Another Adventurous move!!

We had planned on living in NC for 3 to 5 years and then moving back to Utah. Well, our plans changed as plans do! You could call it an impulse decision, but one that made sense (sort of...) Jeremy had talked with his company about becoming an independent contractor for them and figured he could work from home. He could get more work done and get paid more (who wouldn't want to do that?) As he begin thinking about working from home, he figured he could work from home in Utah just as good as working from home in North Carolina. So he begin negotiating that with his work and they decided it was fine as long as he flew to NC every month or so and trained another person. They gave Jeremy a 6 month contract with the possiblity of renewing it, but we hoped he would find a job in Utah by then. All of this happened in about 1 month, from the idea, to us talking about it, to it happening and us moving!! So...we talked with our realtor and put our house up for sale and left the next day! It was the first week of February '08 and we loaded up our Toyota Tacoma with everything we could fit. We bought a bunch of rubbermaid containers to put our clothes in and stacked those in the bed of the truck. We shoved shoes and other items in the back seat. We tried to think of everything we would need (for who knows how long) since we were leaving the rest of it in our house. We brought my vinly machine and vinyl rolls, our huge saw, my sanders, skis/snowboard and winter stuff, and all our mountin biking stuff...with the mountin bikes on the back in their hitch. I am so mad I didn't take a picture of the truck, but it was packed so full you couldn't even open the doors without something falling out!!

We all took turns driving and Tica was a big help! Jeremy and I decided to try and drive straight through and not waste time or money on hotels, especially since we had so much stuff in the bed of our truck we knew we couldn't stop anywhere. We left early in the morning and stopped at McDonalds drive through for Breakfast. As we pulled away and I stared to drink my Diet Coke (yes, Diet Coke is a breakfast drink) Jeremy said something funny and I tried to hold in my drink, but because I was also laughing I ended up spewing it all over the dash board and everywhere. Then I was choking and coughing so bad he had to pull over and I had to get out...I eventually stopped coughing about 10 minutes later and we were on our way again. McDonalds was 5 minutes from our house so we hadn't even gone far...this was just the beginning of our adventure :)

Notice all the nice leg room the passanger had! And the seat was scooted up as far as it could go too because we needed all the room we could get in the back! It was definitely a cozy ride...good thing we all get along so well. Things were going pretty smooth...we were making good time and when one of us was driving the other one was sleeping. We usually ate in the truck, but I let Jeremy talk me into stopping at Shoney's, he said it was really good and he ate there all the time when he was growing up and hadn't eaten there in a long time. I was hesitant because it looked a little shady to me, but we stopped and parked the truck where we could keep an eye on it. The food was gross and the service was slow...we ended up mad that we wasted the time and money. When Jeremy said "I remembered that place being a lot better, maybe it was because I was a kid and we didn't go out often" I almost punched him :) We were back on the road again driving straight through and thinking this is great we are going to make it to Utah in 36 hours! Well, pretty soon we hit a bad snow storm in Arizona...it slowed us down a lot! The truck was slidding around everywhere, some roads were closed causing us to find alternate routes which took us out of our way and then they ended up getting closed. We decided to back track through all the bad snow we just went through and head a different direction through Arizona and cut into Utah. Hmmm...that didn't help so much...the snow storm was worse and people were slidding off everywhere! We were driving 5 miles an hour only to find the other way into Utah was closed! We had no choice but to stop and get a hotel. It was about 10 pm when we started to UNLOAD THE ENTIRE TRUCK into the hotel in the blizzard. What a nightmare! The stupid door to the hotel would lock so everytime we got another load of stuff, a rubbermaid container, a mountain bike etc we had to get our key out and swipe it then open the door and walk down the hall to our room. We were trying to be quiet and lay low too since we had a dog with us! Of course she was going nuts and following us back and forth. As I was trying to carry our pillows and suitcases and open the outside enterance to the hotel with my key, I dropped our pillows into the puddle of mud water that was right by the door (you had to straddle it while opening the door to avoid stepping in it (it was at least 6 inches of water) ARGGGH!! We finally unpacked the entire truck and filled up our room with the stuff. Now it was midnight and we needed dinner, so we went to McDonalds and brought our food back to the hotel while Jeremy watched the end of the super bowl (Giants Vs. Patriots) I think he was secretly excited we had to get a hotel. We couldn't get the internet to work so we weren't able to check out maps or routes of ways to go in the morning. Finally we went to sleep and woke up the next morning to pack the truck up again and hit the snowy roads. The major storm had stopped but the roads were still bad and it took us a lot longer than normal to finish the drive. We were so happy when we finally made it to my parent's house!