Loading Up (or Not?) in Dallas

When we moved down to Costa Rica, we put a bunch of our stuff in storage at our friend Megan's house in Dallas. Wait--let me re-phrase that. When we moved down to Costa Rica, Kerri drove a 20-foot long U-Haul truck by herself for 3 days from Denver to Dallas and got stranded in Kansas when she hit a tornado while I was sunning myself down in Costa Rica. OK--I was probably actually working, but that's not the version she tells. ;-) Since Dallas is a common point-of-entry into the United States from Costa Rica, we figured that we would pick up a little stuff each time we went into the States and bring it back down with us.

So on this last trip back to Costa Rica from Las Vegas, we stopped in Dallas for 2 nights to pick up a load of our stuff. As we started to rifle through the 20 or so boxes in Dallas, we quickly realized how little of it we actually needed. We'd been living down in Costa Rica now for 6 months with maybe 10% of the stuff we own and were doing just fine. In the end, we filled one more extra suitcase and took our golf clubs.

Now, granted, it is great to always have access to all of your stuff. To be able to pull out the blender/cuisinart/insert other random appliance here/etc. whenever you need it. To be able to spend a random Saturday afternoon looking through a box of old high school memories. Or to hold on to that favorite shirt that you haven't worn in over 2 years and that is filling your closet but that you just can't seem to part with.

But in the end, Costa Rica has been a great lesson for us in really how little "stuff" we actuallly need to get by in life.

(Megan--So sorry to have left you with so many boxes. We'll put them in storage the next time we come through Dallas. And dinner at Three Forks is on us the next time we are in Dallas!)