On The Road Again

Well, friends, we have officially moved!  It was a bit of an adventure.  Monday, Oct 1, we finished packing up our cars, locked up our old apartment, realized I had left my laptop there and cried a lot, and got on the road.  (Still waiting to see if the landlord will give me back my laptop, or if they are claiming it as abandoned property.)

First thing you should know about this trip:  #1 did AMAZING!  (#2 did just a little bit better, but that is because she is just hanging out inside of my uterus, so nothing was really different about her life.)  We drove 8 hours the first day, 8 hours the second day, and 3 hours the last day.  I would say that in the car #1 cried maybe 90 min total.  That is stinkin' awesome.  I credit it mostly to her enjoyment of sleeping in the car, the advice we got from some friends to just put her forward facing for the trip (don't guilt me, we made it safe, and it made life SO much better!), and her newly discovered love of Teddy Grams.

Second fact:  The Hyatt has AMAZING hotels.  Because of a connection, we were able to get an amazing discount and stayed in the Hyatt House.  It had 2 separate bedrooms (kind of important when we have an 11 month old and people who enjoy their own space.  (Did I mention that my kind parents were with us?)  It also had a complete kitchen, that we didn't use.   But seriously, SUCH a nice room!  And that bed!  Wow.  It was amazing.  We also got to see one of my favorite people and meet her cute daughter.  The first leg of our trip was just wonderful!

Then comes day two.  Dad got a head start because he was pulling the trailer that was CRAZY full of all of our belongings.  Hod, #1 and I were all in the Mazda, and Mom was hanging out by herself, following us in the Buick.  (She kind of had to follow us, cause I had put the maps in my laptop case and that was stuck in Utah.)  We're driving around, looking at a whole bunch of nothing (though we did pass "Jesus with Corn"  It was probably the most exciting thing we saw that day.)  When suddenly my car starts feeling funny.  I couldn't figure out if the road was just really bumpy or if something was wrong.  Another car passed us, and I could tell their car wasn't being bumpy so we pulled over.  (Right as I pulled over Mom was about to call me cause she could see there was something wrong.)  We totally had a flat.  Hod was a little concerned (he's never changed a tire... or watched someone change a tire.  We need to teach him a few things.)  I wasn't worried at all.  I knew where the spare was, and sure, we had to pull about 6 things out of the car to get to it, but that's not so bad.  We got the spare, I reached for the jack.... and it wasn't there.  The lame pole that you use to make the jack work, we totally had, but the actual jack, nothing.  Mom called Dad cause he has AAA so we could get some help.  And we waited.  And waited.  And people just drove past.  And State Troopers just drove past.  (Really?  Isn't that their job, pull over and see the problem?  We just needed a jack, then we could put on the doughnut and drive the 10 miles to the next city.)  I got on the phone with a great friend and had her look up tire places in the closest city, Hod called them to make sure they had a tire for us, and we waited.  After about 2 hours of sitting on the side of I-70, I was getting really bugged!  #1 was still being amazing, pretty sure she had angels with her.  I lost it and cried.  Lame pregnancy hormones.  Then I had a great plan.  I went and took #1, and leaned against the back of the car, poking my pregnant belly out the best I could and tried to wave someone down.  Surely people would stop for a pregnant lady holding a baby, right?  WRONG!  Kansas is on my list of unkind places.  Finally a State Trooper stopped.  He was all, "Oh, yeah, I can help you change your tire".  We told him that AAA was supposedly sending someone.  Then he was all, "Oh, then I probably shouldn't help... let me find out where they are."  After he spent some time in his car we found out that they were about 20 min away.  So he left and we waited some more.  Finally the guy showed.  He had been looking for us for about an hour.  We wanted to follow him to the next town so he could show us where the tire place was, but he had to go the opposite direction for a dentist appointment.  Ok, fine.  We got on the road, got lost finding the town, got lost in the town finding the tire place, finally found them all, got a new tire and were finally back on the road.  This whole thing took over 3 hours.  That really throws off your schedule, especially when you were already loosing an hour that day because of time changes.

Dad was WAY ahead of us at this point, so I gave him directions to the fancy hotel we had for a night.  According to Priceline, it was a suite with a separate bedroom for the queen sized bed, and a queen sized hide-a-bed in the sitting room.  Also with a complete kitchen.  Finally around 10:00 we pulled in.  We were the victims of false advertising.  It wasn't two separate rooms.  It wasn't a queen sized hide-a-bed (more like a double sized piece of cardboard.)  And it wasn't a non smoking room.  Whatever.  We were all so glad to be there that we made it work.

The next day was pretty uneventful.  We drove through a ton of small cities and they were just cute.  We finally got to our apartment, signed all of our papers, 8 guys from our local congregation showed up to move us in, we discovered that our apartment was never cleaned, and we went to bed.

The next day was a flurry of unpacking, assembling things, and having a bit of fun.  I can't imagine how we would have made this without my dear parents.  Thanks again!

We've had some adventures since getting here, and I'll have to share those another day.  But we're here!  Missing family, but glad to be where the Lord wants us.

Love you all!