Catching up...June!

We hit the ground running in Texas, finding fun stuff to do admist the unpacking!

Our dearest friends Sanda, Brett, Mason and Ethan were our first visitors. They came and stayed with us for a weekend and we had a blast catching up with them. It's just awesome being so close to them again that we can get together often!

We also got ourselves a Y membership. We've never lived close enough to one before, but now we have one just down the street. It's fairly affordable as gyms go, and the best part is that Emilee and Trevor are allowed to work out with us (most other gyms do not allow kids or charge a crazy extra amount of money for your 16+ year old). So we've been able to go to the gym as a family...and yes, the kids kick our behinds stamina-wise lol!

We've also been hitting the water for some boating. A little in the lakes, and a little in the ocean.

The city of Kemah does Friday night fireworks during the summer, so we've been heading over there as often as we can. We anchor in the bay, take snacks and drinks, and enjoy an amazing fireworks display.

Galveston Island is also close by and that means some beach time. Though it's nothing like the California Coast, it's still a nice day trip to get out of the house and play in the water.

Clam hunting together...

Splashing in the surf

4th Leg -- HOME!

Our last leg was probably the most stressful. The first 4 hours of eight were more white-knuckle type driving. The severe weather in Oklahoma extended south into Texas and continued that morning. I could barely see the road most of the time. Luckily I was following Joshua towing the trailer. I kept my eyes on that bike rack (which was all I could make out alot of the time) and just prayed that he stayed out of the ditch so that I did too. Finally on the other side of Dallas the skies cleared off. We pulled into our new neighborhood that afternoon and excitedly showed our monkeys our new home! (Tour of the house to come in a later post!)

Since I didn't show this at the start of our moving story, I thought I'd post these now...a few of the moving truck pictures. Here's the packers/movers loading up the truck in Boise. The company did a fantastic job this time. After our disaster of lost/abandonded/broken belongings last move, we got the star treatment this time. The owner of the company came and oversaw everything this time.

The big trick of this move was getting our boat down to Texas. I had my doubts, but they pulled it off...here's how you pack a boat into a moving truck!

Our beloved "Pink and Paid For" ready and waiting...

Have flatbed tow truck come and lift the boat to truck deck level...

Carefully push boat into truck (because there was less than two inches clearance on the wheels...

"Pink" all tucked in and secured for the long ride to Texas!

The moving truck pulling away from the curb in Boise...

And everything safely arrived and being unloaded in Texas! (Not sure if you can see it, but Carter has a frog in his hand that he packed around for HOURS while the men were unloading lol!)

We were very blessed that Joshua's company provides us with "packers" so I'm not tasked with getting everything boxed. The moving company just comes in and in one day POOF, my house goes from normal to completely boxed! It's nuts! Anyway, as much as this is wonderful, you never know what went into which box...and you end up pulling some pretty crazy combinations out of boxes (like a shoe, a dog toy and some kitchen dishes). Well this was my favorite box. It was one of the last ones done with odds and ends in it. I'd bought a few boxes of baking soda to put in the appliances so they didn't sour during the move and one was leftover. These moving guys ummmm, usually aren't of the highest education (albiet they are SUPER nice!)...so this is how the last box was labeled...

3rd Leg

The third leg of our trip turned out to be our longest. We were supposed to stop in Kansas, but we decided to power all the way through into Oklahoma City making it about a 700 mile day. Like I said...loooong day...so that meant NAPTIME for Carter!

We did stop in Kansas and stretch our legs at the F14 that is parked near the side of the highway. Joshua loves this kind of thing and the kids soaked up all the stuff Daddy was teaching them about this awesome plane.

As we got near Oklahoma City, the skies were stormy. True to "the Edges are in town" form, severe weather was forming. We drove into some pretty darn scary super heavy rain and lightning and wind. At one point Joshua called me and asked "does that look like a tornado right there off to the left of the highway?" It sure looked close to one to me (it turned out not to be but it was close conditions) and I just kept white-knuckled on the steering wheel and we drove out of that cell as fast as we could. We got to our friends, Brad and Jamie's, house and parked, exhausted. Emilee was picked up by a friend and went to stay the night with her and we turned in for the night.

The next day we got to spend some time playing with Jamie and Braeden...

And then we had some rest time out in the trailer so Braeden could nap. The boys snuggled in for some movie and ipod time...

And we of course made some time to go visit Bill and Uni, our other amazing friends there in OKC. Carter asked for his cookie and got in a bunch of hugs!

Our second night in OKC there were more severe storm warnings issued. As I got Carter ready for bed and as I was brushing his teeth I hear "whooooop! whooooop! whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" Yup, that is the tornado siren sound. Seriously?! So I grabbed Carter and ran back into the house, through suddenly increasingly heavy rain. Soon it was hailing and storming like crazy. Here's the video Joshua took from Brad and Jamie's front porch.


