Settling In

More and more, as the days combine to make weeks, and we have almost been here a month I am finding that this feels like home. We expect our old house to close today and in some ways it is bittersweet. That is the home we brought Baby home to, where we settled her into this world and nursed her through meningitis, hip dysplasia, a cyst removal from her mouth and the variety of childhood illnesses. It is where Miss Pear really came into her own and was nursed after heart surgery and she grew in her roll as big sister. On the other hand it is wonderful to be out of that part of Southern CA were we never really seemed to belong even though we had a great church and friends.

But it is nice to know that the house is closing, it almost makes it easier to really launch our new lives here.

There are still boxes to unpack and things to do, but I find my mind racing ahead to planning projects and getting organized. To settling in here and restocking the pantry and other supplies that were run down.

And it is a great feeling.

Thursday Night Update

Good evening, I though I would pop in and give you the latest.

We found out this morning that we got the rental place! It was actually our second choice, but thinking about it more it appears it should have been our first choice. So when the place that turned us down called to see if we were interested we could easily say no.

I had a dentist appointment today for a cleaning and 2 fillings and officially maxed out our dental coverage that expires this month - such good timing! Now I will have new dental coverage to use!

We had supper with friends and it was great. I will miss them tremendously.

Our house is showing lots, and we have heard talk of offers, but nothing on paper yet. But that is okay, I am trusting God in this, and He has never let us down! Led us on the scenic route, yes! Let us down, never!

Thanks for all the encouraging comments, they helped tremendously!!!

Calling it a night, I can barely hold my eyes open...and it is not even 8:30!

Should have stayed in bed....

Yup, it was truly one of those days.

We found out yesterday that the offer on our house fell through, actually the buyers just backed out. As much as they raved about the house and fruit trees I guess it was not true after all.

The back up offer was a joke because they did not actually have the down payment money, it was to be gifted by a relative who in turn used the money to pay his taxes instead. So without down payment money in hand they were making offers. That just sounds kind of dishonest to me. And they stayed so long last night when they came for a "quick peak" that I ended up having to feed mu children in the car. I was a bit annoyed.

So now we are back on the market.

At least the termite inspection came in clear.

And then my husband found a great rental home for us up where we are moving to. And after a couple months with no activity another family made an offer the same day we did, and they were accepted.

We are a bit discouraged.

But here is what I know. God is fully in control, completely sovereign, and always good.

Books, Books, Books

Quick prayer request for the move. The sheer volume of books in our house is driving up the move cost estimate!

Please pray that the weight estimate would be over-estimated and that we would be able to sort through books pulling out the ones we really will not read again or use again.

A silly request, I know, but this is important to my husband so I am going to do what I can.

Middle of the Miracle

Things are rolling right along here, we listed our house so it was visible Tuesday morning, we got an offer that night and an offer last night, so we are accepting an offer tonight that is so good we are not even counter-offering, we are just saying thank you. To both the buyers and to God.

The way this whole move things is working out our crazy ambitious schedule is actually working, and I think the key reason it is working is because we have seriously prayed about it and think we are doing what God wants us to do. Because it is pretty clear to us we are supposed to move north we laid out a schedule of what we would have to do to move there in time for my husband to start is new job the last week of this month so that our health care did not lapse! And if you have been reading around here very long you know that is very important right now. As crazy as the schedule looked, it is working, and that is only by the grace of God.

Just want to be clear who gets the credit here! It has been incredible to see how God has cleared this path for us.

And I am grateful like you would not believe to be selling the house this fast because it is exhausting having it on the market! How did I do this last time for 8 months? (Oh yeah, God helped me!)

So all is going well, and things are moving right along. Just wanted to let you know the fun and miraculous latest!

Home for Sale

The "For Sale" sign went up on our lawn this morning with the MLS listing being visible for the first time this morning as well. And we had 5 showings.

