The Journey

It's over a month since our trip to Seattle and I'm just now sitting down to blog about it. Life is just as crazy busy in Seattle as it was in Texas! Maybe it's me, not my circumstances...haha!

So, our trip to Seattle started bright and early one morning as my husband and his dad went to pick up our moving truck. I was not very conscious because it was so much earlier than I ever wanted to be awake. Two blessed friends from work, Matt and Stephanie showed up within half an hour to help us load our truck. We would have never left on time if they hadn't gotten up super early and sacrificed an hour for us. Matt also brought a breakfast feast (Sonic taquitos, coffee, and fresh fruit for me because of the gluten thing). Stephanie brought a card that everyone from work had signed and donated some money for our trip. Super sweet people, I'm glad I had  chance to work with them!

Curtis' family and my family both showed up that morning as well to help us load the truck. We highly under-estimated how much of a chore it would be to load the truck, Curtis and I are super grateful that we had so many hands to help. It would have taken us all morning by ourselves. We finally got the truck loaded and then we had to get the car onto the trailer. That was a fun little adventure but Curtis' dad (Curtis Sr.) showed him how to get it on and off again which is great cuz we had to do it a couple times before it was all said and done.

I think we hugged all our family members and said goodbye about a million times. Finally we were on the road, completely set up with story tapes (thanks to my family), a few meals, and a sweet couch setup for Stogie (our puppy). We were ready!

Day one's adventure included getting lost and spending 45 minutes to get back on track. It was also the first of 4 days of terror for me as we drove a huge truck with a heavy load behind it down some very steep and narrow roads. I've never been more scared in my life than those 4 days...although it got better every day as Curtis became more proficient at driving it. We stayed with an awesome family who attend the Mars Hill Albuquerque that night. They homeschool their kids and we got to have some awesome conversation with them about how that works and how they work to not be the "weird" homeschool family...it was great.

Day two included lots of red rocks (and I mean lots). It was a super long day, we were both exhausted by the end of it. We stayed in a super gross hotel that night in Brigham City, Utah. We decided that the drivers in Salt Lake were LITERALLY the worst drivers in the world. Remember my terror from riding in that big truck? It multiplied exponentially every second we were in Salt Lake.

Day three was our favorite day by far. We started driving through Montana, big huge pine trees and HUGE mountains. We blew a tire on our trailer in the middle of nowhere (we stopped at a gas station and only noticed it because a trucker pointed it out to us) and luckily found a repair shop literally half a block away from where we were. Only delayed us an hour! We finished in Spokane, Washington (beautiful drive there) and stayed with Virginia (Curtis' friend from high school) and her roommates the Champagnes. They were so gracious and loving to us, we ended up staying longer there than we had originally planned the next day because we just couldn't tear ourselves away! They had a cute little black dog and was the sweetest and softest little puppy ever! Stogie and her played until they couldn't breathe anymore, all you saw were streaks of puppy fur as they raced by!

After all that, we finally arrived in Seattle...just in time for evening traffic. We drove our huge truck through tinny tiny streets until we got to Ballad where we met Mark and Pam Duckworth. They are originally from Dripping Springs so we talked Austin for a while. They had donated a couch to our apartment but didn't let us leave until they had also given us two chairs, an ottoman, 3 sidetables, and two marble-topped antique tables (Mark told us they were family heirlooms...they are my most prized possessions! I plan on keeping those forever). I wept, their generosity was overwhelming.

After another hour or so in traffic we arrived at the Black's house in Dupont where Geb Black is stationed to do his residency for the army. They blessed us with gluten free pizza and beer and we stayed with them a week while we waited until we could move into our apartment. We watched their kiddos as much as we could to help repay their kindness. I've known the Blacks for years and Curtis was able to meet them before we got married. They moved to Washington in June just a few months before we followed in September, which was good for us to start our time there with good friends.

It was been a fun adventure! Soon as I figure out how to upload pictures (read: too lazy to figure it out) I will post all the pictures I took of our trip.

Thank you to all the people who have been praying for us, who donated to help us get here...we are truly blessed!