The Long Trip

Thank you for being so patient and waiting so long for this post!! It's been rather busy here, with moving and travelling and settling in here in Calgary. But here's some pictures of our trip!

This is the last picture taken of our "normal" apartment, when December's room was still put together. I really should have taken a picture of the gigantic stacks of boxes that we had before moving day. On moving day itself, we had eleven seminary guys come out and help us move all of our belongings from our apartment to the storage facility. They did it in record time! We were really blessed to have so many of our friends come and help us out. After Della helped me clean up the apartment, we packed up our van and left for Calgary around 6:00pm.


We stopped that night (Thursday) around 11:30pm, just after going through Las Vegas. We slept in our van, which actually worked out really well! I'll show you pictures of that below. The next morning we started out again around 7:30am. This picture was taken in Arizona.

Brad and I enjoyed seeing all of the different kinds of scenery pass by...God has truly made some fascinating landscapes, and each state that we passed through was so different and beautiful! This picture was also taken in Arizona.

December did well on the long trip. She's generally a good traveller, although we did manage our share of meltdowns and temper tantrums -- which is to be expected of a 2-year-old strapped in a car seat for hours on end! She played with her kitties and her bears (one of her favorite things -- it's what she and Brad are playing with in the very first picture), she watched movies, we sang songs together, etc.

Brad the tireless driver!

...and December passed the time by napping, too.

This picture was taken in Idaho. That was probably my favorite state to drive through, because it was stunningly beautiful!

We stopped at a rest area in Idaho and had dinner. After dinner, we wandered around on paths through lava formations. It was a fun break from all of the driving, and December thought it was great fun to run around in the grass and on the paths!

We let December drive part of the way, too. She really does quite well for a toddler! ...not really -- she's just pretending to be like Daddy.

Here was our bed for both of the nights! We folded down the back seats, flipped forward the middle seats, and laid down our foam mattress. I could sleep stretched flat out, but Brad was a bit too tall for that.

December LOVED sleeping with us! She slept great, which was nice. On the second night, we stopped at a rest area in Montana around 10:30pm and got back on the road again around 6:00am.

This is what we did with all of our suitcases while the back of the van was made into a bed -- stuffed them into the front seats.

This picture was taken in Montana, around 6:30am, right after we had gotten back on the road. We arrived in Calgary at 2:00pm that day, all safe and sound!

Here are December and her cousin Caden playing together. We are staying at Brad's parents' house, and so are Jeff, Erin, and Caden while they wait for their new place to finish being built. It's been fun! The kids love playing together.

Giving each other hugs. You can see how wet the bottom of their pants are -- it has rained nearly every day since we've arrived, and December & Caden love puddles!

Do you like December's pants?!? She fell down in one of the puddles and was thoroughly soaked.

One big change for December is that she is now sleeping in a big-girl bed! We tried putting her in a pack-and-play when we arrived, but she immediately climbed right out of it. So we put a mattress on the floor instead and made a BIG deal about what a big girl she was and what a nice bed it was. The transition went better than I ever expected, and she's sleeping in it like a champ! Well, most of the time anyway. At this nap time, she decided to sleep on the floor instead.