Road Trip from Mesa, AZ to North Richland Hills, TX

We started our move to Texas by staying in an awesome hotel in North Scottsdale.  We invited my brother and his kids to come up to play with us.  We loved being close to Tyler & Kacey and his kids while he was in Law school.  We met up frequently for Sunday dinners, during the week playdates and other events.  Our kids really love each other so much.  I love those cousin relationships and am so sad to take my kids away from that.   We swam in the pools and lazy river.  It was super crowded since it was the 4th of July weekend in Phx.

 Tyler and Kacey watched our kids so we could go get massages (that came with the room).  It was SO incredibly nice to relax so fully.  I wish that could be part of my weekly routine :).   We went to dinner at the hotel and ate to our hearts content.  It was so nice to be free to order whatever we wanted and enjoy a relaxing evening.


 We crashed for the night and despite our plans to get off early, we slept in and took it slowly.

We made it as far a Tuscan before we stopped to walk by a display of old military airplanes.  

We went to church and met a family who was also moving to the Dallas area.  Jackson bore his testimony in Sacrament and we snuck Mariah in to nursery and she never cried a bit!!  Such an enjoyable meeting!

We then drove through the Saguaro National park.  It was cool to learn about the cactus we've been living around for so long.  Jackson liked the Jr. Ranger program and we enjoyed taking photos and looking around. 

 Finally, at 5 pm we were on the road again.  We found a place on the drive and call in our order so by the time we pulled up in Lordsburg, our table was set with food, a high chair, and kids coloring books!  It was great to sit down and start eating immediately!  We should do this more often! 
We got back on the road for a couple more hours and spent the night in El Paso.

Once again, we were planning on getting up early, but we slept late, ate Texan waffles and took a quick dip in the pool.  We finally got on the road to Carlsbad Caverns.  This was out in the middle of no where.  The drive felt like we were never going to see civilization again.  We ate at the cafe at the park and then headed to the caverns.  We were a bit disappointed that we could do all the hikes since our kids are so little, but we were thankful for the elevator making it easy to get to the best parts of the caverns.  We did hike all around inside the caverns.  It was amazing.  The structures and creations were fabulous.  Once again, Jackson loved the Jr. Ranger program they provided.  He is a little lover of learning and it is fabulous to be around him.  Fortunately, our kids were a bit creeped out by the cave, so they were subdued and well behaved.
We hit the road again and made it to a random pizza buffet along the way.  The kids loved it and it was a perfect pit stop.  We headed to a park to get more wiggles out (we had to break into an elementary school park after trying 3 other locations that GPS was wrong about.).  We got into the car as the sunset and headed for Abilene.   We debated heading home, but were exhausted by the time we stopped.

Once again, after a slow morning, we headed out to our home.  We ate at Chick fil a for breakfast and a long 2 1/2 hours later we were in north Richland Hills.  The kids were thrilled and ran around the house finding all the things we had told them about.  We tried the swing set and the loft bed.  Everything was so much bigger than I had remembered it.  It was interesting to see it with our 'stuff' in it.  This is really our house now!!

The vacation was over.  I started cleaning out the fridge and then we took a huge shopping trip to have something to eat over the next few days.  I spent the rest of the day cleaning out cupboards and trying to get the kitchen in working order.  I realized that I have NEVER put a kitchen together on my own.  I felt lost knowing where to put everything.  Dave wasn't much help because he was focused on sorting out boxes, mowing the VERY overgrown lawn and getting our beds in order.

The next day was so overwhelming.  Dave headed to work and I tried to get motivated to get boxes, but the house was so dirty, I couldn't stand to unload with the condition it was in.  I spent over 5 hours cleaning baseboards, window ledges, windows, doors, closet shelves and other dusty nooks and crannies.  The upstairs was completely finished and I didn't know where to start to I just kept cleaning.  Literally, not a single box was unloaded this day. I was still overwhelmed (stress-paralyzed?) But at least the house was clean.

We met a kid at McDonald's the week before and I saw him again at the library.  This may seem insignificant to most, but I have always said that I feel at home in a place when I run into people I know randomly.  When we moved to Arizona, I ran into 5 people in the first week I happened to know (this never happened as frequently as that first week).  I felt like God was showing me that I was 'at home'; that I belonged.  When we were moving here I realized that I knew NO ONE so there really was no chance of randomly running into someone I knew.  But meeting someone and then running into them again showed me that God is aware of my needs and he is doing His best to meet them.  This happened again with a neighbor that I met and then ran into later.