Traveling North, part 2

So day 2 of the journey to Indiana we got a good start with breakfast at the hotel after a restful night. We were loaded by around 8am and headed north for what we expected to be the other 'half' of the journey to West Lafayette, totaling 4 more hours. Wrong assumption. We made it about an hour and just outside of Xenia, Ohio the brakes in our Altima went out.

We were traveling on a stretch of highway that had a few stoplights and after slowing down for one of these lights, Jonathan made a jerky move of the wheel to the left and hit the e-brake. I said 'what happened?!' He said, 'I just lost the brakes.' There were a few cars stopped in front of us and a few behind us. Thankfully Jonathan's reaction after he tap, tap, tapped the brakes and no response was to merge over into a center median to avoid hitting someone or getting hit. After the cars passed us at the green light, we made our way across two lanes and turned right at the light to pull over where we could see a little more shoulder on that side of the road.

Jonathan called his dad. I called our insurance for a tow. The kids sat in the backseat entertaining themselves. We had some locals stop and see if we needed any help. After we arranged for the tow, we noticed there was a parking lot across from us at the entrance of a park so we got the kids out and waited over there safely. Another local stopped to see if we needed any help. Jonathan called the repair show that insurance told us they would tow us to and they unfortunately said the could not work on it today if we came there, it would be at least until tomorrow, but they recommended another shop. J called there and they shared the same. Then we googled.

When the tow truck showed up, Heath was beyond excited for the experience of watching our car get lifted onto the bed. Our driver said the shop we googled would not be his first choice, but that he'd call shop #2. We said they were full. He said, I'll call. And he did, and they told him to come on over. During this time, another local stopped to see if we needed any help and offered a ride for us. Heath was determined to ride in the tow truck as already promised, but Reese and I opted for the back seat of these strangers, Jackie and Jack. They had just come back from breakfast at Cracker Barrell and were headed out for a drive, they *happened* to have a car seat in their back seat that is usually occupied by their 2 year old grandson. So Reese got to enjoy her first forward facing car seat experience on this 8 minute drive to the shop.

The repair shop was able to offer a quick assessment when they got the wheel off and see that our brake line had come loose from the front and then caught in the wheel, puncturing it and draining all of the brake fluid. They called around to find the tube part needing replacement from the left side and a shop within an hour *happened* to have one left side tube remaining (no right sides in). They said it'd be a couple hours. Jackie and Jack said they would take us to a shopping area north of town that had a water fountain the kids could play in and plenty of places to walk around and eat. They offered us their stroller from the trunk. They gave us their phone numbers to call them when we needed a ride back to the shop. They *happened* to have Thomas the Train books from the library in the back seat of their car so as the 4 of us crammed back there tried to entertain the kids we had material! It was closer to 20 minutes to the shopping place, but well worth it.

Heath loved exploring the fountain!

We grabbed lunch at Chipotle, Reese took a nap on me in the carrier, we looked at a bookstore and then the shop called that all was ready to go! So we called our new friends Jackie and Jack who promptly came to shuttle us around town again. They said they drove by us on the side of the road and noticed our out of state license plates and thought 'they probably don't have anyone local they can call' so they did a u-turn about a mile passed us to come back around and see if we needed anything. And they were persistent helpers! We got them a gift card to the fro-yo place at the shopping center where they said they loved to take their grandson. Small thank you for a BIG blessing.

Have mama, will nap.

So after 5 extra hours in Ohio, we set back on the road with a functioning car to take us the remaining 3 hours to Purdue's campus, getting in close to 5pm. We ordered pizza for dinner (it was Friday night after all- a weekly Manz fam tradition). And we all crashed shortly after that in our temporary apartment here until we close on our house next month (8/20). We are grateful for the prayers of safety covering us on our journey and the traveling mercies we experienced. For your brakes to go out on a highway, we know this was the best possible provision where our whole family was safe and the damage to the car and our pocketbook was minimal. It was all part of the adventure and only took a bit more time, something we had plenty of as we entered this week of stay-cation time in our new hometown!

As we crossed the border, Heath chants "Indiana, Indiana, Indiana.... COOOOOOORRRRRRNNNNNNNN!"

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!

Florida Vacation

Back in the fall the Manz family began to talk about a spring vacation in Florida. Jonathan's grandpa lives in Port St. Lucie and is 92. J's dad has always made a trip each spring to visit him, and we thought we should join in while we are still living in this vicinity and he is still well enough to appreciate visitors. As the timeline developed it worked out that all of J's siblings and their wives would be able to join in!

So just as Blacksburg was getting hit with more snow and multiple days of temperatures in the single digits, we busted out of town late February for a warmer climate! We drove to the inlaws on a Friday night, staying in Georgia for the weekend. The folks then rented a minivan that we could all fit in and took off Monday morning for the ~8 hour drive south. The kids did pretty well in the van. Reese is still not a lover of the road trips, but comparatively, 7/8ths of the time was spent not screaming, so I call that a win!

Enjoying the Dodge Grand Caravan!

