Getting There

We were able to sign our closing documents early, so we didn't have to stick around until Monday morning after all. After a second round of cleaning the house in the morning, we finally got on the road around mid-day. 2 cars, 2 cats, 2 kids, 2 drivers. Oh boy! For those reasons, we decided to make the ~1600 mile trip in 4 days. Buckle up! I looked in my rear view a lot that first day, looking back not only for my husband's car, but at the beautiful landscape we were leaving behind. So long Idaho!

I was hoping we could make it to Moab for dinner, but it got dark quickly and we got hungry around Green River instead. Aren't my co-pilots the cutest?

I was bummed that we rolled into Moab in the dark and that our schedule didn't allow for any national park detours. It's such a pretty area. So I was ecstatic when we got to drive right by an arch off the highway the next morning! (We needed some levity, since Owen had barfed in the hotel room before dawn! We said a prayer and crossed our fingers as we got into the car for a full traveling day with a sickie, hoping it was just food poisoning or travel sickness.)

The map indicated that we would be extremely close to the four corners area on our route today, and a 30-minute detour would put us at the actual marker. So, we did make a small detour. (The windy, remote roads leading to the monument caused a road-side emergency stop for barf #2. This cannot be happening.) It was super cool to know exactly where we were geographically, but the monument was a little sad. Lots of empty vendor booths on this chilly day and not much else.

After that, Owen was promoted to the front seat (that always helps me with motion sickness), and we thankfully did not have to pull over to the side of the road the rest of the day! He did take a picture of Shiprock, NM for me, which was a strange, huge rock jutting out from the otherwise barren landscape.

And the end of that nerve-wracking day called for some adult refreshments...

We started off the next day excited to know that Uncky Dan would be signing papers for our new house while we were in the car. We tried to brush off the call we got from our lender that morning (the morning of closing!) with questions we thought we had already answered. It later became apparent, as we were in separate cars in probably the most desolate strip of interstate in the middle of New Mexico, that our lender required some more documentation from us (the day of closing!). What?! 40 miles later, we pulled off at the first McDonald's to use their WiFi to appease our lender.

While we were feeling particularly homeless, we crossed into Texas and felt a glimmer of hope that we were, in fact, headed home.

And then the rain came. The skies grew dark and it rained quite a bit. We found out that we had not closed on our new house that day, after all of the phone calls and documents sent and forms we filled out over the past several weeks. But we did witness an extremely vivid rainbow (and even double rainbow sometimes) that again gave us a glimmer of hope.

By the time we reached Lubbock, we just had to get out of the car to walk around Tech's campus for a bit to stretch and vent. But by the end of the day, we received reassurance from our lender that all was good for closing the following day.

Phew! The final car day was all business, like an arrow to our new house. Closing actually happened, and we had movers coming first thing the next morning! We got to Houston just before the title company closed, which worked out for us to grab a key and check out the place that we could barely remember before movers arrived. Hallelujah! We made it! The kids approved of their new playset, and we dropped off the cats before the last bit of the journey to Uncky Dan's house!