Adventures in packing - Road Trip Day 1 and 2

" When preparing to travel, layout all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money." - Susan Heller

Ohhh the truth in the above statement.

Our bomb.com trip got off to an interesting start. Monday Rach and I had planned to say good bye to several friends, finish last minute packing, load our stuff into the car and head west. It almost happened. Neither Rach or I had finished our packing, we still had several people to see, I was still finishing a med school essay and Rach was finishing several paintings so what had happened was...

We decided we would pack the car that evening and head out in the morning instead of rushing.

We gathered all of our belongings and piled them in the driveway in front of the Alexanders garage. WHOAA. Where did all this stuff come from. Things had hidden in the cracks and crevices and despite sending some of our belongings ahead of us, selling furniture and becoming the largest donors ever to Good Will ( and the Alexanders- sorry Daniel..:) we still had way TOO MUCH stuff. As I continued to pack and sort Rae attempted to do the impossible and fit the mountain of belongings into our small neon. She almost succeeded. By the time we were done it was 3 am and we still had a few things that needed to go into the car. Discouraged and exhausted we headed to bed. The next morning we retackled the car, pulling everything out, resorting through boxes and bags and once again getting rid of a bunch of belongings - this time Rachael's super power comes through and she is able to get everything into the car! We just can't see out of the back window. ( " I really wish we had Mary Poppins bags so we could put everything in there and then there would only be two small bags in the back seat"-Rach) This has been a great reason to really evaluate what we need and wear and get rid of what we don't. How do we accumulate so many belongings? We hugged Sarah and said goodbye off we went!

We had planned to hit the road at about 8:30 am and in our typical fashion it was 2:30 pm in the afternoon. We made it to Winston Salem to hug Katie and Mary and then somehow managed to get lost right afterwords. No worries folks we can make it to Oregon no problem - but will get lost an hour outside of Raleigh. We had accidently set our GPS to "off road" so it was not giving us any directions. Our cousin amanda was able to google us back to the right road. Ohh and shout out to Katie's mom who in true mom fashion made us an emergency kit with food, flashlights and FLARES! ( amazing) We have decided if we don't use them along the way we will let them off when we get to Portland. Helen "amazing" Munt made us a CD to listen to in every state - fantastic. Rocked out to them in NC and later TN.

Some great thoughts from the trip -
" There is nothing in kentucky except an amazing rest stop"
" Your telling me all these great things in kentucky, and all i'm hearing is corn, corn, corn, corn, corn..."
" I wonder how a caveman would feel his first time in the car" - While tribal music is playing in the background and Autumn is trying to sleep.

Then we stopped for gas somewhere in mountains- Rach ran in to get snacks and stretch her legs and I was sleeping in the car. I woke with a jolt when over the loud speaker the cashier asked me to move the car because I wasn't allowed to sleep at a gas pump. I thought I was dreaming so I went back to sleep. Rach heard him in the store and had to explain I was not driving (ummm obviously).

Arrive tired in Franklin, TN but had a blast with Rach in the car. Today we have spent time with Tim, Tracie, Amanda, Matt and James and Brenda stopped in. Lots of yummy eating, cookie making ( see chris as the hot fireman and jackser as bballer to the right), a bit of shopping and game playing and now its already bed time. Good relaxing day.

Thank you to the Alexanders and Manganos for all their help in getting us out of town and for just being amazing!

Love to all of you!