It was gratifying to have 5 showings after all the work we did the past week to get ready! With all the craziness of life some things had fallen behind, and some things were just never done despite the good intentions until all of a sudden we were moving! Although I did notice that all our pictures are crooked after the earthquake in Mexicali on Sunday, so that will be a project for tomorrow (along with mopping the floors and dusting the corners of the house!)

It is sad to think of leaving this great little house and all our fruit trees, but we know it is God's plan for us so we are praying that the family who buys our house will love it as much as we did and love all the fruit trees! (We are also praying that it would sell fast and for a great price.)

Our God is AMAZING!

No, this is not a Good Friday / Easter post.

This is just because God is amazing. The way He cares for the details of our lives is incredible. Actually, incredible is not a strong enough word, but I cannot thing of one that is.

This morning as we were finishing morning reading time the phone rang. A friend of ours calling to see if we would like her to play with the girls while I worked on a project that needed to be done. Turns out my husband has today off, and we needed to paint some trim on the house. So he painted, I held the ladder (our yard is sloped), and the girls played happily! Totally a God thing the way that worked out.

The moving company called and did not freak out when I gave them my "ideal" dates for everything. They will be here Monday for a walk through/survey...right before the real estate agents arrive to do what is necessary to list our house.

Mr. Pear's trip up North to find us a place to live is all scheduled with the ideal dates and times.

Our neighbors who sold their house moved out today and the new people are moving in Mondayish so there will not be a vacant house next to us. They said the first day they listed their house they had 15 showings. I nearly fainted.

We will be playing at our other neighbors on Tuesday morning - she promised me cake. I am bribe-able that way.

There is a church in our denomination up there whose pastor gets a high seal of approval from my friend, and the pastors parents go to our church!

God is confirming in many ways that we are following the path He has for us. In our lives He has always used "coincidences" to encourage us and confirm things. Such a blessing to have that confidence!

Now I must go clean something....

So much for boring...

...remember when I said that being boring for a while would be fun?

God disagreed.

We are moving from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest.

It was official yesterday and my husband's new job starts the last week of April...in 4 weeks.

If I disappear for a while you will know why!

By the way, this is a great change for our whole family!

Work of three ladies hands...

So Mr. Pear is in North Carolina. He left Monday morning and will be returning Wednesday night. So that leaves my MIL, Miss Pear and I to our own devices in the house - always a very scary thing....

Our box count is down to three boxes and two mirror packs in the house, about 10 boxes and a crated picture in the garage.

So what is a girl to do with all these boxes and paper? Our trash company has a move in special where they bring you a dumpster so that you may recycle all your moving supplies. Our dumpster was delivered yesterday morning, and by 10AM it was very full. We even resorted to me getting the ladder and climbing in so that I could use my weight to stomp more packing paper in the open crevasses along two sides. My sweet neighbor on one side came out to chat as she was leaving to meet her mom, and did not say anything about the fact that I was indeed standing in a dumpster filled with moving boxes and paper. My other neighbor loaned us his recycling garbage bin for the week so that we could load it up with moving paper. So we are doing well.

Yesterday we also found the mystery missing kitchen box, so I made us a cake and fruit leather.

Today we are off to look for a patio table. We are hoping to have it this week for our party on Saturday...more about that in a later post!

Oh, and the Magnolia tree in the back is now pruned as well, and seeds have been ordered for my veggie garden.

We are definitely not afraid of a little hard work around here!

Ah, progress

One thing I love about our new home is the beautiful magnolia tree in the front yard. Unfortunately it is in dire need of pruning as it is rubbing against the house. I guess I should say it was rubbing against the house as we gave it a good pruning after supper!

We are definitely making progress. We found the missing box of cookbooks, and the missing bathroom box, so that was nice! Miss Pear's room is officially completely unpacked and organized with pictures on the wall! There are no boxes in the kitchen, dining room, or living room, and pictures are going up.

There is still tons to be done, but we are making progress!

