Traveling North! part 1

So we have made the move to Indiana! We are settled into our temporary apartment on Purdue's campus for the next 4 weeks until the purchase of our Lafayette home closes August 20th. These last few days are already a blur, but we know we need to document all the craziness of transition!

We got a family dinner at the duck pond in during our final week! As an added bonus, we bumped into VT President Tim and Dr. Laura Sands walking and had a nice chit chat about our move to Boiler country where they just came from last year. Lots of good things happening at Purdue and VT! It was fun to hear their interest in our family relocating and asking about neighborhoods and Heath starting kindergarten.

Loving the duck pond

Reese was fearless walking right into the ducks with her 'Superman' run

Friday, July 17th Jonathan and I both worked our last day at Virginia Tech and said our goodbyes to our work community. We grabbed some delicious food at Souvlaki's and sat on Henderson Lawn to enjoy our last free Friday night concert downtown.

Thanks Dave for being the last parent standing with energy Friday night!

Saturday and Sunday we enjoyed with our friends, hanging at the Children's museum and going to church. It was a beautiful break of not packing and soaking in the last of our weekend with community. We were incredibly blessed by our New Life friends who shared well wishes Sunday morning and the Chinn's hosted a farewell celebration in the afternoon, which we tallied a grand 6 hours of leisurely eating, socializing, s'more making and laughter. It was a great Sunday.

Post bath and pre-story night at the Chinns' Sunday

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday the kids went to daycare as usual while J and I worked all day long packing up the house. We were reminded how much we appreciate the staff at Rainbow Riders and how they give our kids love and consistency, even when home is crazy and boxes are everywhere. Tuesday was a rough packing day as I got discouraged trying to load the kitchen up- nothing fits in any box! And we discovered that our stash of boxes under the house we had planned to use were completely useless as they got wet and moldy- yuck! This included our tv box, which was kind of an important one to have proper packaging for in the move. So we made a plan to purchase more boxes and in the middle of all that got an email from our mortgage officer in Indiana that a signature was needed on a form. With no printer or scanner in sight, we headed over to the Chinn's to handle business. As we got there Wendy had just received an Amazon shipment for a new printer that came in a larger shipping box 2x as big as the printer box. Daisy was playing in it as we eyed it up for measurement. We took it home and the box could not have fit our TV any better! Praise God for that provision!

Thursday morning the movers arrived at 8am to load up the UPack (ABF) trailer that was dropped off the day before. Hiring these three movers to load in all our stuff after we had invested 3 days of packing it all was the wisest choice ever (behind keeping our kids in daycare 3 days that week). It was amazing to have them handle it all while I offered information and Gatorade. Jonathan took the kids out of the house for a morning of breakfast and play at Chik-fil-A and the library. We were all loaded by 11:30am and I had swept the house out as instructed in our seller's agreement. We took a family selfie in front of the loaded trailer and then hauled our tired bodies into the silver bullet, loaded down with a carrier on top stowing all of our 4 week needs. We waved goodbye to our first house, the street and then the town as we got on the highway and headed north!

Reese fell asleep in the car shortly after we left and Heath did his usual self-entertainment of song creating and talking. It was a smooth drive, despite some physical and emotional exhaustion settling in as the day went. We stopped in Chillicothe, Ohio for the night and had dinner at a local drive in that's been around a few decades, Sumburgers. The food was good, but the kids were tired and Heath had a complete refusal of obedience which led to a meltdown by Reese, me taking Heath out of the restaurant and then us quickly paying the bill to go to the hotel, thankfully only 5 blocks over. Despite the light outside, the kids went down near their usual 7pm bedtime after a quick bath and with the boys in one double bed and the girls in the other, we were all asleep quickly. I'm feeling tired again just thinking of that day, it was a rough one. . . . so part 2 of the journey we will share later!