You can see the hail piling up in the grass and hear it pounding on the roof, windows and cars.

We all were holed up in their house. The hail was pounding against their windows. It sounded like someone was shooting at the windows. And the hail was hammering our cars (later we found out my van had over $6000 in hail damage). We never saw or experienced an actual tornado, but the storm and quarter to golf ball sized hail lasted for over an hour. We just prayed throught the whole thing that it wouldn't bust out our windshields as we HAD to drive first thing in the morning to make the final drive into Texas and meet our furniture delivery on time. Luckily, as the storm subsided, we checked our cars and the windshields had held!!

We headed out in the wee hours the next morning and as we left we were starting to get teased "get out!!" The joke is always that we attract natural disasters and that storm was serious enough that many people had severe damage to vehicles, house windows were broken and roofs had to be replaced from the hail.

2nd Leg

We left Wyoming and made a half day drive to a nice campground outside of Denver. On the way, Carter enjoyed his "travel bag"...a gift from our awesome friend, Lindsey. She made one of these bags for each of the kids, packed with tons of fun things to do in the car like coloring books and little games and glow sticks and legos and knitting. I was really touched by how thoughtful she was to do this for each of the kids and they LOVED them. (In fact, they now each repack these bags when we head out for any kind of car trip!)

Carter diligently coloring a page...

The best part of our Colorado leg was getting to meet up with friends and family. One of my oldest and dearest friends and her husband and kiddos met up with us and camped along with us.

And then Joshua's mom and sister and her younger son and daughter came to visit for the day too!

The kids all had a great time playing together for the afternoon.

After a swim, Emilee and Daddy worked on making dinner for everyone...

After dinner was the much anticipated "glow stick hay ride" that the campground puts on each evening and of course the kids had a great time!

First Leg

The first leg of our trip was Boise to Cheyenne, WY. I thought I'd share the view I had over the eventual 1900+ miles of our trip...the back of our trailer. I was always right behind Joshua, who was towing it...it was a LOT of miles looking at those bikes lol.

The nice part about having two vehicles was trading monkeys around. Each one got some one-on-one time with us, and some extra space. I'd say that time with Daddy was probably the highlight, and as you can see, Emilee was quite amused to snag Daddy's hat. Isn't she a GORGEOUS cowgirl?!

We arrived at our campground and all were a bit surprised at the sparse landscape. When we had "camping" in our head for our trip, THIS wasn't what we pictured...but it's Windy Wyoming, what should we expect? Our trailer did look pretty awesome though!

There was a very not-up-to-current-safety-regulations playground that the kids immediately ran over to play on. ALL day in the car meant they had tons of energy.

And there was a mini golf course so we all whacked around some balls until the attendant said we had to go in. A severe storm started to brew and we weren't allowed to stand in an open field holding metal sticks over our heads...go figure!

The HIGHLIGHT of the day for Carter was taking a bath in the "Booga Sized" trailer bathtub.

And just before getting settled into bed, the kids decided to go outside and test the crazy 50mph+ wind that was whipping around our trailer from the storm. They could barely stand up!

Good morning, trailer-style! Thank you, Daddy, for making us amazing cinnamon rolls!

And you can't forget that the pets were all packed into the trailer with us too. Above, with Carter, you can see Trevor's crabs in their travel tank hanging on the dining table. And Emilee's birds chirped non-stop from their perch on the sink.

Signs of Moving

I thought I'd get started with our moving story with a sort of "say it with signs" version. The picture above was one we snapped as we moved TO Idaho.

As we started our moving journey, the first state line we crossed was into Utah. It was sprinkling...just barely sprinkling...but Carter refused to get out of the car and get wet (yes, he's Mr. Personality some days!)

Then we quickly were into Wyoming and we couldn't get to the sign to get a cool picture so this across the road one had to do.

Day 2 brought us into Colorado and it also brought Emilee's adorable conversion to Texan with Daddy's hat (oh and look, Carter joined the picture because "it is sunny now, so I'll come")!

Day 3 had us through Kansas...

And we made a long push and got into Oklahoma!

We spent an extra day in Oklahoma and then completed the last leg into Texas. We don't have a family picture with the Texas sign as the weather was T.E.R.R.I.B.L.E. and it was all we could do to keep our truck, trailer and van on the road safely. But just to make this seem complete, I've borrowed a picture from dear ole Google...

So we're back in Texas.  As the Texan natives have trained us to say..."We're not from Texas, but we got here as fast as we could!" HAHAHAHA!!!