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07.17.2010 Day Two

Nature and Embroidery-RoadTrip 5 Comments

First of all, I want to thank you all SO VERY MUCH for your prayers and well-wishes for travel safety. God not only answered, but He answered fast. We started out the morning getting the trailer light problem fixed. I had prepared myself for the worst, but y’all we pulled right up to the correct mechanic shop (a miracle in itself considering I scribbled directions down half asleep) and they fixed the problem in ten minutes flat. The girls and I never even got out of the car! (It was just a blown fuse–thank you Lord no new trailer was required. I may have just started walking back home if they’d asked us to re-load :))

Next we went to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

Pace’s one request for this road trip was to see some dinosaurs. Her request was granted, but I think maybe a little too well. She was pretty scared the whole time we were in “their world”…even Dapples wasn’t her normal independent self, when faced with these gigantic creatures in the semi-darkness.

The girls said their favorite part was the Barbie exhibit. The got to design outfits and walk the catwalk:

They also rode a 90-year-old carousel,

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And played rock-star right next to Elvis’ motorcycle.

Jeremiah and I did a lot of ear-to-ear grinning, just observing their intense excitement over each new discovery.

At 2pm we were pulling out of the museum and Pace asked how far we had to go. Jeremiah’s reply was hysterically sobering: “Ok girls, we are going to drive the same distance as Birmingham to Dothan, back to Birmingham, then back to Dothan AGAIN!” We then proceeded to calculate the rest of the trip through questions like, “Are we back to Birmingham yet?” “How long before we start BACK to Dothan?”

It was a long haul through nothing but Illinois corn fields. Beautiful in a lot of ways. It seems the small-time farmer is still alive and well out here. Each field contains some little white farmhouse that we delighted in picking out and rejoicing over. We saw a thunder storm raging in the distance. More lightning up in the clouds–and contained–than I’d ever seen. It looked like a warring pack of demons, fighting to break through the sun-setting horizon.

We did drive thirty miles in the wrong direction at one point yesterday. Jeremiah and I decided that it was both of our faults…and thus were able to not spend too much time sulking.

Got to go now. Lots and lots of miles to travel today!
07.16.2010 The Journey Begins

Nature and Embroidery-RoadTrip 9 Comments

I could write a very humorous book about all it took for our family to officially begin our journey West. Despite the lost storage keys, trips to the DMV, power outages, and MULTITUDINOUS trips to a lovely U-HAUL location called “Backyard Treasures,” we managed to pull out of Dothan only one day behind our (already-pushed-back-once-by-choice) date.

That last parenthetical note occurred because Jeremiah decided he might want to be in at least one of the girls’ rehearsal dinner video pictures–at the beach as a child. And, since Dothan is only an hour and a half from some of the most beautiful beaches on earth….And since they may soon be covered in oil…And since our friends who have been in Vermont doing residency for the past five years invited us…we took one last journey down:

Then, after that fun, we began the fiasco of organizing and loading (for the 3,756th time) a trailer. We reached a low point last night, when we realized at around 8pm that it would be pointless to begin our journey at the weary state we’d reached. So, we decided (against our pride and our families’ jokes) that we would just start bright and shiny this morning.

We went to bed defeated, but awoke on the farm to something pretty amazing:

Little Hope, the horse I like to ride at the farm, had her long-anticipated baby boy.

He was so beautiful and sweet and smart, we could hardly leave–still 🙂

And a successful birth felt like just the right way to begin such a life-altering journey.

At 8:30 am on July 15th, we pulled out of the driveway. SIXTEEN hours later–at 12:30 am on the 16th we finally arrived HERE–tucked away in a hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana. We had LOTS of lil’ stops and good-byes between Dothan and Nashville, but each one was sweet. The girls were pretty perfect, and we never even had to turn on a DVD player…It can’t last long can it :)? This is their first time to ever stay in a hotel–perhaps that’s why Jeremiah let us stay somewhere that I’m willing to let my arms make contact with the comforter 😉 He normally likes to build my immunities during our hotel adventures.

Besides the fact that we discovered, as dusk settled on us, that the running lights on our U-Haul didn’t work…leaving us with no choice but to drive the last 200 miles with our flashers blinking, things are going well. Pray we don’t have to wait forever for a repairman to come fix our lights in the morning. Pray even harder that we don’t have to UNLOAD AND RELOAD THIS SLAM-JAM-PACKED-FULL TRAILER.

Still smiling after Day 1. Mainly thankful to have our little family all together…Good-short-night.
07.08.2010

Love and Marriage-Family 12 Comments

Jeremiah takes his boards tomorrow morning….

He has been extremely diligent to study,

So we’ve been extremely diligent in staying out of his way.

It’s been hard though.

No seriously, I know these pictures look like we’re having the time of our life with my Dad

And Taylor

But really, we’ve been missing Jeremiah really, REALLY bad

And trying to vent the missing towards being proud of hard he works,

Instead of angry about only being allowed to speak to him while he is putting food into his mouth (not really…but sort of :))

I was against coming to Dothan while he studied for these boards…I was worried I would spend three weeks feeling like I was in everybody’s way.

Ummmm, I may be in their way, but when you get to do things like this after dinner, it’s hard to care!

So don’t feel too sorry for us, living with our personal belongings strewn in every house, vehicle, storage shed, and horse trailer across the tri-state area.

We miss Jeremiah, but we’re pretty happy.

I’d love a prayer for success for my labor-loaded husband, if the Spirit moves you 🙂