You are in the midst of building your RAFT, but you’ve always pictured rafting to look somewhat like this photo above.

It’s calm.

It’s peaceful.

It’s picturesque.

It’s, well you fill in the blank.

It’s suppose to be a time where you enjoy your friendships and your favorite places.

Your home fits nicely into boxes. The junk drawers and overstuffed closets are not to be found, for the moving fairy came and organized them while you were having coffee with the girls.

Your new destination is going to be like paradise.

My sunglasses are rose colored. I promise that the world looks SO much better with them on. I’m not joking. We’ll be driving along the coast and I’ll ooh and ahh about the ocean color or the sunset, but then I slip off my glasses and reality is nice, but it just isn’t as nice. Building a RAFT requires you to not put on rose colored glasses, but instead to be real. Doesn’t RAFTing as a family look more like the photo below?

And if you have children with special needs you are tied to them, possibly pulling them along.

Boxes are stacked all over the house.

“What do you mean you want to take ALL of your stuffed animals? Didn’t we agree that we’d only take 10?”

“What do you mean you’ll be home late again? You know the shipping company is coming to measure how much space we will need. I can’t comprehend what they will be saying while wrangling mini-you and feeding mini-me.”

Kids are crying. You are crying. You’re out of tissues.

You’ve given all your food away to friends and now you are hungry for that bag of chocolate covered almonds.

You get the picture. Nothing has gone the way you planned except that the airline tickets are set for you to leave in a few weeks. How are you going to get it all done and build that RAFT, let alone help your kids with it?

First take a deep breath, or maybe take a few. Relax.

It will get all done. I promise that the important things will get done. Remember to keep it all in perspective.

Prioritize your list of things to do and people to see.

Recruit help. Friends want to help. They can watch kids, clean house/rooms at the end, and even provide you with a meal. But, you have to let them know what would be the best way for them to help.

Have take-out more often. Invite people you need to see “one last time.” You need to eat. They need to eat. So eat together.

Keep that bag of chocolate covered almonds. Don’t give those away. You might need those.

Breathe.

Fill box and tape shut.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Breathe.

*Image by judithscharnowski  at Pixabay

** Image by julianomarini from Pixabay