After living at Fawn and Dave's house for 6 weeks without David I was SO done and ready to be in my own space. I enjoyed being there but 6 weeks is too long! So the day finally arrived that I got to pack up my van and Mom and I headed out. The van was packed tight. Originally I put Maylee and Talli in the middle row and Dutch tucked into a tiny little space in the back seat. We made it about a hour down the road and realized that was a bad idea. Things started falling on Dutch and then we started smelling some sort of cleaner. So we pulled over to the side of the road and found the bottle of Pinesol that was leaking and got that taken care of and pulled stuff off Dutch. We also realized that we didn't take any pictures so we used this time, pulled over on the side of the 17 to take pictures of the over packed car. 

Right outside of Flagstaff we got caught in a huge rainstorm and quickly realized my windshield wipers did not work AT ALL. We could not see more than 3 feet in front of us, it was pretty scary. So as soon as we pulled into Flag we stopped at a gas station and Mom bought some windshield wipers and she put those on herself, there strangely were some extra pieces, but we just threw those in the trash can! And I did some rearranging and got Dutch put up in the middle row with the girls. 

 The first night we drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico, right outside of Albuquerque it started raining again, no big deal we just turned on our new wiper blades. And then one all of the sudden one went flying but luckily got caught in the other working wiper blade. So off to the side of the road we went. We realized then that all those "extra" pieces weren't extras at all. But we had some scissors and tape and we taped that wiper blade back on. We are so resourceful!  We grabbed dinner at Olive Garden and then found ourselves a hotel. It was a little bit of a sketchy area but we made it out alive.
  I like taking pictures at all the state lines that I possibly can. So here we are at Texas. The kids did really well the first full day. Jackie was super sweet and made them each a big bag of travel activities. And I made sure we always stopped for lunch and dinner and got out of the car and let them wiggle a bit instead of going through fast food.

 I don't even remember what state this was anymore. But we did stop for lunch at Fazoli's, it might still be Texas, it is the next picture I took after the state sign, oh well who knows.

 At one point we saw these crazy car "gardens" so we took some pictures.

 The kids did super good, I really can't complain. We only had one incident were Dutch and Talli and both fallen asleep and when they woke up, at the same time, they were crying and inconsolable and we happened to be driving past a Burger King when this happened, so I quickly pulled in there and we let the kids play for about 30 minutes to calm down and be happy and then we were on our way again.

 The second night we stayed in Oklahoma. We found a Red Roof Inn and got a room. It seemed like a OK area. But that night a huge storm hit. It seriously sounded like the hotel was going to come crashing down. We quickly realized it was not the best hotel and we could hear EVERY noise. Mom and I didn't sleep great that night.

These next few pictures were taken in Missouri. I could not get over how beautiful and green it was. It was making me super excited to be in Ohio living in this beauty! 

We were only a couple hours away from our destination when we stopped for the night. But the kids were starting to get crabby, Mom and I were just exhausted from a bad night sleep and driving all day. So we stopped in Terre Haute Indiana and Mom "splurged" and got us a nice hotel at the Holiday Inn. The room was nice, it was a nice, safe feeling area and it had a pool. We got some dinner and then we just let the kids swim for a couple of hours and move around after being trapped in a car for two and half days. It was greatly needed and appreciated!

The next morning when I routed how to get from our hotel to Ohio this is what the GPS pulled up. Apparently we were going to have to walk the last portion of the way, yikes!

                                                    
This water tower said 'Brazil', I was getting a little nervous that we were headed in the wrong direction :)

We finally made it to Ohio, YAY! We left Monday at noon and arrived Thursday about noon. Granted we made stops along the way, and probably could have done it faster but we choose not to. It really was a good trip, but I hope to not being doing it again any time soon. Ohio is so beautiful! 

We made it to our new home. 

                                                  And it only took 1914.4 miles to get here.

I am so glad my Mom went with me. I could not image having done that alone. The kids were great, we made it safely, over all it was very successful!