Here we go!

We’ve come a long way since my last post! This will be a picture dump post, so get ready.

First, the promised picture of my plant, waiting to leave. This is a well-traveled plant. He was given to me by a student staff member before she left the University of Illinois, and lived in my office there in a small pot for a year. Then I drove him down to FL with me, and eventually transferred him to a large pot where he lived quite happily in our kitchen. That large pot was taken by a friend when we left, and now this little cutting is traveling across country again to a new home in CO. Here’s hoping he survives the adventure!


We’ve decided to use this little toy car to help show our travels as we go. So here it is in North Florida.


We’ll try to catch a picture as we pass into each state. Though we missed the initial welcome sign going into Georgia, Chris did get a picture of the rain!


We stayed the night Wednesday in GA with Grandma. Was good to see her and catch up a bit. She made us her famous full southern breakfast – eggs, grits, bacon, sausage, and from scratch no-recipe biscuits (seriously amazing..). We didn’t need to eat for 8 hours after that! Here is Grandma being shy about having her picture taken :)


Yesterday we said goodbye to Grandma and headed to TN to visit our friends Mark and Heidi. As you go from GA to TN, you pass back and forth between the states a couple times which is entertaining.




We stopped at the rest area just inside TN, which was gorgeous! And, Chris found some Cheerwine, which he was very excited about.



Today we depart our friends in TN and head to IL. Up, up and away!

Movers

I ran some errands yesterday and (almost literally) ran into a car full of my students at the Target in Hialeah. They helped me find lumbar pillows to use for the drive. Good times!

Having movers come pack the house has not been quite the magical experience I was promised. They sent only two poor guys to pack our whole house, and it took them eleven hours. They only took one 5-minute break the entire day.. Didn't even stop to eat.

Anyway, we're almost out. They're taking out the beds now. We're hoping to get on the road within an hour. I have a picture of my little plant, waiting by the window. But this internet is not fast enough to transfer it now. Later :)

Ding!

Like a well timed meal, there is little that is more satisfying to me than a series of things coming to completion at the same time. Ding! Everything is in order, all the food hits the table perfectly done and piping hot.

Similarly with a move. I get a little thrill with each box of kleenex finished in the last couple days, each jar of jam, every task completed at just the right time so there isn't a crunch. This move, getting a job offer the day before my last day at MDC exemplified this.

I am willing to put a lot of effort into making these little successes. Last weekend we had a "potluck/take stuff from our pantry" party in an effort to make sure we didn't waste too much food before the move. I planned an entire main dish of chicken just to use up a packet of soup mix. But boy was I pleased to have found a good (and truly delicious!) way to use up that little packet.

I've also been having fun using up some of our more expensive baking ingredients. With all the gluten-free cooking we do, some of the flours are expensive/hard to find so the thought of them mouldering in storage going bad is hard to handle. So this week I baked these little delights:

Gluten-Free Cherry Sour Cream Muffins. Making these muffins used up the last of our sour cream, frozen cherries, sugar, Egg Beaters, muffin cups and *almost* the last of the butter. Plus we were almost out of breakfast cereal so this prevented us from having to purchase more. Ding!

Today is our last big purging/organizing push before the movers come tomorrow. We have a TON of stuff to get through, but I'm hoping that at the end of the day everything will be ready and we'll be able to keep going with minimal stress!