Secret Packing

My routine has become to drop the girls off, come home, hurry and get my workout done, then spent the rest of the morning packing as much as possible before they come home again. They are on a shortened schedule last week and this week, so once I leave to run with Brian at 11:30, I am not home again until 1:30, with all the kids.
I try to get as much out of their rooms as I can w/o making the room look too empty or changed. Plus I have been going through their clothes and sorting out what doesn't fit or what they just don't wear and making bags to give to the friends. So far they haven't noticed, although Sophie's closet took a major hit this morning, so we will see if she says anything later today.
One of the nice things about this whole stinky situation is that we have time. Time to pack slowly, secretly if need be. I want the kids to feel as uninterrupted as possible for as long as possible pre move. We spent part of the weekend cleaning out the garage, totally emptying one side so we could then move all the boxed in the living room out to the garage. We also found a dresser on Craigs List for Emma. She currently has shelving built into her closet, but will need a dresser in her new room, so we took care of that. We found her a very nice, large, old dresser with a large mirror above it, and a matching headboard and bed rails for $40!
I have so far gotten all the weird areas packed - top of closets, bottoms of closets, all decorative things off the walls, linen closet, some of the kitchen cupboards that had random things in them that we never use. The girls asked for boxes to pack up their breakable things....better to show them how to do it and let them do it themselves so that they don't blame me for any broken items! Plus, they wanted to be involved, so they each did quite a few boxes of stuff out of their rooms. I have a pile of about 20 garbage bags of stuffed animals in my living room from Bubba's room.
So we are making tons of progress! I mainly try to do all the icky parts of moving in the morning, the throwing away of old useless toys, and all those things that they never use/wear, but as soon as they see them heading towards the garbage become their "favorite" thing. Then there's the issue of digging down into the garbage can to hide it all because if they spot anything it is traumatic! Moving with kids is definitely its own art!