Rambling all the way to coffee

I am just waiting for my coffee to be ready this morning. Our start to the morning was not our routine one. I need the car this morning, so we all got up and Miss Pear and I chauffeured Mr. Pear to work this morning. Having only made the trip once, I am very proud to say that I remembered the way there. While this may not seem like a monumental achievement, driving in southern California in a new area is tricky as none of the roads are straight, and none run north to south or east to west, unless it is just briefly. The way I learn my way around is by driving, being a passenger just does not help much, so I anticipate I will be "forced" to do the family driving for a while so I can learn my way around with the help of my navigator and walking map, Mr. Pear. If opposites attract, we are proof, I am geographically challenged, and need to constantly be referring to the map. Mr. Pear is the exact opposite - if he has been there before, even a few years ago and only once, he can get there again, and he looks a the map once, and then just drives there.

The point of that whole paragraph is that we need the car to pick up my MIL at the airport today. I kind of know how to get there as I have driven past it numerous times, but have never actually left the freeway in that area, so after reviewing the map and looking over the directions that Mr. Pear wrote out for me, I think we can do it.

Unpacking is going well. I am only missing a kitchen box, a box of cookbooks, a bathroom box, and a living room box so far. I suspect that they ended up in the garage, so looking in there will happen very shortly. I anticipate that unpacking will go much quicker with the extra set of very helpful hands that is arriving today.

Miss Pear is still under the weather and sneezing big gooey sneezes, and is lethargic in the morning, often just lying down to suck her thumb a little bit and rub her eyes. She finally slept through the night again last night - she has been waking up terribly congested. I am on the mend too, I just cannot seem to shake a very low grade fever that only bothers me when I move around too much - like unpacking 9 boxes of books yesterday.

I have found a few interesting things I had forgotten about as I unpacked boxes. One thing was the employee cookbook from where I once worked. It was assembled for a United Way fund raiser, but unfortunately no one really knew that they were collecting recipes, so it is a rather slim volume, and I did not submit anything, for which I feel very bad, but did not know about it. However, as I flipped through it, I found the famous mushroom recipe! One of the managers brought this to every potluck, and if you wanted any, you had to get there very early! Everyone raved over it! And once I read the recipe I was a little bit annoyed with myself as I should have been able to figure out the THREE ingredients in it! We will be making it for our open house party to celebrate our new house, Miss Pear's birthday, and the Lord's blessings and provision in our lives on June 30. So if it is as good as I remember it, I will post it for you!

One thing about this move, I have lots of material for WFMW, Frugal Fridays, and Kitchen Tip Tuesdays. I basically just use these fun little things so that I remember to share with you all the things that make my life easier in a more spaced out manner with some variety!

We had the ant guy out yesterday to deal with our ant problem - our flower beds around the house were infested, and they were making inroads into the house! We saw immediate improvement, and are thrilled! I have a lot of tips for dealing with ants, after all, I have lived in southern California for 8 years, but these ones were too much for me!

And just out of curiosity, did any one read the Word Studies that I posted last week? There were no comments, so I was not sure, and if nobody liked them, I will not bore you with other stuff like that.

We are home

We are finally in our new home, and we love it!

Last Tuesday we finally closed on our town home.

Wednesday was particularly eventful. We closed on our house, the movers packed us up, and I became an auntie! On Tuesday my sister-in-law (husband's brother and his wife) was taken to the hospital to be induced, after 12 hours nothing had happened, so Wednesday morning she gave birth to their son via C-section. My sweet nephew was 10lbs, 1 oz, and 21 inches of pure cuteness! Everyone is healthy and doing well.

Thursday we were packed up and moved to our new home. It was a very hot and long day. The movers were great. Our new neighbors are great! The house is great. The only thing that is not great was the condition the house was left in. I think the previous owner fired his cleaning crew as soon as we had an agreement and then cleaned nothing...for 4 weeks. I have never seen such filth. We went and bought new toilet seats that day, it was the only way, and I cleaned the bathroom for an hour before we could even shower in it. We have done the initial clean almost everywhere (there is just one bathroom that is still off limits), but I want to get in and do a deep clean everywhere!

