Day 1 of 4

I'm very pleased to say that day one is done with and that it went smoothly. We're in Nebraska!

When Sabe and I were planning our route last night, we broke it up into 500 (give or take a few) mile chunks. It's about 2000 miles from Eagle Mountain, UT to Fort Benning, GA. There were quite a few routes that google maps gave us and of course we chose the fastest one. It brings us north into Wyoming, cuts all the way through Nebraska and then goes down towards Georgia from the Nebraska/Missouri border. Our day one destination was set for Sidney, Nebraska.

We got a tiny bit of a late start since we forgot to set an alarm. The boy's woke us up at their customary 730 and we scrabbled to get everything together since we wanted to leave at 8. 815 rolled around and we were pretty satisfied that we were packed. After saying our goodbyes to Jared and Amber (love you guys!! Thanks again!) we headed out (with Gary in tow this time!)

Jamesen started out fussy, even before we made it to Wyoming. He was pretty fussy and sleepy after just an hour in the car and I thought that was pretty foreboding. He fell asleep right before we stopped for some gas so we tried to make it quick, but since Marcus refused to pee in their self flushing toilets, we took too long. Since the car wasn't moving, Jamesen woke up after only about 20 minutes. Lucky for us, it wasn't really a bad thing, since he was pretty happy after at that for another hour and a half.

We stopped for lunch somewhere in Wyoming... I can't remember. The only place with a play place was McDonald's. I usually HATE McDonald's, but honestly this play place was so awesome!! It was big enough that I even fit comfortably in it and could go through the tubes fast enough to chase the boys. At one part I could even stand up straight without hitting my head. The boys loved it! Sabe and I snuck some Subway in though... I don't really do McDonald's.

After lunch we hopped back in the car and kept driving. After a movie or two, Jamesen was back out and Marcus kept getting excited over the trains we kept passing and seeing Sabe's truck in front of us. He went ON AND ON about "Daddy truck!" and kept saying, "Hi Daddy Truck!" So. Flippin. Cute. After Sabe being gone for 11 weeks, he gets all antsy when he thinks Sabe is leaving again, so he was very happy to see Daddy's truck driving with us and see Sabe whenever we stopped.

After Jamesen woke up from his nap, he was pretty fussy, but we kept changing movies on him and pushing snacks on him, until we finally made it to Sidney at about 7 pm Utah time. We stopped for dinner and asked someone where a park was so we could let the boys run around. After failed attempts at getting them to eat dinner, we decided just to play. Sidney is pretty small. their "man road" has 2 lanes on each side. Anyways, it was small enough that we got a lot of weird looks by the other people at the park. Apparently it's one of those "everybody knows everybody" places and people were a bit put off by the fact that some strangers were barging in. the park was great though. It was a bit old, but the layout was awesome and it had such a variety of things that the boys just ran from thing to thing laughing and giggling.

Once dinner and the park was over, we decided to hop into the car and drive some more to get a head of our schedule. Tomorrow is our longest day and we wanted to get a good chunk out of it down. We managed another 100 miles since the boys fell asleep and are staying the night at North Platte. Our next destination is Kansas City, Missouri. Cross your fingers we have another great driving day with no incidents or fussy kids!

First leg down!

Well, our first leg of our journey is down. We made it to Utah in one piece!! We started off great and I was thinking to myself "wow, for once we made it out on time!" only to have Sabe go "Did we grab Gary?!" and we had to turn around and go find the dang cat we left behind! That added an extra hour onto our trip and sapped most of Jamesen's nap.

Marcus did amazing. He really is such a great little traveler! He didn't make a negative peep at all! Only happy squeals and exclamations from time to time. Jamesen on the other hand... has a time limit. He'll be quiet and watch a movie for about 2 hours and then we can pull another half hour out of him with constant distractions from other things and then the constant crying starts and he's inconsolable until we pull him out and let him run. Once he gets the chance to run around, he'll start his clock over again and give us another 2 hours of quiet. It made for a long trip to Utah. We got here at 11 pm Utah time and we were hoping to be here by 7 pm Utah time.

4 hours difference! Can you believe that? Leaving Gary, Jamesen being fussy and pulling a heavy trailer behind us really cost us a lot of time! Luckily we won't be pulling trailers on the way to Georgia and I hope we don't forget Gary. The fussiness is to be expected, especially since we're going to be driving for 3-4 days.

Wish us luck! We leave on the 9th. We could really use some prayers that the boys do well. 4 days of driving is a ton for an adult. My poor boys :( I hate to put them through that, but it will be SO nice to get into our own house and just settle in for the next 3-4 years!

Enunciation

We are starting to get clear and precise words from Marcus. I know most of you might shake your heads at that seeing as how he's almost four, but that just shows you how amazing this is. He was so far behind and in the last 6 months has almost caught up with his peers. We've still got a ways to go, but he's speaking in sentences frequently (though he usually leaves out some of the "filler" words) and is really talking up a storm. He said tomatillo and giraffe clear as day today. Makes my heart leap with joy.

Another thing that makes my heart leap with joy is Jamesen's word count. He's been saying "Hop up" a lot lately (what we say when we want the boys to "hop up" in their chairs for dinner or anything you climb and sit in/on) as well as pickle, airplane, and a few others I can't think of at the moment. He's also behind his peers, but so far ahead of where Marcus was at this age that my heart just sings.

We're getting ready to start out treck to Georgia. I can't believe how fast these weeks in Vegas have flown. Sabe comes home late Friday, the boys will wake up to him Saturday and then we'll have a wonderful day of being a family. Once the boys are in bed, Sabe and I will pack up as much of the outside toys and my bedroom as we can. Sunday we'll get the moving trailor and the hitch to attach it to my Pathfinder all before lunch, then have lunch and leave for Utah where we'll spend a few days with my brother and his family (who I and my kids just adore!). We'll drop the trailer off, have the army come and inspect all of our stuff in the storage unit and then they'll pack it up and take it all over to GA to wait for us to get there. We'll leave the next day (the 9th) and get to GA as fast as safely possible because those two boys will not be happy about so much driving!

