On March 13th we had the packers from H$@*. A 60+ year old man and a woman who spoke no English showed up at the house to pack our belongings. It took him 3 1/2 hours to pack just my kitchen...I would like to say that is due to the fact I have a gourmet kitchen with many precious items, but that is not the case. They arrived at 10:00am and did not drive away until 7:00pm!! Needless to say it was a LONG day! The movers that arrived the next morning must have been sent directly from God! They were wonderful and did a great job getting our things loaded. Mom and I then set about to clean the place! We didn't get as much done on Friday as we would have liked due to sheer exhaustion so we finished up the next morning. We skillfully packed the truck (as you can see Jackson did not have much room) and set out to Camp Lejeune to see Dan.
The 6 hour drive to Camp Lejeune went smoothly. We past through some pretty interesting back woods towns. When we finally arrived I was STARVING so we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at Outback...Big Mistake...BIG...HUGE! We thought we were great because we called ahead. So it saved us 20 minutes of waiting for a table, but then we proceeded to wait another 2 HOURS for our food! Yes you read right 2 HOURS! Needless to say I had long turned it to the Hungry Prego Mama Monster and Jackson was quickly behind me with the Hungry Toddler Monster. Finally I told the waitress to pack up the food to go and we left. Luckily we did not have to pay for the meal, but it certainly was not the relaxing dinner we had hoped for. The next morning we headed out to the beach. I had to see the ocean! It was a chilly blustery day, but nothing was going to detour us from seeing the waves. We did not stay very long, but Jack had a great time blowing in the wind.
We said bye to Dan and headed to Winston-Salem, NC. We arrived without incident and FINALLY enjoyed a relaxing evening. The next morning we got up and pushed on the Nashville, TN. The only incident was Jackson taking a tumble at a rest stop and getting a bloody lip! Oh little Danger what will we do with you. In the late afternoon we arrived at my Uncle Clay and Aunt Kim's house. I was pleasantly surprised to see my cousin Caitlin was home from Georgia. We had a wonderful Irish Stew for St. Patty's day. Jackson had a great times playing with their two dogs and running FREE!
The next day was the longest day of the trip. We started out the day with Jackson taking another good tumble and busting his lip wide open! He had quite the fat lip. Then we fought high winds all the way to Memphis! In Memphis we ate lunch with my college roommate Candice. What a treat to see her! We had good old southern food at Cracker Barrel!
From Memphis we fought more wind as we headed to Little Rock to have coffee with my other college roommate Kelly. As if Jackson did not already look like I beat him on a regular basis, he took a nasty header onto the conceit and developed quite the goose egg. Gotta love it when they first start walking!
Little did we know the WORST of the drive was yet to come on the short three hour trip between Little Rock and Ft. Smith, AR. We continued to fight the high winds, but added to that HEAVY rain! I was certainly glad my mom was at the wheel. I am a wimp for driving in adverse conditions. That night we arrived to our hotel hoping to take Jackson down to the pool for a little swim. We all get decked out in our swim trunks and headed down to the indoor pool. Well this pool was colder than any pool I have ever been in. Jackson shivered and cried to get out. So our fun end to the day just turned out to be cold and no fun at all.
The next morning we headed to Amarillo, TX. Another fun day of fighting high winds across Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. We finally arrived at my Uncle Craig and Aunt Donna's house. We were greeted by my cousin Colin's two and a half year old son, Triston and his new baby sister Annie. We had a wonderful dinner with them and Jackson had the best time chasing Triston around the house. In fact they were on the move so much I only got one lousy picture with both of them in it.
The next morning we set out for Colorful Colorado. We have driven the stretch of road between Amarillo SO MANY TIMES we practically did it with our eyes closed. We finally made it home! That evening after partially unloading the car, eating dinner, and putting Jack to bed. I started to have contractions regularly every 12-15 minutes. YIKES! After about two hours they finally spaced out and then stopped completely. When I mentioned this to the Nurse Practitioner I saw the next day at the Air Force Academy she immediately wanted to to go down to the hospital at Ft. Carson to be monitored and checked! After about two hours on the monitors and a cervical check later we left knowing nothing had changed and little Hannah was just fine. I have been told to take it easy and not lift a lot of things! So it looks like we may have a drama queen on our hands.
Well that was the extent of out lovely trip across the country. I have much more to add, but will do that in separate posts as to not overwhelm everyone.
After leaving the Academy and determining that downtown Annapolis was way to busy for us to find someplace to eat we decided to take a little jont over the Bay Bridge. It was just as big as I remember! Of course I don't remember having to pay $2.50 to cross! After taking our trip across the water we decided on a whim to go over the Baltimore Inner Harbor and get some lunch there. So we plugged the National Aquarium address into our Garmin and headed out. A little side note about the Garmin....GET ONE! It took SO much stress out of this trip and perhaps one day will save our marriage! We arrived with little difficulty to the Inner Harbor and found some lunch. Then we told Garmin to take us home and off we went. It was a great little day trip!
