Home for Christmas

It must be the year of the road trip, because here we are again, loading up the car for a long drive. But this time, it is to drive into the snow and cold to make it home for the holidays. We are incredibly excited to see everyone!!! Plus, it's almost guaranteed to be a white Christmas in Iowa.

Here's hoping for decent driving conditions as we cross the country, and then spend the week driving around Iowa & Minnesota to all the Christmas gatherings.

It's hard to believe it's been since 2009 that we've been home for Christmas. I think I'm going to need some snow boots...

Fall Happenings

Fall has been a complete whirlwind of activity. Between starting our new jobs and exploring our new state, its been a rare weekend to have nothing to do. This is one of those weekends, so it's high time we update the blog!

As most of you know, part of what helped us decide on where to move was my teaching position. Kindergarten has certainly kept me busy this fall! It's like being a first year teacher again with all the work outside of school hours. Brad has kept busy with work as well - he transferred with his company and things are going well there.

Beyond work, we have tried to explore as much of our new home as we can. I won't lie, school consumes more time than I care to admit. But we have found a new church and have enjoyed getting involved in the community - as evidenced by that face paint Brad let some young pre-teens give him. 

 

Between the beach on one side and mountains on the other side of the state, we have found plenty of weekend adventures to escape work. Sometimes we forget to grab the camera, but its been great to go exploring. I should also mention we have a roommate for the time being, Molly, a close friend who moved to North Carolina just after we did back in August.

Having missed out on fall foliage the past three years, North Carolina did not disappoint us. It's easy to forget just how gorgeous the autumn colors are, but wow. I wish I would have gotten pictures of the transformation of my drive to work too but we all know I wake up way too late for that!

As always, our home is open to any and all visitors. My brother has already taken advantage of the free place to crash, but we'd love to have any of our friends and family visit any time!

Changes

Sometimes I forget I live in a new state now, as in: different time zone, different climate, different everything. Not to say it's bad, just different - changes from what I'd gotten used to. I have to remind myself what state I live in.

And yes, this chorus keeps going through my head (although I realize the song is completely unrelated, it is a good one)...

Changes. Examples of what is different since the move:

1. I want to text a teacher friend on my way out the door in the morning - oh yeah, Arizona is now a 3 hour time difference. The people I used to work with aren't even awake yet, much less in school mode. Whoops, sorry for that 4am text! The same goes for everything - it's strange being ahead of everyone instead of behind them. Alaska is 4 hours behind me. This East Coast time is just weird.

2. Apparently in Arizona, Brad and I got into the habit of calling interstates "the __insert number__" - as in, "You take the 101 to the 202 to get there." I get made fun of for inserting that the - I didn't even realize I was doing it.

3. There are trees everywhere. As in, you drive down the street and don't know what businesses are located where until you are at the driveway entrance. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a forest and feel a little lost. That's nice compared to the concrete jungle that is the Valley of the Sun.

4. Fall is actually a season here. As in, I have to put on a jacket in the morning and the windows can be left open. It's been a long 3 years, oh I've missed you Fall!!

5. We have a yard. I don't have to get a leash and walk my dogs every time they need out, I just open a door and they run out. WHOA.

6. Mosquitoes live here. We have a love/hate relationship. I itch a lot. One dog doesn't like the grass because of them. 

7. Kindergarten. Need I say more?

And because every post needs a picture, I give you Cleo. Let's blame her for my lack of blogging. She does this whenever I sit on the couch with my computer.

 In completed unrelated news, Lindsey fell down her stairs. Inside. Except for it's not evening there - it's afternoon. Time is so strange.

Road Trip Deja Vu

Back in July....Our glorious summer ended with saying goodbye to Arizona. If you recall, we had packed everything up into a garage unit in May and spent two months crashing at a friend's house while we figured out where we were headed. (Julie- thank you, thank you friend!!) All too soon, it was time to move. At the end of July, we packed all of our possessions onto a moving truck. Side note: I would definitely recommend this for anyone moving long distance. It was great - we loaded the truck, they drove it. No hassle.

       Shout out to Dave and Dave for both volunteering to sweat buckets loading up a moving truck in the disgusting heat that is Arizona in July! Lucky it was fairly easy to just unload the garage where everything was stored and pack it onto the truck. With this moving company, you pay for the footage you use on the truck, so it became a big game for the guys to fit it in as little space as possible.

