May 10th was a beautiful, sunny day as the giant Penske truck pulled up in our driveway. We’d been packing up boxes for more than a week and we were excited about getting everything on the truck and getting on the road to Vermont. Aaron & Travis, from our new church, came to help us load, and it was a grand feat! It took them from about 10am until about 6:30 that evening to get it all loaded up. We barely fit everything into the truck & Brett’s car, which was being towed behind the truck. In fact, at the end of the day, I was throwing out food & cleaning products & anything that was not vital, just so we had room to fit everything!
It took quite a bit longer than we’d expected and the guys were exhausted, but after all the cleaning and loading was done, we got out on the road. We put Abigail forward facing for the trip, because we thought she’d be able to interact better and I could see her to keep her occupied. The kids were excited to get on the road.
We only drove about 3 hours the first day, stopping around 11 that night in Richmond, VA at a hotel to rest. We had originally wanted to get further, but it worked out just fine and the next day we started out early, around 8:30 or 9. It really did take a full day of driving. The kids did amazing. I had bought plenty of new coloring books and small toys for the car ride and pulled them out one at a time to keep them entertained. Abigail was a little trickier and whined off and on, but she did pretty good at cat-napping throughout the day. We also just bought a portable DVD player and more often than not, that kept them all busy. We took a long stop for lunch at Cracker Barrel (my Mother’s Day treat) and after that Abigail got really fussy. Finally she got sick and threw up all over her seat. Thankfully, we’d brought along her rear-facing car seat, so we switched them out and after that she fussed a lot less. It seems she’s still too little and was much more comfortable not all scrunched up in that new seat! That was really our only snag, besides a little traffic around DC and a whole lot more toll roads than we’d planned, but finally we pulled into Vermont around 9. Abigail was the only one sleeping but we didn’t want to get them all out for a picture by the state sign so this is all we got:
When we got to our house, there were at least 15-20 church people waiting for us. The moving truck had arrived only about 3 hours before us, but they’d already unloaded the entire truck, made our beds (including putting Abigail’s crib together), put our living room furniture in a really great arrangement, stocked our refrigerator & cupboards and even started putting together the kids’ swingset! They were so excited to greet us. So many of them have been working hard over the past few weeks to clean out the parsonage where we’re living and make it look amazing for us. I was overwhelmed with their warm welcome and all they’d done. We slept so well that night and the kids didn’t even make a peep!
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