I have crossed the line this time!

The Mason Dixon line that is...  

I am now a resident of New England.  

I know I haven't posted in quite a while and I'm sorry for that.  The move and all....you know how it goes, right?   I got a little frustrated in Virginia when I couldn't upload photos from the hotel.  I had every intention of blogging from the road every day but it didn't work out as well as I had planned. 

The day we left Virginia was a long day.  We were able to make it all the way to New Hampshire though and not stay someplace along the road.  When we figured out that we weren't as far away as we thought we were, we decided to push on through.  We arrived pretty late but it was nice to spend the night at my mother-in- law's house and spend Thanksgiving with family instead of on the road driving.  We have a pretty amazing family up here.  They have gone above and beyond in helping us get moved into our new place and get set up here.  They are such a blessing!

It's been quite a ride so far. The journey up here was long and tiring but it was a lot of fun.  David and I chatted and laughed all the way up here and it was good to spend that time together.  We are starting a brand new life together up here and I am enjoying every moment.

Thanks so much for hanging with me during this time of transition!  I look forward to visiting your blogs and posting more often in the future.

Blessings!

A photo from Moving Day #2....

Good Morning from Virginia!

I don't know if it's Blogger or the Internet service here at the hotel; but this is the only photo that I am able to upload from yesterday.....

This is the sky over Ft. Payne, Alabama as we were leaving the hotel.

I am praying for safe travels, good weather, little traffic, stamina for the both of us to drive long and hard today,  for good photographic opportunities that I can capitalize on and a good Internet connection tonight so that I can post some photos.

Take care and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Blessings!

Moving Day #2

Hello from Winchester, Virginia!

What a long day it has been on the road?! We did not get as far as we had planned; but, the day was fun and we didn't encounter any problems at all today. We are very thankful for that! It did rain most of the way and that made the traveling slow at times but it was nice to not have the sun glaring in the windows on us all day so we are counting it all joy!

Thank you to all of you who are sending up prayers for our safe journey and those who have called, emailed, commented here on the blog and/or texted! We love you and appreciate you more than you will ever know.


We left Ft. Payne before 8 a.m. this morning and hit rain shortly thereafter. It rained almost all the way through Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia.  Due to the rain falling and difficulty with shooting photos out of the window of a moving vehicle, I wasn't able to get photos of the beautiful scenery as we passed by. If only I could capture what I'm seeing as we travel. I absolutely love the area that we drove through today. Truly, if you have not visited this part of the country, you must visit sometime. David and I have both said that we definitely want to come back and visit in a car sometime....and not traveling in a 26' moving truck towing a car. God has given David special grace to drive this huge vehicle and I must say that he is doing an excellent job. For the most part, our journey is very light hearted and fun and not too stressful even with the rain and the traffic and trying to maneuver the vehicle in and out of places to fuel up, eat and spend the night. We are laughing often and enjoying this time that we have together.  I can't think of a better person to be experiencing this special time with than my very best friend.


Even though photographing the journey has not been easy, I still managed to snap a whole bunch of photos (most of which I had to delete!!)

I tried to upload them tonight and got an error message that said "server rejected"...whatever that means?!

I guess I should get some sleep now anyway.  Tomorrow promises to be a long day of travel.  We will begin our day in Virginia and quickly see West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania.  We are hoping to go all the way through Pennsylvania and New York and into Connecticut before stopping for the night. 

If we get up early enough and make really good time, maybe we can even push on through to New Hampshire.  That's pretty optimistic though!

Thanks so much for stopping by and joining us for this very exciting journey.  Maybe I will be more successful tomorrow with the photography and with posting the photos from the hotel.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Moving Day #1

Hello from Ft. Payne, Alabama!

We haven't seen Randy Owen and the other guys yet but we certainly have been looking since we got here.

We got off to a later start than we wanted to this morning; but we have had a nice drive with no problems and lots of joy for the journey. It seems so surreal to us that we are actually moving to New Hampshire. I'm sure reality will settle in soon though. It's all very exciting!

I have heard that happiness was Lubbock, Texas in the rearview mirror. Surely you all know that song, right? 

Well, having traveled from Ruston, Louisiana to Albuquerque, NM across the great state of Texas, there is a certain amount of truth to that! I must say that today we could have definitely changed the lyrics....

