Another epic roadtrip

View from our hotel room in Gaithersburg the night before we left. I had so many people say that moving themselves made them nervous because they had heard so many stories about people getting their trucks/stuff stolen at hotels, etc along the way. So I did some research, bought good locks and made sure we only stayed in hotels with well lit parking lots in view of the hotel. We had prime parking this first night :) It is sort of surreal to see everything you own packed up and put in trucks. But it was also kind of cool to be in control of our stuff instead of having strangers come pack it up and hope it makes it in one piece to our new house.The caravan of cars behind cracked me up too.

Grant drove the 26' truck, Ron and Tammy drove the 16' and my parents, me and the kids were in the van. We put a carseat in the front of Grant's truck too so we could have kids take turns in there.

Because we didn't want to spend a ton on hotel rooms, we decided to only get 2 rooms so Grant and Rowan slept with his parents and Boden, Dylan and I slept with my parents. It worked out well since we really just went to sleep each night. However, the first night, Boden threw up all over his bed on the ground...so I bravely put him in bed with Dylan and I, which pretty much meant I got kicked out of bed. But luckily he was close enough to me that I woke up and moved him before he threw up again all over my bed. Good news...he woke up feeling pretty much back to normal! And no barf in the car for the entire week, so although I felt like it was a really bad way to start our trip, it luckily was the worst night of the trip, so I'll take it.

 The next morning we were ready to go!

The last chains of our chain that we made with 110 days to go. We brought the end of our chain to the hotel so we could rip off that last link the morning we left! Because Dylan was still rear facing and wasn't really old enough to sit through movies, etc I needed some activities to keep him busy. Luckily he is an overall amazing roadtripper (and kid in general) but the Magformers on a cookie sheet turned out to be SO fun. It kept him busy for a good bit of time each day on the drive.

We didn't really have the drive planned out, but the only place I wanted to make sure to drive through was Lexington, KY. We hadn't been back since we moved 7 years ago and didn't know when we'd get another chance to go back. So, we did the 8 hr drive to Lexington the first day and stayed on the East side of town. We didn't reserve a hotel before getting anywhere because I wanted to be able to check out the parking situation at each one before committing. I was also excited to get to drive by our old house, see Jenny, and eat at Saul Good. Because Grant had to go into the hospital and check out that morning, we didn't get a super early start which meant not too long in Lexington that evening, but still had time to drive by our old house on the way to Saul Good, pick up food and bring it back to the hotel to hang out with Jenny and Marc while the kids swam. It was perfect.

Our house was looking good, almost identical to how it looked when we were there. They fixed the chimney which is good and it looks like the people who we sold it to sold it again 2 years ago. The inside looked very similar, I guess they liked what we did with it which was awesome to see!

SAUL GOOD! We didn't skimp and got all our favorites. Pizzas (perisian, steak and BBQ chicken) Argentinean steak beery cheese nachos and a tuna sandwich (random but so good).

We all slept pretty well that night and enjoyed hotel breakfast and took off to our next destination! Love getting to drive from Lex to Louisville and see all the familiar sites including Keeneland, all the horse farms, bridges, etc.

Always a good lunch break when you find a Chick Fil A :)

Hanging out with dad getting gas. It turned out SO nice having a seat for a kid in the truck. Even though it was too loud to almost talk to each other, the boys loved being with Grant and there were some truck only snacks and activities. Grant's voice was hoarse by the end of the trip from yelling to the kids over the noise of the truck.

Hotel pools are always a highlight..we drive drive drive, swim swim swim and sleep sleep sleep. Keeps us going!

Another room with a view of the trucks :)

The kids apparently got sick of fast food and junk food pretty fast because by night 2 when I pulled out a bag of carrots they DEVOURED them...like I've never seen them so excited to eat something. Boden even fell asleep cuddling with the bag :) 

Since we were driving through the middle of nowhere, i tried to find a mid way destination for us, kind of like we did with Waco on the way to Maryland. So...we found the most Waco-like thing I could think of and decided to stop at the Pioneer Woman Mercantile in Oklahoma one day for lunch. It wasn't too far out of the way so thought it would be fun! It was actually really cool to see that part of Oklahoma despite some crazy storms that rolled in! We decided to listen to her book on the drive there to get in the spirit :) It made for a fun stop and a good non fast food lunch so I called it a success! We got some sandwiches and salads and everyone got to pick a treat.

Yum!

By the end everyone is always ready to be done...but luckily everyone was still hanging in there. We drove by White Sands in New Mexico...thought about going and looking around but decided in the end we couldn't get full enjoyment and it would take a lot of time when we were just ready to be to our new home.

The truck's grill got a pretty good collection of really fun bugs by the end. Kind of sad...

Our last night was spent in Arizona, so we hit up In-N-Out! The kids were kind of done by this point and I couldn't find a hotel I was excited about...so we ate and looked online for hotels after looking at some not so great ones. My mom found the perfect one and seriously saved me. I just needed a nice one with a good truck view for our last night and it was PERFECT. This night was also 4th of July so I thought we should maybe try to do stuff to celebrate, but in the end we decided on the hotel pool..and we got to see one firework from there, haha.

Yeah Dylan, we're ready to be in Cali now too...

I think Boden liked riding with dad the most. He rode almost the whole way from AZ to San Diego. I think it also helped a ton that there were only 2 boys in the van for a lot of the time too, cut down on any bickering, extra noise, etc. Overall it really was a pleasant trip.

And we finally made it...Maryland to California!

We met our Landlord's mom at the new house around 5pm on the day we checked in. She gave us a quick walk through, we unloaded a ton of stuff and slept in the house that night. It was so good to be home!