals and snacks prepared by my girls for me! Goodbye Pink Kitchen with your sumptuous wooden play foods.

Goodbye to the plastic playhouse in the backyard that has been the home for so many play dates over the years.

Goodbye to the little plastic slide and climbing structure that was perfect when I had toddlers whose sticky, dirty barefeet would allow them to spiderman-crawl up the slide to become queen of the castle.

We are essentially saying goodbye to our years of raising babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and little girls in our home.

So, a fond and wistful goodbye to the end of an era becomes our first significant goodbye to prepare us for Our World Edventure.