Our first full day in Florida we visited the beach as it was the sunniest day of the week. Reese LOVED the sand. She rolled in it, snuggled her head and cheek on it, ate it, ran her fingers and toes through it- just loved it! Here is a brief clip of the first moments there.

We also took advantage of the hotel pool while we were there and it was Reese's first time swimming. Her big brother Heath who is in lessons right now showed her all the ways to kick and jump and blow bubbles.

One day we all drove 90 minutes south to visit Jonathan's great aunt, Mil who will turn 102 next month. She was wonderful to be with and Heath enjoyed reconnecting; she reviewed with him how to spell his full name and it finally 'clicked' for him on this trip. The family all enjoyed having the kids around.

Heath, 4.5, Aunt Mil 101, Reese 1

I think we tallied about 30+ hours in the car for the week experience, but the vacation was well enjoyed! We now have the minivan drive experience that helped us to consider a future model for our family (you know, when we have two incomes again). We returned to snow on the ground, but some good vitamin D in our body that will hopefully get us through the last of this Virginia winter.

If you want to know how my minimalism plays into packing, feel free to journey back to 2012 for this post and read my tips!

The Drive Out East

We will have to come back and talk about our awesome and wonderful family vacation to Portland, OR soon, but in the meanwhile, I know the big questions are around where we are now.

So we flew back to Fayetteville Wednesday June 29th after a week away and our home already packed up in a POD and shipped. We spent way too short of a night and morning at Adam's place on campus since we had already checked out of ours and turned keys in. We hit up Little Bread Company for one last taste of chocolate croissant goodness and hit the road. For those of you on Twitter/Facebook you probably caught much of our progress through those updates. The first day we drove ~7 hours to Jackson, TN and ate dinner there and stayed the night at a quaint hotel.

Nothing too exciting happened the first day. Heath did well. The frozen pizza crust we packed for him from Cable Car leftovers were a life saver as he got focused on sucking it to death and more than once chewed himself to sleep. I finally got to read my new book about In-N-Out while nothing else needed to be taken care of- that was glorious.

The second day we headed out to Knoxville, TN about a 5 hour drive for us from Jackson. Although it was less time in the car on day 2, Heath knew what was up now and was a little more resistant to get in and out of his car seat for quick diaper changes. And we got to him quick! The changing pad we tossed in the backseat proved genius as we were able to throw it on top of the car hood and change him without the added minutes of going inside and discovering whether or not there was a changing table at said rest stop. This was especially helpful on the many occasions we had just stopped, ate, gassed up, did bathroom breaks then 5 minutes later on the highway Heath has a BM and needs immediate changing. We forgot about the time change that happens while in TN so we were a bit later than we thought, but got to our friends, the Greenes, early afternoon. Their 2 1/2 year old Ethan had loads of energy to entertain Heath and show off all his toys to. Mason who is only 4 months was pretty content to chill and observe all of us.

Staying in Knoxville with Ronnie and Christal was awesome. We are so glad to be closer to them now and in the same time zone that we can hang out more. Jonathan went to college with both of them and Ronnie was a groomsmen in our wedding. Ronnie aptly described our night to another friend as having a small window of opportunity where the kids go to sleep and then you have about 90 minutes until it hits 10pm and you have to go to bed because you are old parents. We pushed our bedtime to later to soak in the minutes, well worth it- even though the kids did not appropriately push back their wake up time to oblige us.

Day 3 of the trip east was the toughest. For a number of reasons I'm sure, but the main being that we started off on the wrong path- traveling a windy uphill highway 50 miles in the wrong direction. Navigation said the only alternative to where we were was to turn around. So for the first 2 hours of our morning we wasted driving towards Kentucky while Heath soundly napped in his car seat. I'll move on.

We got to Blacksburg around 4pm (a few hours later than when we anticipated). We had made a pit stop an hour before and picked up water and gatorade that began icing down in our coolers in the car. We were beyond blessed to join us at our house a great welcoming crew that unloaded our POD. A few of my new colleagues from Virginia Tech came over and helped as well as three VT students who just graduated in May and were involved with the Baptist Christian Ministry on campus. Through my BCM contacts at Arkansas, they put us in touch and we were SO thankful to have these three young turks come and help strangers unload. Not only did they unload but they then asked what else they could help assemble or unpack. I kept thinking of Sister Helen talking about how she wanted to be 'the face of Christ' for the inmate on death row she worked with and tried not to cry as I felt so blessed by these young people's heart to serve us. Frank also came over and helped unload and carry Heath around the property and neighborhood while I worked elsewhere. I think Heath has a new friend!

So we are here, the traveling is done. Boxes are everywhere, but in a manageable way. For renting a house sight unseen, we are happy with what we do see now. The space is going to work great for the three of us and the location could not be any better. We walked a mile into downtown for dinner tonight and discovered a playground a block behind us along the way. Heath got a little pool today and had his first backyard playtime. He has been acting different here, very comfortable. For being on the road and staying in many different places the last two weeks, I think he senses we are staying put for awhile here!