   That left just us with a few bags and the car. With our odometer set to zero, we began our trek across the country. One car, 2 people, 2 dogs, and 7 states to cover. Road trip!

 

The miles passed relatively quickly without much to report on. Just imagine us dancing and singing and you get the idea of how we spent our time. Since we had recently done a road trip to Iowa, the dogs were used to spending long hours in the car and slept almost exclusively. There were however, few times when both dogs were in the back seat. Cleo spent the trip attempting to get up with us to sleep.

                 

Something interesting we learned - my car's trip odometer only goes up to 1000 before resetting itself. So that was actually 1,153.7 miles into the trip when we entered Arkansas. And yes, Cleo continued her sneaky assaults on the front seat. On one particular construction-slowed drive, I managed to document what this sneaking looked like.

 

 Three days after we began, we crossed into our new state - surrounded by fog-capped mountains. The most fascinating part of this whole drive had been watching the landscape slowly turn from brown desert brush to brilliant green trees as we drove further east. We were definitely east now!


Let's make that officially 2,195.9 miles later - and we arrived at our new home in Durham. Can you tell we were just a wee bit excited to be out of the car?

June Road Trip!

Remember back when we didn't know where we going to live or I was going to work? It's crazy to think that was just a few short months ago. Three months ago about this time, I was packing up my classroom and apartment, with no clue what was next in our lives. But in the middle of that, Brad and I planned a trip to visit family and friends in Iowa for June.

As the trip drew closer and we still didn't know what our future held, we decided the best option was to drive back to Iowa. Oh yeah and we decided to take the dogs with us since we would be gone for 10 days. Google maps said it should only be a 22 hour drive but we knew the dogs might slow us down (they did). Oh yeah and call us crazy, but we decided to drive it straight through to maximize our time actually IN Iowa as opposed to driving to/from the state.

Two people, two dogs, 25 hours, one car. Let the fun begin! Oh yeah and of course we documented every hour of this giant nonstop road trip to mark our progress...what else are you going to do to keep yourself entertained?

Two things you might notice in our hourly photos:
1. It's obvious when I fell asleep and Brad was taking selfies (and he doesn't keep track well)
2. If you know me at all, you are impressed by the amount of time I was in the driver's seat

Once we FINALLY got out of the car nearly 25 hours later, we kind of forgot to document our trip very well as we made our way across the state of Iowa to visit family and friends. So I give you the few pictures we have:

Our first stop was a family wedding in Cedar Rapids (Congrats again Lenae & Jaron!!). We got to see most of Brad's immediate family and all of the "Damn Family" - what the extended family on his mom's side all affectionately call one another. It was wonderful to be able to help welcome a new member into our clan - living so far away, it's not often Brad and I get to join in these family celebrations.

Next up, I surprised Brad with a  birthday party. Many thanks to my mom, fake mom Diane, and Holly for helping me pull off the surprise! They actually did all the work, I just thought of it. Brad honestly had no idea what was going on until we walked around the corner of the Landrus house! Definitely should have documented more of the party and our guests, but at least I got a few good ones of Brad cheesing it up.

 

With the big weekend behind us, we spent the next few days seeing as many good friends and family as we could. We criss-crossed Iowa to do it and while it meant more time in the car, it was so amazing to see everyone! It was also great to be back in the Midwest and enjoy the green summer there (remember, we still didn't know where/what we were doing next). High on our priority list was to spend some quality time with all our grandparents.

Brad with his Grandma Bev

Liz with her Grandma Fisher

We ended the week with a camping trip in Fort Dodge - again, getting to spend quality time with the Damn Family. This is an annual camping trip they do and we'd missed the past 3 years. Man, it felt good to be back. Imagine, an entire extended family singing the national anthem in the middle of a campground to kick off a bean bag tournament - awesomeness! It doesn't get much better than that in terms of family gatherings! The dogs definitely enjoyed all the attention they received too since Brad's nephew, Hayden, was essentially inseparable from Athena.

It was while we were camping that I got a call offering me a job. It was not necessarily a grade I expected but the school was exactly what I was searching for. I would be gainfully employed again! Strange - we drove to Iowa not having an inkling of where we would land next, but when we drove away from Iowa eight days later, we had a plan. No longer were we wondering where we would live, where we would work - we were moving to North Carolina! I think finally having a plan made it a lot easier for Brad to sleep on our 25 hour drive back to Arizona.