Happiness is definitely "Louisiana in the rearview mirror" for us!  

We are more than excited about this journey that we are embarking on at this time in our lives.  

First stop out of Louisiana is the state of Mississippi and the city of Vicksburg.  The scenery starts to change when you cross into this state and there is so much history in this particular area of the country. 

 

The mighty Mississippi River divides the state of Louisiana from the state of Mississippi.  

 

It looked really pretty today.  I wish that I could have captured it the way that I viewed it.  It's not easy to take photos from the cab of a moving truck bouncing down a bumpy highway at 65 miles per hour.

 

Next stop.....Alabama

As I have said, I found it difficult to take photos from the road today.  I am hoping tomorrow will be better.  Not only was the ride bumpy but we got such a late start that by the time the scenery started getting interesting to me, it started getting dark and the photos just didn't come out very well.  

We cruised through Birmingham tonight which is a really pretty city and through what appeared to be a mountainous area between Gadsden, Alabama and Ft. Payne.  I wish I could have photographed it.  Tomorrow is another day though.....

Tonight, it's home sweet home at.....

 

We are one step closer to our new life in New England.....

 

Thanks so much for stopping by to see me and for following along on this journey.  

Tomorrow we should see a tiny bit of Georgia, Chattanooga, Tennessee, the beautiful Bristol, Tennessee/Virginia (it's right on the border) and hopefully, make it all the way to Scranton, Pennsylvania.  It will be a long day of driving to make it that far; but, if we can do that, we should be back on schedule.  

Sweet dreams, friends.....

Love you all....

THE NEW SEASON.....

Packing!

That pretty much sums up what we have been doing around our house lately! I'm glad we didn't completely unpack from the last move so this time it has been much easier.  We had just unpacked what was necessary to live temporarily and we have taken the time to repack some things for the long distance move.  We have also donated a few more things in the process so that helps!   It's a good thing that I'm one of those people who really doesn't mind packing at all. Unpacking is a whole different story though!   I am praying for special grace to be able to get all of that done quickly and easily when we get to our final destination.  The challenge will be deciding what to unpack there, as well.  We only have a 6 month lease there and having rented it without really seeing it, we are not sure that we will extend it  past the 6 months.  It's going to be a great place to spend the winter though and we are looking forward to the new season in our lives.  The season of doing something different in a new place and of course, the season of winter, as well!  After the brutal summer we had down here in Louisiana, the winter snow will be a welcome relief!

 

This temporary home that I dreaded so much has been such a blessing to us in so many ways.  While it never became home for us, I became pretty comfortable there once I got it cleaned up.  The house was built for someone who had disabilities so those accommodations have been so helpful in the moving process. The ramp on the door and the super wide hallway made moving furniture and boxes so much easier! 

We got the moving truck on Friday and I must say that it looked sooo huge!  I am so glad that David will be the one driving it instead of me.   I'm riding shotgun to help him watch out for other cars.  This is where we will be spending the next few days...

David got a few things loaded on the truck on Friday night; but he really hit it hard yesterday morning.....

David was able to get the heavy stuff on the truck and then rearrange everything on there so that it fit perfectly well.  It's like putting together a puzzle to decide what fits where.

 

I must say that, when he was all finished, he did an excellent job at getting the truck packed this time and I think it's all going to ride very well.  Like I told him....worst case scenario?  Something breaks.   So what?!  We will deal with that as it comes.  There is nothing in the back of that truck that is going to steal my peace!

The logistics of making a cross country move is quite complicated. The first time I made a move like that, I threw some stuff in the back of a Geo Prism and headed out. The second time that I made a move like that, I packed up some stuff in the back of the same Geo Prism and sent the rest of the stuff via UPS. This time we had to rent a 26' moving truck to hold all of our "stuff". That is after a yard sale last fall, giving stuff away to friends and family and multiple trips to the dump and multiple trips to our favorite charities to make donations. How crazy is it that we have so much stuff?! I'm going to have to do some major adjustments if my "Airstream Dream" ever comes true. In all fairness, some of the stuff that I had was not all mine. I had some items that belonged to other family members and those items needed to be disposed of in some manner, as well. But still.....

