Preparations to move are always stressful. What do I do with this and will we have room for that?  Maybe we should have a garage sale and lighten our load! My wife said this to me in Denver, Co. I wasn’t working full time so it was decided I would clean out the garage, and the house stuff that we didn’t need and sell it. I asked, “What do you want me to sell”? She said, “Well anything we don’t need”. Allrighty then, now we get to have some fun! If it didn’t move, I sold it

“Do you want to buy this bolt”?  OK, out the door it went! Wouldn’t you know we needed it a couple weeks later and my wife said, “I knew I had some of those in the garage”. I sold it honey. Down to Ace Hardware to buy some more! Of course I sold it for $.25 and paid $ 4.00 for a new one.  Do you know how many strange people there are out there?

I went to the Mexican Consulate to find out what we had to do to be legal getting across the border to Mexico. The office opens at 9:00 a.m. and at 8:30 the line was around the corner! “Can I take a U-Haul truck across the border”? NO. “Well how about a U-Haul trailer”. NO.

Another garage sale. We are getting pretty skinny by now. I figured I would try a trailer and if they wouldn’t let us across I would find a place to store the stuff and have a commercial mover take it across the border.

We made inventory lists of everything as directed by the Consulate (Spanish and English) and headed out. We had a pickup and a car. Our daughter rode with me and my wife’s sister with her. Twenty four (24) hours later we got to Lukeville, Az. When we got to the border, the border patrol asks me a few questions and my daughter was terrified. She is 5’4”, sitting straight up in the seat and scared to death. Got through there OK, and now it is Mexico’s turn. “Dad, they have guns and they don’t look too friendly”. “Relax they will just check us out and I have everything inventoried”. Well, we got the green light. Whew! Wife behind us also got the green light!  So much for the inventoried lists!

It is now getting dark and it is about 1.25 hours to Peñasco. I don’t remember where our condo is that we have rented, so I let my wife lead the way. We were ready for a toddy, food and bed! Gretchen Ellinger (our real estate lady) is going to meet us at the condo with the keys. We unload some items from the car and “WHAT no electricity in the condo”? Darker than the inside of a paper sack in there, but we found some candles so we could at least see to get to bed. Gretchen assures us the lights will be on in the morning and offers to put us up at another place for the night…after traveling 12 hours that day – we sure don’t want to travel any further! Gretchen took us to her favorite taco stand and fed us. Bless her heart! NO power the next day and Gretchen is really upset with the power company – they were supposed to have this turned on two days ago! I walked around the condo area and found the meter. The breaker was off! Flipped the breaker and all is well.

I have met many super nice people here who have helped us so much, that I would like to take the time to “THANK” them all. In this article I am trying to get across that it may not be easy to move here, but it is all worth it because this is God’s country and I feel blessed to be able to be here and enjoy it. The food is good, the beer is cold, the people are fantastic, and it is safe! So com