Well, I wish I would have had a chance to blog over the last few days because each day could have and should have been a post of its own. But alas, I had no time and then no wifi to do any blogging. So I will try to catch you up on at least the main events of the last few days.
To start, we are here. I guess you could say we're in limbo-land, kind-of feeling like a mixture of being on vacation, but with no home to go back to. Mike went straight to work on Monday morning, so we haven't even had a chance to really get our bearings and debrief or anything of the sort as of yet.
We were supposed to close on our house on the 5th and leave a day or two later. But at the last minute, the buyers extended their option period while they drew up a "new" offer that reflected their concerns about their true budget after they had an inspection completed. Their new offer was so far from their original offer that we had to respectfully decline and terminate the contract. We definitely saw a case of an investor trying to take advantage of us. So, we scheduled a time to get the moving truck, and Mike and David started packing the truck immediately.
We hoped to leave Thursday afternoon, then switched to Friday morning, then to Friday afternoon, and finally by 8:00 on Friday night, we had the house empty and clean, the moving truck packed completely full, two SUV's packed full, a trailer loaded behind one SUV for David to pull, and another trailer loaded behind the moving truck to haul Mike's prized rock-crawler. With a caged cat in two vehicles, we each got into a vehicle to begin the long drive North, assuming we'd make it at least a few hours that first night to shorten up the trip some on Saturday.
We're so thankful for so many prayers for safety, because God definitely kept us safe, though the trip was anything but uneventful. That Friday night, I started getting tired around 11:30 and told Mike I could make it till midnight. That would get us to Texarkana, one of the bigger towns. Except once we got to Texarkana around midnight, we couldn't find any motels with any vacancies. So we drove a bit farther while Mike called 14 different motels on our way, only to find out everyone was booked due to an athletic tournament going on. I finally resorted to a being open to a Walmart parking lot where I could at least sleep a few hours in my car. Just when we decided on that over the phone, we heard a popping sound, which happened to be Mike's trailer tire. So he slowly pulled off the road and onto the next exit, right into a Walmart parking lot. When we all got our of our vehicles to look at the tire, we looked up and saw a motel right across the street. With a vacancy! We all got a good night's sleep for the long drive on Saturday, and we got the tire we needed at Walmart in the morning. God took good care of us that night, in Hope, Arkansas, of all places.
Saturday we got a later start due to getting the tire situation all sorted out and fixed, so we didn't pull out until about 10:30 in the morning with a ten hour drive ahead of us. I was really started to get bored and tired in the late afternoon (I don't know that I've ever driven that long on my own), so I was really looking forward to listening to church online at 6:00. I was so excited to get to listen to my church for an hour and hear Josh Howerton preach.
But shortly after 6:00, as I was singing along with the worship, I watched as David blew a tire on the trailer he was pulling in front of me. So we both pulled off onto the side of the road and got off on the next exit. He pulled into the first parking lot he saw, which just so happened to be a wrecker service. With tires. He walked in (thankfully they were still open on a Saturday evening), explained what happened and what he needed, and they let him pull into the shop and get things taken care of. In that time, I was able to go to the gas station across the street, use the restroom, get some coffee, fill up my gas tank, and then drive to McDonalds to grab us something to eat for dinner. So we lost another hour, but God definitely kept us safe and took care of us. Oh, and I did get to listen to the rest of church, too.
We all three got back on the road, but we kept losing time due to some engine issues Mike was having with the truck that made going up any kind of hill or incline take a lot longer. We finally found ourselves driving up the last road to Mike's brother Matt's house at about 2 am (1 am our time in Texas). Except that his road was a bit more of an incline than the truck's engine could handle, and the truck just stopped moving. He revved it the whole way, but the truck wouldn't budge another inch up that hill. So we called Matt, who came with his Excursion to pull the truck the rest of the way up the hill to his house. Not quite the grand entrance we really wanted to make back into Indiana, especially at 2 am, but hey, we're thankful we made it up every other hill prior to that without any issues. By the time this happened, Matt was just at the top of the hill with just the right vehicle to come to our aid.
I have a lot more to write, but I'll end this post and continue the story later. I'd hate to leave out any important details because I'm trying to tell too much at once.
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