First thing we had to do after pulling away from my mom's house Monday morning was get Natalie's glasses replaced at Wal-Mart. We have had to do this no less than 6 times in the year that she's had them. I was grateful it was a quick trip in and out of there and that it happened when we were near a Wal-Mart.
We drove to Colorado that day and it was a beautiful drive. We spent the night in Aurora (suburb of Denver) at a nice hotel thanks to my last minute Priceline skills.
At this point, Emmy was missing home the most. She kept asking to go to her house.
When she got tired she would put her blanket over her head and take a little nap.
I can't even believe these words are coming out of my mouth, but I kind of like driving and driving and driving. We discovered Kansas is a looooong state.
We spent the next night at a Sheraton in downtown Kansas City. Don't ask how Nate parked the U-Haul in their parking garage.
The kids did so well for being in the car for so many hours. I am also so grateful no one got sick, they slept well at the hotels, and the car did great.
Our favorite stop along the way was in our old home of Hilliard, OH where Nate attended medical school. We spent a wonderful couple of hours with Karen, our neighbor and sweet friend from the ward. We sure miss her.
She was so sweet to have a little box of trinkets ready to keep Emmy busy while we talked.
I was glad the kids got to see Karen again to jog their memories of her. They drew pictures for her while we were there that she put on her fridge.
Our old apartment...Jansen was 11 months old when we moved in.
Columbus is also dear to our hearts because that is where Noah's memorial is. We stopped by and cleaned things up a bit and spent some time there.
Natalie was very sweet about the whole thing and wanted to leave some things she'd gathered for him on the grave.
The last stretch! From Ohio we would be driving to Maryland.
Maryland is so beautiful. I think it's fitting that this picture has a church in it, there are a lot of different ones here. We counted 12 different places of worship just on the drive to our church.
I had been feeling really great about things up to this point. Pretty relaxed and at ease. The closer we got to our house, the more nervous I got. My stomach was turning and I recognized that "homesick" feeling creeping in that has plagued me so many times in my life. When we got to the house I was tired and stressed from the whole road trip. The kids had fun chasing fireflies as we moved things from the car into the house. It smelled very strongly of gasoline inside. Luckily, we ended up figuring out and fixing that problem. I also kept finding little spiders. I was starting to get pretty upset and probably had a good cry at some point, I don't remember. We spent the night on an air mattress, kids on the floor, and Emmy in the pack and play. I did not want to be there.
2 comments:
I loved the recap and seeing all the pictures. I know the feelings you are describing all too well. Somehow, I always end up loving the places we live, no matter how much it hurts in the beginning. Don't you wish we could live by each other? Now that would be awesome.
this comment really refers to this post and the one after. isn't it funny how most of the really wonderful things in life come right alongside something really hard. like babies, for instance. pregnancy, birth, newborns--the whole thing is so hard and so wonderful at the same time. i am sorry for the hard stuff and excited for this wonderful adventure you are having at the same time. hopefully the hard stuff will pass pretty quickly and this year will be full of amazing experiences. i look forward to the future blog posts about it all :)
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