A look back at our journey east...

Since we left California I have longed to post pictures of some of the memorial parts of our trip east. All told there were over 300 pictures taken from our trip. I wont be posting all 300 but I will highlight some.

We drove through California until we got to Arizona. We were supposed to stop at the Grand Canyon. We were going to camp on the south side of the Grand Canyon. However Mother Nature decided this was not a good plan. Instead we got to witness snow in Arizona.

Needless to say we did NOT camp outside, and we did not get to see the Grand Canyon. We were all really bummed about this, but it was getting dark, it was cold and our sleeping arrangements for the night just went up in smoke  errrr down in snow?


So we drove on as long as we possibly could hoping for *warmer* temps. Then crashed out in the car/truck for a few hours of sleep. We worked into New Mexico the next day and hoped to see some sights as we drove. We spotted the Largest petrified tree sign just off the road and had to stop and check it out.

check out how big around this one was!

This is the tallest one I have seen

Polished up they are pretty expensive... that says $2100.00
(that's way to much to pay for a rock!) 

We also saw some cool wagons, and got to talk about what travel was like for the people making the trip 100 years ago. My dads family moved from the east coast to the west coast, but they did it by car. 

I also saw some really cool polished petrified wood in smaller pieces in the gift shop, as well as some cool shirts. My oldest two got together and bought one for their dad, they are awesome.

We went onto the next location where we were supposed to camp out only to discover, that in-spite of the park rangers email telling me different, the park was closed still. So there goes camping site number 3. We were all exhausted and beyond spent at this point so we splurged and spent the money to camp at a KOA. I can not say that the site was beautiful, or that it was worth the money aside from the fact that we all got to stretch out and we got hot showers for free as well as breakfast that was all included in the price of our camping spot.

We stopped at a gas station on the famous Route 66

Then we left New Mexico behind:

And Entered the Lone Star State:

I will save the rest of the telling of this story for another day.
I hope you all enjoyed this look back at our trip across the states.

Wooo Hoooo!

I managed it! I got all the boxes (except pictures) unpacked! Everything is packed into storage containers if they are not needed immediately and placed under the house in 'storage', or put away in its respective places.

I am still in need of some fabulous storage but I have a few tuppers that didn't have lids anymore. (they fell apart on the way from California) Those are being used as my linen closet right now. Stacked on top of my washer, which may very well be what holds it in place as it spins at 2000rpm's to drain my clothes.

I am in need of a few sunny days so that I can paint some chairs, paint some walls, paint my handmade closet, hmm anything else I need to paint? .... No I think thats everything!

I need to find that bag of brackets that hold up my curtains so that I can put those up in the dining room instead of these blinds that drive me batty. Those blinds, you know the ones that break if you touch them, rattle if the wind blows through them and with 4 kids and 4 dogs they are bound to end up trashed!

I am itching to get some more of this painting done and just can not bring myself to do it with rainy grey days. I have to many kids and dogs t do it indoors so for now I must live with ugly dark green ladder back chairs that have been scuffed up to accept my paint, and patched walls in the living room and my bedroom, as well as ply wood wall panel for the closet. At least until the sunshine shows itself for more then a half a second. It needs to be warm enough to paint outside and have it dry before the rain shows up again.

It feels good to have the boxes out of my dinning room... I can not wait to have it all pulled together and pretty! how exciting will that be!

settling in

I am trying hard to settle in. I still have boxes upon boxes to unpack but I have unpacked the kitchen and the living room so that is a big start.

My new home is smaller then the last one so its a good thing we got rid of furniture. :) I just wish that i had some money left after the move to replace what we don't have... In time it will come but I hate waiting.

I also get to use some of my creativity to add storage and build some of the things that are needed like storage and closet space. I am hunting up free stuff and trying to utilize what I have within my grasp right now. I love getting to be creative.

I am totally in LOVE with my new home. My neighbors are a dream come true! My home is surrounded by trees and its beautiful and relaxing and the birds sing to me every morning. I get to live "in the country" but am only 10 minutes from town. I am close to all the shopping I need to do and yet far enough out that I can sleep with my windows and doors open all night long. It is a truly glorious feeling!

I still have HUNDREDS of photos to download but the desktop comp is not set up yet and I honestly do not want to sit and upload that many pics on my laptop. LOL But hopefully soon I will be able to upload some of the fantastic pictures my daughter and I took as we crossed the United States. She took many while I drove of some unique things we saw as well as the landscapes of the different states we traveled through. I took some when we stopped to enjoy some of the sites. I didn't take any of the places we slept, because we often slept in the car in a parking lot somewhere.

Road trippin

Well its funny how you can try hard to plan out your adventures and end up having none of the adventures you planned on having.

The first major stop on our move across country was supposed to be the Grand Canyon and Four Corners. Only Saturday when we left our little town of Yuba City California it decided to snow in Arizona at the Grand Canyon. This meant we were forced to decide do we have the money to stay in a hotel or do we just drive as far as we can or camp out in the car. Since the low in Flagstaff Az was supposed to be 19* we opted to drive farther east and then camp in our car.

This turned out to be the story of out trip. Each destination ended up not happening for one reason or another. New Mexico's destination turned out to be closed in spite of an email saying they would be open and to come on over. It was a state park and who knows why they were not open. After a long drive the day before and not nearly enough sleep in the car we opted to find a camp site early in the day and camp for the night in a different location. We found a KOA and they were more then welcoming. A hot shower was a wonderful thing and the free cookies and breakfast was a nice touch. I was not thrilled with the price but we didnt end up sleeping in the car that night! It took far to long for us to tear down the tent and repack everything into the truck in a way that would allow everything to go back into the truck. So after getting a late start the next day we opted to not camp anymore along the trip because we are on a time crunch.

There are so many things that I would love to post about but tonight I am exhausted. We are hanging out in Birmingham Alabama waiting out the tornado warnings, severe thunder storms and horrible rain. We are only 8 hours and 35 minutes from our new home. We are anxious to be home in our new home but we are also not willing to attempt to drive through this storm.

I hope to update you all with photos soon. So far my bookworm has taken over 400 photos as we drove through each state. I am not downloading those until we have arrived and can set up the desktop! thats a whole lotta photos!

Until I have arrived this maybe the only post while On the road.