Moving

I find it hard to believe it was already a week ago that we left our beloved house in Charleston and began our crazy weekend on the road, ultimately and thankfully ending at my parents' house. What a couple of weeks it has been. 

The packing and loading all went smoothly, but moving is just awful even when it goes well. So much work. So much stuff. So much stress. Yuck. But we survived. The kids were top-notch through it all and we have some funny memories like this:

from hanging around in the empty house. All in all though, not a period I really want to dwell on. It made me sad to see our house packed up. 

But we made it and last Friday night found is in a hotel a few hours north, where we had fast-food and melting ice cream and I even painted my finger nails for the first time in six years (it didn't last long). 

Saturday took us as far as coastal Virginia to visit our really good friends and former neighbors. Sunday we drove a short way from there to visit another set of old friends. Great times had with all, and wished we could have spent more time with them everyone. 

We departed Virginia on Sunday afternoon, kids, trailer, cats and all, with the intent to once again spend the night in a hotel before finishing off the drive on Monday. But we really didn't want to schlep the kids and cats and stuff in and out of the car again, so we made the crazy decision to drive on through the night to my parents. 

The kids did sleep eventually, by I rode the whole time with a knot in my stomach watching the hours tick by and thinking we had made a terrible mistake. Traffic was awful clear till midnight. The cats were howling and the kids were sleeping restlessly, and we finally pulled in past 4:30 am. No fun. But we all grabbed a few hours of grateful sleep and it was such a blessing to have all the driving done. I don't ever want to do that again. 

This has been a busy week with lots of company and getting settled in but I am super glad to be here for a few weeks before we head out west. I haven't bought our plane tickets yet. Honestly I'm still a little in denial. But that's another story. For now it's just about enjoying the here and now.