Friday we unpacked boxes, got our cable set up so we could have internet to see pictures of our nephew, and had the gas guy come and inspect appliances (he hooked up our gas drier too).

Saturday Miss Pear and I woke up with very bad colds, but we persisted and unpacked more boxes - I finally found our plates and glasses that afternoon. Friends of ours came up to bring us stuff the movers would not pack, and to take us out for supper as a housewarming gift! It was very sweet!

Sunday was spent feeling the ick and unpacking boxes. We have a list of 3 churches in the are to check out, but were too sick to leave the house.

Monday was great - I was sick as all get out, and nothing got done, but we got to see Mr. Pear before he left for work, and his commute was only 10 minutes each way!

Today we are still feeling the ick, but I am very thankful that I can breath again (something I have not been able to do for 2 days even with taking Sudafed!). I spot cleaned the carpet in the living room (but need to really clean the carpets), and we plan on attacking Miss Pear's closet after nap time.

Fortunately my MIL is coming down on Thursday to help, so we will be cleaning, unpacking, organizing, and washing carpets like women possessed! We also plan on painting two bathrooms just so they finally feel clean, even thought they already are.

So basically, I just popped in to say we are in our new home, and surrounded by boxes (but are making progress!), and it is wonderful....

Moving Week - Take 2

So here we are again, another Sunday night, another declaration that this will indeed be moving week!

For supper tonight we had Asian Beef Kabobs from Dream Dinners, rice and carrots - If you have the recipe for the Asian beef kabobs (marinade of hoisin sauce, ginger, garlic and a bunch of other stuff please, I beg you, share it with us - Miss Pear actually ate beef and asked for more, again and again and again! A miracle!

We took a cooler load of fridge and freezer stuff over to a friend who has an extra fridge in their garage this afternoon. She is actually going to deliver it to us next weekend! We are thrilled!

We organized stuff and had great intentions of doing lots of preparations, but we were tired. This big girl bed transition is not going as hoped. Miss Pear was up for two and a half hours off and on during the night (we put her back to bed, crawled into bed, just dozed off, and she was up again). Sigh. Her favorite words to greet me with at these times are either, "Mommy, I need you!" or "Mommy, I missed you." How am I supposed to resist all that cuteness!

So, getting back on track, our plan for the week. God willing of course!

Monday - herd open me first stuff to central locations, herd all Miss Pear's books and toys to her room, pray like crazy. And get times from movers.

Tuesday - Movers arrive to pack us up. Miss Pear and I go to friends house to play for some period of this organized chaos. Out for supper, and probably lunch too. Pray lots.

Wednesday - the BIG DAY! A big truck pulls up to our little town home and all our stuff gets packed into it. I anticipate Miss Pear standing on the front deck endlessly fascinated! And we move. The movers have promised that Miss Pear's room will be last on the truck and first off. We have excellent movers! Again, I anticipate out for lunch and supper (or ordering in pizza). Try to remember to not freak out, and pray instead.

Thursday - reality of our new home. Theoretically our cable will be hooked up this day. I unpack like a crazy woman and continue to pray like crazy.

Friday - I have to report to the DMV for my license renewal. They say that they want me to take a vision test (clearly they have not talked to my optometrist who will tell them that my eye site is annoyingly perfect). The truth of the matter is that when I got my driver's license I did not have a social security number because they refused to give me one because I did not have a driver's license, so I think the DMV would like to have that little tidbit of information. Remind me to tell you the saga of my social security number one day - it is kind of like Abbot and Costello.

So it is moving week.

I will be posting a special something on Monday (about 14 posts long) that I worked on for you - actually I just worked on getting it into blogger for you, I already had it in a Word document.

