............So many of my smiles begin with you.: Road trip!

When Clark and I got married almost 8 years ago he moved to California with one condition- that we would leave after 5 years. Max. I was pretty sure I would be able to get around that and I actually did for a few years, but the time has finally come for us to move on. Though I don’t think anything could have made me as excited to leave California as spending the last 5 of those years managing apartments while Clark was in school and we were raising our first 2 children. Aside from saying goodbye to my family that lived close by I can honestly say there were no tears shed about this move. After looking in to a few different options we decided that Austin Texas would be the best place for us right now. We took a big leap of faith and planned everything way in advance. Knowing that Clark didn’t yet have a job, knowing that I would be 7-8 months pregnant with no definite health insurance at the time of our move, not knowing where we would live, we still set a date and planned on leaving no matter what. Luckily, literally 1 week before we planned to leave, Clark got a job offer, we were able to secure an apartment, and get health insurance for me (minus the month or so it would take for me to get enrolled). We have been truly blessed that things have worked out so well!

Anyway, on Monday May 26th we loaded up our truck and said “see ya!” to the apartment job (I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my whole life!) and headed out. We grabbed one last lunch at In N Out (not knowing that they just came to Austin, yay!) and we were on our way. The total trip was about 1800 miles, pretty much halfway across the country, and was supposed to take around 27 hours total. Not something you look forward to with 2 small children.

The first day we drove 6-ish hours down to Anaheim so we could spend the next day at Disneyland. Miles decided it would be a good idea to throw up twice that first day in the car and we figured we’d be in for a long, stinky trip if that were to continue.

After a great day at Disney we drove another 6 hours to Mesa Arizona and stayed with some good friends who used to live near us. During this drive through Arizona we stopped for some Subway and as soon as we opened the car door the heat hit us like a ton of bricks! We have been so spoiled with the moderate bay area temperature that it was quite a shock getting out of the car.

The next day we drove from Mesa to El Paso (7-8 hours) and again got to deal with some lovely heat. We kept promising Lily we’d swim at the hotels but, as usual with kids, we never ended up leaving early enough in the day to do so once we arrived for the night. Lil was kind of bummed but what can you do?

We had planned on visiting Carlsbad Caverns on the last morning of our drive but with another 8+ hours ahead of us we knew we couldn’t squeeze it in if we wanted to pick up the keys to our apartment that evening. Texas is pretty huge and it was a long final stretch but we finally made it to Austin! Miles commemorated the occasion by throwing up just as we were getting off the freeway and trying to find our way to our apartment but we got so distracted by him that we took a wrong turn and got a little lost. Luckily that was the only other time he got carsick on the whole trip.

The kids actually did really well for the amount of time we were in the car (thankfully!) and only fussed a little bit. One thing that really helped them was listening to the Frozen soundtrack in the car. Let me tell you, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard that soundtrack played entirely on the kazoo by a 4 year old. It’s quite the experience Winking smile