Gosh, I am good at procrastinating. I feel like it was last week that I was still contemplating blogging about Christmas. Well, that time has definitely passed. So, skipping ahead 4 months and keeping everything as short and simple as I can (which is never short and simple)...
Andrew left the last day of February and drove to Little Rock, AR to start his training in the C-130. Two weeks later, the girls and I flew to Salt Lake City, UT to visit my family. Two days after we arrived we drove up to Boise, ID to visit my Grandma Sarah whom I hadn't visited in 3 years. It was a great visit even though it was a short one.
We stayed with family for 2 1/2 weeks and were scheduled to fly home Monday morning. At least, that is what I thought. As I was trying to get checked in on my flight I realized that I had booked a PM time, not AM. Instead of arriving at 11:51 AM, we were arriving at midnight. Talk about a dam bursting. I was a mess. I was already stressing because once I got home I had the whole house to pack up by myself. And, Abby had come down with Croup just the day before.
Well, I'm proud to report that I have the BEST parents in THE world. My dad booked a flight so that he could arrive a few hours before me, pick up the Durango from long term parking, and greet me once I got off the plane to help with the girls and our luggage. Talk about stress relief. I felt like I no longer had this huge burden to bear.
And low and behold, my mistake turned out to be a blessing. Not only was my daddy going to come home with me and the girls but Abby slept horribly that night. She could hardly breathe and had the worst sounding cough. I even contemplated taking her to the ER in the middle of the night. Once morning came she wasn't in quite so awful of shape but if I had booked the AM flight, we would have been driving to the airport at 5 in the morning. I believe that when I was booking my flight, Heavenly Father made me see AM instead of PM because there was no way I would have booked that flight otherwise. No way. Miracles - they are still happening.
Everything went well with our flights. The few days that my dad was in town were wonderful. The girls LOVED going to the park with him and having Grandpa push them on the swings for as long as they wanted!
When it was time to leave Del Rio I had got the house 90-95% packed. Those last few things though. They sure do fill up quite a few more boxes than you plan. We said our goodbyes to our friends and drove out the morning of April 20th. We hadn't gone far, only 45 minutes, when the tire flew off of our trailer. I called roadside assistance and after getting everything figured out I realized the guy helping me had my location wrong. Got that corrected and 3.5 hours later (from when the tire flew off) the tow showed up.
Of course, I called Andrew and was keeping him updated through the whole thing. We decided to ditch our trailer (the tow guy paid us $100 for it. cha ching) and rent a uhaul. Once we got all our stuff transferred we were back on the road. We picked up my mom (who had flown out to help me with the drive - again, BEST parents in the world!) in San Antonio 4 hours later than I was planning but hey, we were heading East!
We stopped just before Houston for dinner and gas and were back on the road, hoping to get to Beaumont, TX for the night. Well, like 15 minutes after getting back on the road we were driving through Houston but pleasantly surprised we weren't in horrible traffic. My mom was driving for this leg of our journey and all of a sudden we hear and feel a big crash! She immediately pulls over to the left side of I-10. My mom calls Andrew and I call roadside assistance thinking it was our stupid hitch that had broken. After trying to explain the damage to Andrew over the phone, Andrew asks my mom for a picture. After seeing the back end of the Durango Andrew tells my mom it looks like someone crashed into us. My mom and I then go to the back of the trailer and sure enough, someone had hit us. And then, of course, not stopped. Because really, who stops after crashing into another car!!?
I get off the phone with roadside assistance and call the police. 30 minutes later they show up. He tells us we need to get off the interstate and that the Durango will drive just fine till we get to the nearest gas station. He turns on his lights and we lead the way.
Simplified story of the night: the officer gets our info down; a good Samaritan sees us looking at our Durango at the gas station and offers to follow us for 20 miles and signal to us if anything looks bad with how the Durango is driving; we make it to Beaumont making half the time a normal drive would've taken and go to sleep at 1AM.
I got up early the next morning to get the trailer switched out. While figuring out my stuff, I loose my balance on a patch of slippery mud and drop my phone face down on the cement. My phone is shattered. I bawl my eyes out and beg God for a miracle. Phone is still shattered. I take my mom's phone and head to the uhaul place. While there I get a really bad feeling about trying to take the trailer off our hitch. I leave and return to the hotel. We all pack up (didn't take long) and get back on the road with our broken trailer. Side note: because of how the trailer was hit, the door was impossible to open so we had to live in what we had on for three days and two nights. Yum.
On our way out of Beaumont we are able to get my phone fixed for more than the stupid thing was worth but you know you can't put a price on all those thousands of pictures, so it was totally worth it. We were able to get into Hurlburt AFB lodging around 11 PM. The next morning I returned the uhaul. It took the man a good little while and a bunch of effort to open the door just enough to get all of our stuff out. After it was all unloaded he had to pound our hitch off of the uhaul trailer. He said that with the way the hitch was bent that we were crazy lucky that no one got hurt. Oh and that horrible feeling I had earlier. I'm glad I listened to it cause there was no way I was going to get another trailer onto our hitch. Like ever.
Not to get all spiritual and all that but I do want to note that my mother and I firmly believe that we were watched over by angels that day and were taken out of harms way. There is no other explanation for how the crash didn't make the trailer jack knife and the Durango not flip. We were all kept safe and had no injuries or soreness or anything of the sort. I will never forget the experience and will always be grateful to God for watching over me, my mother, and my precious babies. God is Good.
April 29th we signed for the house (I signed for Andrew). We are now homeowners!! Our beds, dressers, washer and dryer were delivered a week later. Andrew will deliver the rest of our belongings the first week of June when he is done with training at Little Rock. In the meantime, the girls and I are finding plenty to do to keep us entertained and preoccupied... ish. We still miss Daddy a ton.
Fast forward to this past week. Our Durango has been totaled. The crash bent up the entire frame of the Durango and even bent the back end of it down so that you can't see straight back out of the rear window when driving. So, two weeks after buying a house we will also be buying a new car. Annnd Andrew's jeep is getting it's transmission replaced for $2Gs tomorrow. And yet we are still doing fine financially. I am stressing quite a bit, as is Andrew, but we are doing okay. We are so blessed and so grateful for all that we have. It has been a rough six weeks but it's also been eye opening to how blessed we are. God is Good.
Kate and Abby are adjusting well to the move. They are loving the increase in space and play super sweetly together, most of the time. We go shopping quite a bit to stock up on everything that is packed up in TX. They love playing at the beach and look forward to getting our money's worth out of our new zoo membership. Church is great. People are super nice. Everything is a drive but at least we now have options! We so look forward to when Daddy comes home so we can show him all the fun things we've been doing!
