This Trip

Well, here we are.

The drive was less stressful than expected.

We left Woodstock, Georgia Tuesday, Nov. 27th at around 5:15pm.   Our time table was all flipped because the loaders were a lot slower than promised.

There was the passing of Trent to neighbors to babysit on the fly.  And trying to make sure the midget wasn't squished like a fly wandering around the house.

Nora coming home from preschool to find her room packed up, first excited then panicked to find all her shoes packed!  Three pairs packed in the luggage was just not going to be enough.  Mmmmm, I have a shoe diva on my hands.

We had a kerfluffle with the kitty cage not fitting in Rich's car how we thought.  Ooops.  Funnier, we had a conversation two days prior about testing it out.  We had not executed the plan.

And so began our journey.

Rich had meticulously mapped our entire route across the country.  Near destinations with hotels if we got tired early in the late afternoon.  Long destinations if we wanted to burn some midnight oil.  From the start we were leaving about 4 hrs later than anticipated so we had to punt on the first hours of travel.

Atlanta, like most large cities, is a commuter nightmare.  After the emotional toll of two packing and loading days we would lose our minds in stop and go traffic.  We opted to go north to Nashville, instead of west towards Memphis.

Both us were powered only by adrenaline that was overriding the exhaustion.  I likened it to giving birth, you are so tired afterward but can't sleep for hours caught in the excitement of it all.

The kids behaved most of the time.  There were fights about who was holding the DVD player or touching something, but hey that can happen on a normal day in our house.

The lights of the city fascinated at night.  Lulled into a state of peace by the twinkle of lights and promise of sleep we rolled into Nashville.

Our thoughts the next morning were only of getting on the road.  Get the kids dressed, get breakfast, find the cat in the hotel room.  Secure cat in cage.  Pack all the electronics and travel hoopla up.  Away we go.

Ring, ring,,,''Yes?''  (I need to mention that I was in my car with the kids, Rich had the cat in his car.  We drove tandem across the country)

Rich, ''Loki has escaped.''

Me, ''what?"

Rich, "Well, I looked back to talk to her and isn't in the cage.  And what's freakier is I didn't hear her get out!"

Me. "Where is she in the car?"

Rich. "I'm pretty sure shes squished under the passenger seat."

Me: ''Ok, she probably feels safe there.  Loki and the great houdini escape.  Ahh.....tick that one off the crazy adventure list.''

And so started located Loki in the car before making a well thought out car exit.

I spent the rest of the morning listening to Toy Story on repeat, trying to counteract it with some Andrea Bocelli in the front seat.  Occasionally, I would be told to turn my music down please, ''we can't enjoy the movie''.  Sigh......background noise of my life, children's cartoons.

In contrast, Rich was listening to ''Lord of the Rings'' book on cd.  Sweet necture of mental driving bliss that it is for him.

We stopped in Arkansas for lunch at a McDonald's.  Blech!  But they had an awesome playground.  We stayed for 1.5 hrs to get the wiggles out of the kids.  They were behaving so well, almost angelic.  The memo about no craziness, no whining, no screaming being allowed had somehow gotten translated.  They laughed, they played, they were in awe of the new landscapes.  Nora cheered with excitement as we crossed state lines.

Mommy and daddy just tried to focus on the road and not think about how much farther we had to go.

We put our sights on Oklahoma City, mental braced for a long long afternoon and night.  Rich's matrix of travel had OKC as the stopping point the second day of travel.  Sheer determination was going to get us back on schedule.  We wanted to make a point to ourselves, that we could do this.  Some people suggested that we were crazy for driving in two different cars and we were going to prove them wrong.

That it CAN be done, you just have to be ready for twists and turns in the road.

(story continued in another post, must cook dinner)

Pause

And now there will be a brief pause in blogging due to unpacking the 13,900lbs of stuff we moved across almost 2400 miles.....back in a few days with tales of our venture.