A long day . . .

Well, we are here in Lima! We were anticipating a very long day of travel and it was but, honestly, it wasn't that bad. I should probably back up a little bit. I was meaning to post last week before we left but we decided earlier in the week that we were going to put our house on the market while we are gone sooooooo I was extremely busy trying to get our house "show ready" in addition to packing our family for 10 weeks. I'm so glad we are doing it and our house looks amazing (if I do say so myself) - way better than it possibly could if we were actually living in it! So if you know anyone looking for a wonderful house in Homewood send them our direction in mid-March. We are hopeful that someone will fall in love with it the way we did and want to make it their home too.

So this is the end product of all that packing - 3 large duffle bags, 3 suitcases, 1 car seat, 1 double stroller, 2 backpacks and 1 rolling carry-on. We barely made the 50lb limit with each bag weighing in between 46.5 and 49 lbs. Whew!

This is what our duffle bags looked like before one somehow broke loose on I-20 just east of Birmingham at 70 mph. It cost us 15 minutes and put a hole in one of the bags (nothing we couldn't duct tape at the airport!) but luckily our undies weren't scattered all over the interstate so for that we are thankful. That was really the only big hiccup on our long journey from Birmingham to Lima.

Here we are just before we left in Atlanta. My parents and my precious sister in law and (even more precious nephew) met us to say farewell and help us get settled at the airport.

Here is sweet Ford on the first flight. We were so thankful that he had a seat - it made it so much easier!! The kids did absolutely amazing!! There were literally no breakdowns or problems with them at all. They really just had a really fun adventure. We left home at 7 am and got to our hotel around 1:30 am so everyone was well worn out - including Mom and Dad. We got settled into our hotel and hit the pavement today looking for an apartment. We found a fantastic place that I hope to put pictures up of soon. We are going to take care of the final paperwork and hopefully move in tomorrow. We should have internet there in a few days so I will have more time once we get moved in to update on us. We had a siesta this afternoon and went to get local cell phones and have a good dinner and some ice cream. Now we are just trying to get Ford to fall asleep in a small hotel room with all of us - a big challenge for a tired baby.


Thank you all for your prayers. We appreciate it so much and will keep you updated on more specifics of how you can keep praying for us soon.