Then I anticipate a bloggy break until next week.

Not so bad...

Without giving away all the gory details, our buyer was treated horribly by her mortgage broker and lender. Now that I have the whole story, I feel really bad for her! She did everything she could to babysit this, and it seems to me that they were less than upfront with her when they realized they had a problem. The lender was missing a piece of paper our HOA could supply in about 5 minutes, if they had bothered to ask. Our escrow person has a gal she works with over there all the time, had we know this on Monday when it seems like they did, or even Tuesday when it was confirmed to be a problem, we could have fixed it, and the dates would have stayed firm.

The only reason I am bringing this up once again, besides the fact I want to admit that even though the buyer was not in town when she should have been, I was wrong about her being part of the guilt in this and that our buyer is now in a tough situation.

When she called her movers to reschedule they said they could not reschedule, so they would have to cancel. She is now stuck moving herself. She is so stressed she was almost in tears today!

So she is in deep trouble.

We are just inconvenienced. Our movers happily rescheduled us, and even expressed sympathy that we had to move our dates as they know we are very anxious to move!

It is surprising the attitude adjustment that comes with a perspective check.

While I am less than thrilled that Mr. Pear has to do three extra 160 mile round trip commutes, it definitely seems better than having to suddenly be moving ourselves!

Why is it that I need a perspective check to have a good attitude about trials? Why can I not just tell myself it could be worse, trust God and go on?

So I have decided, there will be no more whining on this blog about moving fiascos, because as I reread my posts, it sounds like whining to me.

So I leave you with this parting question:

Did I tell you that the Lord has blessed us with a string of miracles that leads up to the big miracle of us actually buy a house (a house!) in Southern California???? This is a huge miracle! And did I mention that my family is all safe and healthy? The Lord has blessed us richly.

Oh good...

...further torture!

So it turns out that the piece of paper that the buyers loan people needed is something we have in our filing cabinet, that our fabulous escrow person could have gotten in 5 minutes, if they had just been honest with us.

If they had just been honest with us the dates would not have slipped...

...oh yes, they would have because our buyer was not even in town! She had not even flown in!

I was shocked and furious!

Apparently our escrow person read her the riot act!

So today she will be in town signing documents, but we are not closing until Monday because it messes us up. And actually cannot be done because of conditions our buyers lender has, so that works good for us.

However, to further inflict pain on us, she wants to do her walk through today, seeing she is in town and all....

I think we will be going for a walk and letting our agent handle things.

It is clear if you walk into our house that we are Christians, and I am not convinced that I can behave in a way that honors the Lord for a prolonged discussion, so rather than dishonor the Lord, we are going for a walk.

Please excuse me...

...while I bang my head on my desk.

We are not moving this week because the lender for the buyer of our town home made a mistake, which would have been caught if the buyer had been following up with her lender like we were.

Kind of toasted our anniversary celebrations....

But we are still going out tonight for supper to celebrate our 8th anniversary.

New moving plan:

Thursday (tomorrow) - all documentation for the buyer at escrow
Friday - buyer signs all documentation
Saturday and Sunday - continue t0 wait patiently
Monday - close on town home so that on
Tuesday - close on house and get packed up
Wednesday - take possession and move.

The part that stinks is that I had perfectly run down our fridge, so now I have to go buy groceries. I mean, we are out of cheese! This is a calamity in Miss Pear's world!

So the surprise I was going to post today will be delayed until Monday.

A sound mind - yes please!

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7

Well, we are down to the wire on this moving business, and we begin signing paperwork today. We are very excited, and a bit overwhelmed. I find myself thinking of all the things that could possibly go wrong!

Of course, lack of sleep is not helping. Miss Pear does not have the hang of her big girl bed at night yet, and keeps springing out of it, and we keep escorting her back, repeat ad nauseum. I am trying very hard to remain patient as she was already kind of off kilter before the bed switch with all the talk of moving and preparing, so this was the final straw for her, but we are tired!

