Denver

It was quite a road to get here, but we have arrived in Denver, CO. I can't say there were any great highlights of this process, but we all arrived safely and can look back and just call it one big "comedy of errors."

Thanks to the amazing help of some wonderful friends we got our house packed and cleaned. However, after the first day of truck loading we realized we would most definitely not have enough room for everything. The next morning we arranged to pick up a second truck, which then left us with the need to tow our van (thankfully, Andy had already driven our pick-up over two weeks prior when he got stuck in a snowstorm for two days). When we picked up the truck we were informed they did not have the appropriate trailer for our van. We took the truck anyway since we needed to get our stuff out of the house and be ready to drive out the following day. After talking to U-haul for an hour we finally found a trailer in Madras, OR. We hadn't planned to drive the two-lane highway, mountain pass route through Bend, but it looked like we were going to now and it would still be over 2 hours out of our way to get the trailer. Next, we had to beg some wonderful friends for one last huge favor. The Pindells were driving from that direction when we called and asked if they could go back the next day. He would drive our van and Nancy would drive their van so they would have a way back home and Andy and I would each drive a truck.

We left Eugene Tuesday morning amongst floods of tears. One boy refused to get in the car so Andy had to lift him into it - it was all torturous. Before we left our neighborhood I called the U-haul place in Madras to confirm that they had received our reservation the day before and that the trailer was definitely available. No problem, they reported, so off we all went. Instead of driving our van across the country I got the challenge of driving our 34'3" moving truck - not relaxing! Andy drove the 26' truck since he was also going to tow the van. We headed up the highway, through the snow on the pass and into Madras only to find NO trailer! We stopped at the u-haul place located at Discount Carpet and started talking to Daniel. He not only lied to us, but also to u-haul about the whole incident. How do we know? While talking to u-haul on one line and telling them something different than he had already told Andy he called his friends on his cell phone trying to find Armando. He spoke Spanish to his friends thinking we didn't understand, but Andy knew enough to get what was going on. His friend, Armando, had the trailer doing who knows what with it and Daniel couldn't get a hold of him to get it back. U-haul ended up putting us up in a motel in Bend and driving to Seattle to bring a trailer to us the next day. Of course the PIndells had to follow us until we were settled at the motel because we couldn't shuttle cars from Madras to Bend so they had a much longer day than planned and we owe them huge. To add to the frustrating day Andy went out that evening to get some water bottles for the trip and ended up getting into a minor car accident - his fault when he backed into someone.

After getting the trailer and van hooked up we finally got out of town at 9 and drove through hail, snow and rain to Boise. Along the way Andy was trying to help one of the boys pee into a Gatorade bottle (a common occurrence when we are on road trips) but there was a little mishap and so he peed all over Andy and the steering wheel. We pulled into our friends' house in Boise thoroughly exhausted. My back hurt so bad from this past month and then sitting in the truck for two days I couldn't even untie my shoes. When we got up the next day we decided to stay one more night. My back was in so much pain I didn't think I could last more than 4 hours driving the truck which would mean we would have to spend two nights instead of one in a hotel between Boise and Denver and since we were do to arrive on a Friday night we had a few days to play with before Andy had to be at work on Monday. We were also still exhausted and emotionally drained from crying across the state of Oregon. It has never been so hard to leave somewhere. The boys had a great day playing outside with our friends' children and I rested on the couch most of the day.

We left Boise and drove across southern Idaho. The first four hours of driving reminded me of our neighbor's exercise machine from when I was five. She had one of those machines with a wide belt that you put around your waist. When you turn it on it vibrates and supposedly shakes the fat off you. Driving the moving truck on the surface we were on made me feel like I was in one of these machines, but with a belt as wide as I am tall. I don't think it succeeded in jiggling any fat off though. We were on the road for 11 hours and made it to Rock Springs, WY. We rose at 5:30 to get an early start, but had one of Andy's tires blow out at 8:30 and ruined the whole early start thing. He was able to make it to the exit 1/4 mile away (amazing since the exits were all about 10 miles apart in this part of WY). However, the exit went to a dirt road 200 yards long ending, on both ends, at fields we couldn't see the end of - basically the middle of nowhere. Thankfully we had cell phone reception and got a hold of u-haul. We knew there was a town 10 miles down the road so thought help would be fairly quick, but that would be too easy for this adventure. The mechanic in that town does not work on weekends (this was Saturday morning) so we would have to wait for someone to come from the next town which was two hours away. It was one of the double rear tires that blew so this guy seemed to think it would be okay for us to drive into the nearest town to wait for him. We limped down the freeway with our flashers on and made it to a McDonald's playplace where the boys had a great time waiting. Just to give a picture of the town we made it to we walked to the edge of the McDonald's parking lot with our dog and found a rotting deer carcass!

Four hours after the blow out we got back on the road and pulled into Denver at 5:00 last night. If only we could say we've arrived and that's the end of the move from hell :). But, no. Some of you know we left two weeks late because we couldn't get into our house earlier and didn't want to put everything in storage for two weeks. We still can't live there at this time, but we were supposed to be able to store our stuff there while they finished some work on it. After another stressful night's sleep we've decided to put our stuff in storage anyway and maybe even look for a different house. The place is just a mess. If they clean it up and get all of the landlord's and renter's personal items out of there it will be okay, but we're not real hopeful of that happening in the next 13 days. The adventure continues...