So Long St. Louis

Well, folks -- it's been a while.  Let's just say that in this day and age, it is REALLY hard to be without internet for any extended period of time!  Hahaha.  When the story left off, we were days away from moving on out.  Our moving trucks arrived on Wednesday morning and as the packers were loading things up, I took the kids to the park to keep them occupied and out of the way.  Ethan threw a fit about not wanting to go, so I left him behind with Scott and met up with a couple of friends while waiting for things to clear out.

My good friend Debbie met up with us for a little bit while we were at the park.  {Believe it or not, I had blow-dried and straightened my hair that morning.  Unfortunately, the 99% humidity outside wanted to wish me farewell.}

Debbie is a super talented artist and I'm so excited to hang one of her paintings in our new house!

After hanging for a few hours at the park, I dropped Sophie and Jane at Natalie's house, and then headed home to put Lover Boy down for a nap and begin the cleaning out that would need to happen once the boxes and furniture were out.  We were so grateful for the friends from church who showed up to help us clean as well.  In hindsight, though, I think it probably would have been best to wait until EVERYTHING was out before attempting to clean!  I think in mind I was expecting it to be a lot easier to clean up and around the movers as they were clearing things out than it actually was.  Oh well.  Live and learn!  We managed to get a good chunk done before Alex woke up and it was time to go and get the girls.  Once the movers finished up, we decided to spend our last afternoon in town at the pool.  The kids were super excited to have Scott there to swim with, and even though our time was cut short by a MAJOR downfall of rain, they still had a lot of fun.

Taking a break from the cleaning while the movers were moving.

Some friends had invited us over for dinner and a happy evening was had all around.  We are really going to miss all of our friends here in St. Louis.  Once we were home for the night, the kids settled in for a "campout" in the basement while Scott and I finished up some more cleaning.

 Mopping the floors one last time while listening to Pandora.  

Having to sleep on the floor for our last night in the house actually wasn't that bad.  Or at least the actual sleeping on the floor part wasn't.  NOT so fun was the middle of the night wake up call from Sophie who was sporting a random fever {seriously random -- by morning she was completely fine}.  And then throw in the fact that we've been needing to do breathing treatments for Jane almost around the clock and you can see what we were up against with our drive the very next day.

Unfortunately, we got off to a much later start than we were planning due to some more last minute cleaning out of the house, cleaning out of the car, and loading up all our junk.  By the time we took off it was about 2 o'clock and our estimated time of arrival SHOULD have been 8:15 or so.  What happened next was a truly unfortunate series of events.  Complete with appearances by Count Olaf and Esme Squalor.  Hahahahahaha.  {Sorry -- just a little Lemony Snickets humor.  Grace just finished this series and LOVED it.}  Seriously, though.  It's a toss-up as to who had the rougher time -- Scott, who drove up in his car with Ethan and Grace AND NO AIR-CONDITIONING; or me, who had Sophie, Jane, and Alex and their screeching and screaming selves with NO WORKING CD PLAYER to help to keep me sane.  In the end, Scott probably wins.  But only because in addition to the traffic and slow-going that we both experienced while caravanning up, he also scored a flat tire a mere 10 miles from our final destination for the night.  Boo.  After changing it himself on the side of a busy highway in the complete dark at 10 something at night, he made it to the hotel a good 2 1/2 hours past what our arrival time should have been.

The first hour of my drive was the easily the best.  Jane was exhausted and promptly conked out along with Alex.

After crashing hard that night, we woke in the morning to close on our new house and explore our new surroundings.  It's been a week now since the adventure has started, and I think it's safe to say that we are all sick of fast food.  Hahaha.  We continued the "camping out" theme over the weekend since our trucks hadn't arrived yet with our stuff, and since we decided to refinish the floors before having everything delivered I took off on yet another road trip on Monday with all 5 kids in tow to visit my little sis, Sarah, while Scott stayed behind to get started on his new job. 

 Eating at Frisch's Big Boy.  

Big Boy himself.

More stories to come.  Although, for the record, the 8 hour drive by myself with the kids was not NEARLY as bad as I thought it was going to be.  Until next time!