We are using the big girl bed without rails as we did not have them yet, we have placed a pillow on the floor for a soft landing, and the bed is very low (special toddler setting). She has fallen out of bed twice, and both times we sprang out of bed and ran in there, and she was already snuggling into the pillow, asleep. So clearly she is fine.

Interestingly enough, we are having no trouble at nap time! I am thankful. I don't understand, but I am thankful.

I almost have my special surprise ready to post on Wednesday, just a little bit of tweaking to the introductory post and I am done. I do hope that you enjoy it!

Updates

Good Evening, and it is good. Miss Pear is settling into her new bed, and it does not take me an hour and a half to get her to sleep, suddenly last night is was half an hour! And tonight might be less. Of course, she keeps asking to pray, and last night as I was praying thank you things, she was saying thank you too. Tonight she said, "Thank you, Lord, amen." All on her own. I almost cried. (Or laughed because it sounded more like "tank you Lode ......... anen.")

Miss Pear is sick today - lethargic with a bit of a fever, we are hoping she will feel better after a good night's sleep as tomorrow is her 2nd birthday!

And the last update is about our insurance for our new home. Thank you so much for praying with us, we did find someone who would insure us, and then we have a year to look around and see if that is who we want to stick with, but we needed something as a requirement to close escrow!

I do not think I posted it yet, so here is our moving schedule:

June 6 -- Happy 8th Anniversary to us!

1. Get hair cuts in the morning
2. Close escrow to sell our town home
   
3. Go out for celebratory supper at our favorite Italian restaurant that we are going to miss so much
   

June 7

1. Movers arrive in the morning to box us up - I provide the special instructions (like open me first boxes, and that Miss Pear's room is to be the last on the truck and the first off)
2. Close escrow to buy our house
3. Play at Miss Pear's best friend's house in the morning so that we are away from the chaos.
4. Go out to a local hamburger joint that is excellent with kids, but is a sit down restaurant, and can manage Miss Pear's peanut and potato allergies.
5. Lose all internet access as they pack everything.

June 8

1. Large moving truck arrives to take all our stuff - I anticipate that Miss Pear will be VERY interested in this as she likes pointing to cars, trucks, planes, helicopters, and pretty much everything that moves. She was enchanted when we were at Fed Ex / Kinkos to fax something and the Fed Ex guy arrived in his truck to take boxes away!
2. All possessions on properties change
3. We, and all our stuff, move to our new home.

June 8 - 29 unpack and get organized

June 30 - Housewarming and 2nd Birthday BBQ at our place - nothing like a little motivation!

I am preparing something that I think is very special to share on Wednesday with you, it has taken me 14 posts to get it from a Word document into Blogger. And for a hint, it goes with my WFMW post today.....

What I have learned by having our house on the market....

(Our town home, at least it is ours for 2 more weeks)

In two weeks, exactly, a crew of movers will be here putting all our stuff in boxes, so it seemed an appropriate time to post this, because after being on the market since September, we learned an awful lot....

1. God has a sense of humor (okay, I knew this before, but I have a new appreciation for it).

2. If you want people to come see your house, get 10 projects on the go so that you are in a bit (or a huge, gargantuan, did you get that name of that tornado) of a mess - guaranteed to work!

3. Buy lots of toilet bowl cleaner - people will treat you bathroom like a public restroom (at least I am presuming they are better behaved at home....)

4. It is helpful to have a good cleaning schedule and be faithful in following it.

5. God always meets me in my disappointment.

6. A microwave is a great place to store baking.

7. If you finish the drink in the jug, it is perfectly okay to put the clean, empty jug back in the fridge to hide it when showing your home.

8. My swiffer is my friend.

9. A relatively fine mesh bag is a great way to store tub toys so that they are not all over the tub.

10. If you want people to come see your home, just get sick.

11. It is really a good thing to make your bed first thing every morning - not just a compulsion I have!

12. There are some real estate agents that push all your buttons, but be nice to them, they will be advising the potential buyer of your home.

