The Great Trip to the Deep South

This week I've been packing up, moving out of Arizona and starting my road trip to Alabama.

First, I gathered a few bare essentials from Trader Joe's (I'll be living 2.5 hours from the closest one) and the local Mexican food store:

It's possible I've gone overboard, but you can never have too much mac and cheese, right?

Next step was to pack the large steel box with all my stuff and let someone else transport it across the country.

Andy demonstrated the size of an empty cube....

...and then dutifully packed all my stuff in there!

A few days later, after some tears, I packed up my little car and headed up to Flagstaff to pick up my mother to begin our roadtrip. First we hit Albuquerque and stayed with my friends Autumn and Enmanuel, who put us up and style and then sent us on our way Saturday morning (only after answering the state question, green or red?, at breakfast). Saturday was a long day, when we drove from Albuquerque, NM to Austin, TX, about 700 miles. But we had loving arms to greet us there, where we stayed with my Granny (my mother's mom). Sunday morning we had lots of visitors, including the Tuckers: Peter, Trish and their adorable daughter, Francis.

Francis is learning to walk on her own and is quite enamored with being mobile.

Tomorrow we move on to Dallas to visit with more friends and then Arkansas, where we will be visiting an old family home on Tuesday....