Trip 1 "stuff"

You may remember that I was suffering from back-to-back episodes of the worst case of the flu EVER when we received our travel dates, and that Norm was on a couple of business trips while I was making our travel arrangements. That made preparing a packing list a bit stressful for me! I really enjoyed (and appreciated!) getting help from other families or reading their blogs to find out what items we needed to take with us.

So, in an effort to “Pay It Forward”, here’s a list of what I can remember taking with us on trip 1. I may have left a few things off, but this is pretty much it! Oh, and we used Space Saver bags for our clothes to make everything fit, and yes we were way under our luggage weight limit!

Baby Essentials (carried in Kar’s carryon)
2 Who Loves Baby Albums (we didn’t know if there would be 1 or 2 Baby C’s! We left one behind & brought one home)
Stacking Cups (left w/ Ilya)
Stuffed Donkey (left w/ Ilya)
Plastic Keys
2 touch & feel books
Blinky Catepillar thing that made a bunch of noises
8 Shout wipes (didn’t need any - yay!)
2 packs of tissue
2 washcloths to use as burp/drool cloths (used both & washed when we did laundry)
Baby snacks (we didn’t even open these & brought them home w/ us)

Karyn’s Clothes
Worn on plane – jeans, sweater, t-shirt, undergarments, fuzzy socks (my fellow ladies know what I mean!!)
MOE – dress slacks, silk sweater combo, trouser socks, undergarments
1 pair black pants (worn on Tuesday & Wedneday)
1 pair black jeans (worn on Thurs & Friday)
2 sweaters (1 worn Tues & Wed, the other worn Thurs & Friday)
1 camisole
1 black t-shirt
3 sets of undergarments (so 4 total if you count what was worn on the plane)**
1 pair lounge pants
1 tank top (which I slept in)
3 pairs of socks**
Coat
1 pair shoes
**could have gotten away w/ 1 less pair of socks/undergarments since we could do laundry
Personal care items

Norm’s Clothes
Worn on plane – jeans, sweater, t-shirt, undies, socks
MOE – dress slacks, turtleneck, dress shirt, dress socks
2 pairs black jeans**
2 sweaters**
2 dress t-shirts
3 pair underwear
3 pair socks
Leather coat
1 pair shoes
**Norm could have gotten away with bring only 1 pair of black jeans and 1 sweater (not including the pair he wore on the plane)
Personal care items

Orphanage Donations purchased in US & carried over (NOT the donations we bought while in Russia to celebrate Ilya’s b-day)
5 pairs of little pants
5 t-shirts
1 dress w/ matching hat

Food
3 pouches tuna
6 pouches Easy Mac
7 Folgers individual coffee packs (only I drink coffee - Norm claims he doesn't need a caffeine fix)
7 packs sugar
7 packs creamer
6 packs instant oatmeal
3 packs instant soup
6 packs Ramen noodles (3 beef, 3 chicken)
9 granola bars
Peanut butter
**Bought water, yogurt, bread, soda, mayonnaise, chips, jelly, sandwich bags, small bag of macaroni type noodles, pizza that we couldn’t cook (yeah, still bitter about this!), and a cake for the caregivers while we were in Moscow. We didn’t go out to eat at all. We ate lunch in the car each day, and our first day we made tuna sandwiches. I don’t think Katia or Anton appreciated the smell much (they rolled down the windows when we got out of the car!! lol!) so each day after that, we made peanut butter & jelly sandwiches instead. We saved our other 2 packs of tuna for dinners. Lovely diet for a week, huh?

Things we took but didn’t need
Sink stopper
Karyn’s books/magazines (surprisingly, I didn’t read at all on this trip. Very weird)
Sunglasses (we did have some sunny days, but the car windows were so tinted we didn’t need them)
5 packs of Clorox wipes
2 extra sets of converters/adapters – they kept falling out of the wall!! See note about Karyn’s international hairdryer to see how we solved this issue
Money belt (probably should have used them but we didn’t)
Antibiotics and other meds (VERY happy we didn't need this stuff!)

Things we are very grateful we took
Camcorder
Camera
Laptop
50’ network cable
Umbrella
Karyn’s International Hairdryer - - it came w/ a converter/adapter that actually worked in the outlets. The other 2 converters/adapters we took kept falling out of the walls.
Very small bottle of All laundry detergent. We did laundry twice.

Things we wish we had
Better Moscow street map
Norm’s broadband card to pass time in the airport (no WiFi access for us)

Things the Verdict is still out on
DVD player & “Finding Nemo.” Love the movie & it was great to watch on the way home. However, even though it was a mini-DVD player, it takes up a lot of extra space in the carryon. I’m not sure it was worth bringing for just one movie.

Karyn’s noise cancelling headphones. I’ve had a great experience with these in the past, but this time they gave me a MAJOR headache plus they really hurt my ears, which means I couldn’t listen to our IPod on the plane. Bummer…

I think that covers it! Hopefully at least part of this will be helpful to families getting ready to travel. If I realize later that I left anything off the list, I’ll let you know! We’re off to update our Target registry!

Paka! (see ya)