What are Mary, Justin, Grey and Hazel up to?: Last Days in CO/Trip Across Country

I know a lot of you want to know more about our trip from CO to MI. Well I'll back it up a little bit and include our last week or so leading up to the move. There were a lot of goodbyes, visits with family and friends, and places to go during our last week living in CO. We always said it was a bittersweet time, we obviously love Colorado and are sad to leave family and friends, but also very excited for our new careers and way of life too.

Mary and Grey flew back on Thursday the 21st so they didn't have to be a part of trekking across country, which was a smart decision.

My Dad and I caravanned back starting late Thursday afternoon. Of course the same exact day we wanted to leave, mother nature decides to create the worst snowstorm in 20 years or whatever it was. CO wasn't as bad, so we decided that instead of waiting until Friday morning, that we would at least get to the Colorado/Nebraska border. We ended stopping about 5 miles short due to icy roads since we caught up with the storm in a matter of 150 miles. The first night we stayed at a little motel in Julesburg, CO. It was nice, they had a bar that was open! We got up at 5:30am and got an early start on Friday. The roads were well plowed for about 50 miles, then we hit a really rough patch of ice for about 10 miles, since it was only 1 degree out! I was driving the jeep at the time and had a hard time keeping it on the road even with 4 wheel drive in. The backend of the car was swerving quite a bit. My dad was following in the Uhaul, and said he couldn't even feel that the roads were slick, must have been all the weight from the Buick..haha! For the next hour or so, we were only able to go about 35 mph. On two occasions, a car passed us both going way too fast. The roads were deceiving because they did not look icy. However, both cars ended up in the ditch ahead us. Slow and steady was the key. The roads got increasingly better throughout the whole trip. They ended being dry all the way to MI after that. Plows did a great job. Second night we stayed in Des Moines, which is just a little over half way. Went to a big casino for a couple of hours. I actually won $75! Then promptly bought gas with it...darn. We left even earlier on Saturday since we knew the roads were dry. We were on the road by 5:30am and had a clear path to my dad's house in Kalamazoo. We got in around 4pm on Saturday, where my brother Aaron met us. Then he picked up getting our stuff up to Alpena on Sunday. It was a good trip even with the huge storm. We stayed enough behind it to make decent time still.

We are now in the process of unpacking still, and getting out new place organized. We'll post more about that later!

A big thanks to all that helped out with packing and moving!!!

Last Day at Work

Mary's crazy kids

Posed teaching shot

Wine tasting with Timmy and Krista during our last week activities

Apple store again

Met up with friends and fan at Lowry beer garden

Of course this is what G would looked like the last time we picked him up from daycare

Bye Kidzapalooza!

We will miss you Whole Foods...Alpena has one right?

We told Grey that he could play with his table one more time before we packed it up, so he lined up all of his trains and cars. I think he was pretty proud of it.

Once the table was gone, then the bathtub was the obvious next best choice

Let the packing begin!

Grey helped out

This was Tim's contribution to packing

"Look at how well I packed these boxes while wearing white gloves"

Here was our muscle for the day

Just beginning!

ALL PACKED!

Went back to the uhaul place to get the buick hooked up just before the snow started! It is hard to believe we got our stuff into this truck. We did have to let go of a few items, but it was ok. My dad would be really good at Tetris.