The Move

After graduation, we worked on getting our apartment packed up. It was so wonderful to have our families here to help - they were amazing and we never could have gotten everything done without them. My sister Cherri rode with me which was such a life saver - I could not have done it without her. Heber drove the Penske truck and then Cherri, the kids and I were in the Blazer. It was quite the trek - the kids actually did amazing considering we were in the car for 4 days!! We left Arizona on Sunday, the 7th and drove just over the border to New Mexico. We made it without any mishap until we got to Missouri.

As we were driving through Missouri a storm rolled in with huge, BLACK, BLACK, clouds and it started pouring buckets of rain!! We turned on the radio and heard that a tornado has touched down and is heading SE at 25 mph and will be at the I-44 (the freeway we were driving on) between mile markers 144 and 157 by 5:20 pm and at Fort Leonard Wood by 5:30 pm. We look at the next mile marker and it is 160!! and then we pass the sign that says Fort Leonard Wood this exit!!! and to make things worse it is 5:08!! We were all getting a little nervous! (except Heber, nothing fazes him!)

THEN....at this time all the traffic has to merge into one lane for road work. So there is a semi with a gap in front of him and Heber starts to ease into the space - everyone is only going like 25 mph, so super slow - and he gets his huge, bright yellow, 26 foot truck in front of the semi and the trailer with our car on it is starting to come over and the semi never brakes or anything and hits our trailer popping the tire and crunching the fender!! Thankfully all the damage was to the rental trailer and our car was unhurt. It was horrible! So now we are sitting on the side of the road, with a tornado heading right towards us, in pouring rain.....we sat for two hours before we were able to get a new trailer for the car - all the Penske places were closed because it was after hours. Thankfully we had a really nice cop who helped us a ton, the tornado ended up changing directions, we weren't found at fault for the accident, and we had insurance on the truck so it didn't cost us a thing. It definitely could have been worse and it added a little excitement to the monotony!

Other than that we made it safely and uneventfully to Ohio. We ended up getting here on Wednesday, the 10th. We love our house - it is an older home (they all are here) but has been updated well, have plenty of space and a wonderful fenced in back yard. We live in a nice quiet little neighborhood and we are adjusting well. There are definitely many more cloudy days than we are use to but it will be a fun place to live for the next three years! I will get pictures up of the house soon!