How do we collect so much stuff?? We need to take a really hard look at everything once we get to our new home and see if we can make some adjustments to what we own. We will really want to do that once we have to carry all of it upstairs to our new home!  

In addition to deciding what to take with us and how we were going to get it all across the country, we had to decide how to get our two vehicles to our new home.  We really wanted to make the road trip together and not drive separately so David did some research and we decided to pull one car on a car carrier and ship the other car.  

 

  It  was a weird feeling to see our car get loaded up on a trailer and driven off by these two men that we didn't know.  David was careful to take pictures of our car from every angle and the license plate and markings on the truck and to take pictures of the two guys that drove off with our car.  He told them that his wife blogs so they were happy to pose for the photos!  So just in case we ever have to I.D. them, here they are....

The car hasn't made it to our new home yet; however, my mother-in-law said that she received a call and it should be there tomorrow.  ~whew~  I was beginning to think that photo was going to be evidence.

It has been a bittersweet time for us.  On the one hand we are so excited about our new adventure; but, on the other hand, we had to say goodbye to my mom and stepdad and goodbye to so many dear friends.  If you're reading this, remember....we love you all and hope to see you soon!

I'm sure we will be back here to visit and we have had several friends promise to visit us.  We will be looking forward to those reunions!

It's time to get some rest for the journey. Thanks so much for stopping by to see me.  I hope to see you here again soon.

Blessings!

Our next adventure....

is about to begin!  I know it has been awhile since I've visited with you on here and I apologize for that.  We have not had an Internet connection in our temporary place and life has been a little crazy for us.  I still can't believe what has happened since we moved out of our log home into the temporary home. 

I wanted to stop in for a bit this evening to let you know that the door has opened for us to relocate to New England.   I am awed and humbled by the goodness of God.  I truly could not have worked things out any better had I been in control of it myself.

The plan is to pack the truck up over the weekend and start the adventure bright and early Monday morning. We should be at our destination in time for Thanksgiving! 

We are excited about this new adventure that we are about to begin!  I can't wait to photograph the trip and share it with you here as we travel.

Have a great week!

LUNCH!

Dear Humphrey....

I sure am going to miss you when I move away. We've been friends since I was a child. With your tangy, yummy yogurt and your three fresh fruits....always strawberries, grapes and bananas for me.....your crunchy sweet granola topped with yummy honey....yes, I'm going to miss you dearly.

Thanks for a wonderful lunch today!

WE HAVE ARRIVED IN THE "LAND OF WEIRD"

Hello Friends!

So here we are at the end of another very busy and chaotic week.  This is beginning to be a pattern in our lives; but I have to say that it's all good.  So many things have transpired this week and the last 36 hours have been especially interesting.  I'm not ready to get into all of that right now but I will tell you about that sometime soon when we have more time together.

Before I head off to work for a little bit, I want to share with you a little about the new place that we are living.  I've shared with you that we went around exploring last weekend and we discovered some interesting sites along the way.  So without further adieu.......

Yes, friends....

Those are doors. Doors set up in the middle of the woods. 

Where do they lead?  I dunno.... 

We thought about trying to go through them but didn't want to trespass.  Who knows where we might have ended up?!

Yup.....we have arrived in the Land of Weird.

Remember the pictures of the pretty horses in the morning mist that I posted the other day?  

At the driveway to that property, I saw this sign......

 Goat protection area? 

What does that even mean?

For the record, we saw no goats at all there.  No goats protecting the place and no goats being protected.  Whatever?!  Moving on....

What we did see occupying the pasture with the pretty horses were these two guys.....

Let's look a bit closer at this idyllic scene.  

Yes, folks......that would be a longhorn steer and a buffalo sharing breakfast together.   I'm sorry for the quality of picture.  I couldn't get closer and I haven't gotten that zoom lens yet to play with.  Are they protecting the goats that we have yet to see or are they being protected by the goats?  Who knows...

Yes...it's the Land of Weird!

Meanwhile back at mi casa, we had some light bulbs that blew out and we noticed something that I don't ever think I've seen before....

67 watts?  52 watts?   

I don't know what to say......

If you take all of those unusual things and you add them to this strange sign that I've already shared with you....

you most definitely have

The Land of Weird....

Have a great weekend, friends!