13. Physical inspections are a good thing, but don't take them personally when the buyer of your house asks for whiny nit-picky things! It is worth it to go buy a tube of calking just to build some good will.

14. If you want people to come see your home, tear a couple rooms apart for an in-depth cleaning and they will be right over!

15. If you microwave is full, store baking or dirty dishes in your oven.

16. God is ever faithful, and can be completely trusted.

17....and He is there when you cry out in frustration too, and listens and soothes....

18. God's timing is perfect.

Meals for Moving Part 1

I decided to do it, I decided to prepare meals ahead of time and move them with us so that it is easier for us. However, I do not have time to do a massive cook in the next two weeks, so on Friday I went to Cena To Go, a make and take meal place, to assemble 6 meals for 6 people, which ended up being 12 meals for our family of three.

The six entrees I selected from their monthly menu are:

1. Authentic Chicken Enchiladas
   
2. Beef Greek Gyros with Cucumber Sauce
3. Chicken & Smoked Gouda in Puff Pastry
4. Chicken Parisien
   
5. Classic London Broil
6. Lime Grilled Chicken with Sour Cream

And I confess, I grabbed a bag of Raspberry and White Chocolate Chunk scones from their freezer.

This was my second trip to Cena To Go. And once again I was completely impressed by the incredibly high standard of cleanliness and food handling. While they must maintain professional food handling standards, as someone who is familiar with those standards I can say that they go above and beyond.

When you arrive with your cooler in hand, they quickly greet you and offer to help you with your cooler. They get you organized and settled by discussing your menu with you, offering you lemonade, scones, and coffee, getting you your apron, and showing you around. As this was my second trip there, the owner recognized me, and we talked about what I had selected.

The store I go is booked solid evenings and weekends, but is very quiet during the day, so at the time slot I went, I was the only one there. Sometimes this results is either poor service, or feeling like you are being watched like a hawk! Neither one happened. While I was assembling my meals, Joan, the owner, was doing her work and chatting, and Michelle, who works there, was doing her work and chatting. While we were all chatting and working, I no sooner finished at a work station and it was immediately cleaned! Questions about recipes were quickly and expertly answered. When I took the last label because I divided my puffs into three meals rather than two, labels were quickly produced so I could label my meal. When I forgot to put my sour cream in cups to take with me, and had moved on to the next station, it was done for me.

The recipes I chose all smelled delicious when I was making them, and they provide an incredibly high quality of ingredients, particularly the meat!

It is fun to assemble your meals when everything is prepped for you and all right there, and you are forbidden from cleaning up after yourself! It took me an hour and a half to assemble my meals, and there was no preparation or real planning or clean-up required of me! I showed up, assembled, put meals in my cooler, came home, and unloaded my cooler into the freezer.

I also appreciated that both times I was there they quickly offer to help me to the car with my cooler.

This was my second trip there, and I am very confident that once again, each meal I have put in the freezer for my family will be delicious and healthy for us. I love that I can adapt the recipes for my family by skipping things and even doing substitutions for allergies.

I love that I will be able to quickly provide healthy meals for my family while still going about the business of moving! I love that there will be no chance for us to fall into the "eating out trap" that is a weakness for us.

I was very pleased with both my food from and experience at Cena-To-Go, and would very highly recommend them. From a price perspective I can certainly make cheaper meals, but when you need help, it is definitely cheaper and healthier than eating out, and than buying prepared food at the supermarket. It would also be great if you were trying to begin preparing food in advance for your family in either a Once a Month cooking fashion, or just a couple meals here and there as if you pay attention, they are teaching you the basics.

I am only disappointed that there is not a Cena To Go near where we are moving, it would be a special hour and a half trip to come back here. But maybe we can plan a girls morning out....