Blogging Updates Begin: The Move

I am now beginning the blog updates for the past couple of months. Get ready...there are many :)

Date: June 16th
Mission: Re-Locating our life. The mommy and her two "scream the entire drive" children are to make a 3-day journey from Orlando, FL to Mobile, AL including overnight stops in Thomasville, GA and Jay, FL.
Logic behind this mission: Pure insanity.

So the girls and I left a few days before Shane and the U-haul so that he could scrub the house we were renting from ceiling to floor in hopes of getting at least part of our deposit back. Cleaning would have been virtually impossible with the girls there so there was really no other choice. So, here are me and the girls in the van about to pull out on our crazy adventure. I know...the pic is completely foggy but I had to post it anyway. My camera lens was a cloudy mess b/c there was like 500% humidity. Anyhoo, if you could see the pic....I have a huge smiley face and thumbs up on one hand b/c I was super pumped to be moving back to Mobile and then my other hand was a thumbs down b/c I had to drive the whole way by myself with the screamers :) It was such an ambivalent moment (I know, I know....such a big, smart word...haha...it just means feeling two opposite emotions at the same exact time...I just learned it a few years ago :) So....let the journey begin....

A few hours into the drive (and the screaming) we stopped for lunch at this Fabulous McDonald's (not that I think there is anything fabulous about EATING McDonald's...ewwww, I'm nauseous just thinking about it...) where they have this totally separate huge indoor play area and tables and bathroom, etc. It's great for the girls b/c they can eat, run around, pee....everything....right there. Splendid idea on McDonald's part.

So, we have these fabulous friends from college, Robbie and April, who we haven't seen in forever. I re-connected with April this past year b/c I heard she was having twins. Their precious twin girls will be 1 in October. She had them at 33 weeks just like I did....crazy! Anyways, we've been wanting to meet up and I thought since they live around the half-way point of my trip, that I would just stop over at their house for the night, see them and their girls and let them meet mine. Here is April and me...

Their girls...too cute!!

The girls saw the twins' johnny jump-ups and crawled into them. Hilarious. They are just standing on the ground. They still think they are little babies!

April got my girl's little goodie bags with some stickers in them. Of course, the girls thought the coolest thing ever was to put them all over "the wittle babies" :) It was so funny watching my girls wanting to "mother" April's girls. It was so sweet!

It was crazy having 2 sets of twin girls in one house. That night we realized we were just going to have to rely on our ears to hear them b/c we didn't think about having four video monitors in one house, thus causing NONE of them to pick up correctly. Needless to say, none of us adults slept very much :)

It was SOOOO wonderful seeing you guys!! Thanks for letting us crash (literally) your house!

Robbie and his sweet little girls...

So after spending the night at the "twin girl" house, I packed up the sexy van to make the 2nd leg of our 3-leg trip. We were heading to Jay, Fl to stay with my family for the night. My grandpa is not doing well and I wanted to see him as soon as i could. When we left Robbie and April's that morning, I had a weird feeling about Gabbie. She had acted weird all morning and had barely touched her breakfast (which is very unusual for her...this is the child who can eat 6 scrambled eggs all by herself if I let her...which of course, I usually don't :) After we had been on the road for about 30 minutes, she started saying her tummy was hurting (this, however, is NOT usual for her. She is my drama queen. She says her tummy hurts every single day and begs me to take her to the "dotter"). So about an hour or so into the drive, I look in the rear-view mirror and to my horror, see Gabbie put her hands up to her mouth and then she proceeds to projectile vomit everywhere. Yes, everywhere. I pull onto the side of the interstate and try to look for something I could use to start trying to clean up this utter disaster. The only thing I could find was a washcloth. That's right. One tiny washcloth! Nice. I strip her down while I am trying to not get completely smashed by the 18-wheelers that are zooming by :) . I had to use some extra clothes of the girls to clean up as best I could. At some point during the chaos I managed to call Shane, who was 6 hours away, and yell at him to "do something!!" Yeah, I was speaking out of psycho-ness. I got Gabbie somewhat "cleaned" up, gave her a sand-bucket to hold in case she had to throw-up again, and prayed REALLY hard that she wouldn't throw up anymore, at least until we got to my parent's (I only had 3 more hours to go :). Well, miraculously, she didn't throw up anymore. However, the sexy van smelled something awful. Oh, when we were about 30 minutes from my parents, I look in the rear-view mirror again and see Gabbie STANDING up behind me. I then realize when I unbuckled her to clean up the mess, I had forgotten to buckle her back in. Awesome. We finally made it to my parents. Finally. And I had to DEEP CLEAN the sexy van big time.

I got to spend some time with my grandpa. It was so good to see him. I got my grandma to take a picture of me and the girls with Grandpa. Her aim was just a bit off :)

The girls got to feed the fish at PawPaw and MawMaw's house.

PawPaw and MawMaw

Swimming with cousin Landon and cousin Ashton

The next day I packed up the sexy van yet again for our final leg. Jay to Mobile. Shouldn't be that bad, right? I mean, compared to the other 2 legs, this one is so short. Ummmmm...not so much. My mom rode over with me and she can confirm. IT WAS AWFUL! Gabbie screamed at the top of her lungs the entire drive. It started to monsoon so we had to drive like 15 MPH, then we hit traffic on the causeway. SOOOOO, 2.5 hours later (the drive is normally about an hour and 15 min) we arrive at Ms. Shrop's house to set up shop for 2 weeks while we did some work on our house. She, amazingly, stayed with a friend for two weeks so we could have her house to ourselves. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Ms. S.!

Shane arrived with the U-Haul that evening as well. My brother came over to help him unload. This was a Friday. We decided to start on Monday morning working on the house, etc.

The next morning we took the girls to their friend, Jake's, 2 year bday party at Pump-it-up. SO fun. The girls had a blast. It was so great seeing so many friends that we hadn't seen in a long time. It still was surreal that we were actually back to Mobile. It felt like we were just visiting, especially since we were not staying at our house.

Shane helping the girls climb up the enormo slide...such a great Daddy :)

They flew down just a bit faster than they had anticipated :)

Jake, the birthday boy!

the little pirates inhaling their cake and icecream :)

Gigi (Gran's new name...she decided the girls could say it easier :) and HayHay came down for the first week to help with the girls and the house. No words can describe our gratitude!

Looking at some pics on HayHay's computer (while Jocelyn totally cheeses for the camera :)

On Sunday, we took the girls out to eat for the very first time ever at Cracker Barrel (chick-fil-a doesn't count as a real sit-down restaurant :) I know they are almost two and a half, but we just don't do the going-out-to-dinner thing with them. At least not by ourselves. Four-on-two is more do-able :)

They loved playing that game there (what is it called? the thingy with the little pegs??). It bought us a good 15 minutes of quiet. Very nice.

They actually did quite well. We were pleasantly surprised. We all ate a hefty country dinner in preparation for the crazy psycho-ness that was beginning the next day. That post will be coming up soon..... :)

Well, the "move" was complete. That is, the actual physical move from Orlando to Mobile. Getting moved-in will be another story soon to come....