Our plan is to wake up in the morning, drive 3-4 hours, stop for lunch either at a place that has a play place, or find a park and let the boys run around for an hour or two and then hop back into the car for another 3-4 hours. If we time it right, it should take us driving all of the 3 days and then another 3 hours into the 4th day to get there, depending on traffic, weather, potty breaks and speed limits. Please keep us in your prayers that the boys will cooperate!

It seems a bit surreal...

that Jamesen is coming up on 2. I think I'm still in a bit of denial that he was born, let alone almost 2!

When I first had him, I had a really hard time bonding with him. I had terrible PPD and it didn't help that he screamed a lot for the first 6 months. I felt so terrible for ruining Marcus' life. I'm so glad Marcus will never remember life without his best playmate and friend. It's hard enough remembering it myself.

They are SO CUTE now days. Jamesen really has become Marcus' partner in crime/playmate/best friend. They hug, they kiss, they hold hands, they share, they laugh, they wrestle, they giggle, they play, they eat, they sleep, take baths... you name it they do everything together. Jamesen has recently taken to climbing into bed with Marcus which is a bit interesting since Marcus' bed is only a toddler bed. One toddler can barely fit a toddler bed, let alone 2! Specially when Jamesen is basically the same size!

Speaking of size... the jayster's barely fitting his 2T clothes we moved him into right before we moved here. The shorts are too small around the waist and the head hole in the shirts are getting to be too snug, as well as the shirt itself being to small. Glad we'll be in GA soon so I can switch Marcus to 4T and Jamesen to 3T. Marcus is teetering on the edge of 4T, so I think it will just fit perfectly to move them both up to the next size at the same time. I don't have enough 3T stuff to clothe two kids!

The weather in Vegas the last week or so has been chilly and wet. It's made me think of Autumn and pumpkins and halloween and trick or treating. I can't wait. Silly of me? a bit... but holidays are SO much better with kids and fall is my favorite season. I'm hoping the GA will stay warm most of the year so that the boys and I can play outside til we explode.

I recently went through all my pictures and picked out all of my favorites from the last 2 years. I'm going to make a mosaic of pictures on one of the walls in our new house. Hopefully we've got a large wall that I can use. I'll buy a bunch of different sized frames and just fill them with pictures. Any empty ones will be filled as we go . I'm so excited to put pictures up and decorate for holidays and watch the boys play with the new puppy we'll be getting when we get there. Life is going to be blissful, lemme tell you!

Sabe comes home in less than 2 weeks. He's doing really really well in his classes and is in the run for honor grad! I'm so proud of him :) Can't wait to be a married mom rather than a single mom though! I'll make sure to post pics of the boys waking up to daddy :)

What's in a... date?

I'm coming up on a date that I don't want to live through. I wish I could just skip over this day and pretend like it didn't happen. This date will forever more be a bad day for me I'm afraid. A whole year.

I've come far in that year though. I'm not the person I was a year ago. I think for the better mostly, but I'm definitely not as care free as I use to be (as care free as a young mom with young kids can be).

I've learned who I can count on and who I can't. I've lost people I thought I'd have forever and I gained people who don't realize how much they mean to me. I've also re realized how great the few that stuck around are and how blessed I am to have them.

I'm hoping that Georgia will be like wiping the slate clean. I'll be in a new place where people don't have preconceived notions of me and won't judge me on who I was in the past. I'll be far away from hostile relationships that I'd rather not deal with. My family can move forward and move closer to being happy and healed after all this time apart and in stressful environments and situations.

I hope that I can wake up when I get to Georgia. That I will be able to slough off all the bad and keep the good things around me to help me heal.

Until then, I'll relish in the fact that my boys love my parents and that they love them back. I'll keep myself busy with my photography and the store my mom and I have started together. I'll work on losing the last little bit of weight I've got packed on me for the eventual addition to our family (whenever that will be). I'll take advantage of anymore rain storms Vegas has to test out the new galoshes I bought Jamesen because his feet literally grew over night and he no longer fit his other ones. I'll relish in the fact that Marcus is speaking in sentences and now loves on his brother an equal amount to beating up on him (unlike the constant beatings we had before). I'll try to remember that Jamesen will soon be a teenager and won't want to be constantly attached to me (aka, in my arms slobbering my face with kisses and raspberries). I'll cherish my children and this time that I have with them.

How lucky I am to be blessed with healthy children. Despite everything I've been through, I hold on to that. My children are my life. The one light to guide me through the dark tunnels life has forced me to go through. I'm getting close to the end of the tunnel. I can feel it. Soon I'll be there and it'll be like waking up. I'll wake up and I'll be ok. I'll be able to truthfully say that I'm happy and I'm happy with where I'm at in my life.

Thanks for everybody's support and love. It's greatly appreciated.

The sun did not shine.

It was too wet to play.

So we sat in the house

all that cold, cold, wet day.

Too wet to go out

and too cold to play ball.

So we sat in the house.

We did nothing at all.

All we could do was to sit, sit, sit, sit!

And we do not like it.


Not one little bit.

I'll be paying for that one all day...

Shauna (my best friend for those who don't know) wanted to take me out for my birthday. While my birthday was a few days ago, we did it last night instead so she could keep on track with her studying and things like that. Knowing us, I decided to put the boys down early so we could get a head start. I knew that if we didn't start early, we would be staying up way too late and would both end up paying for it today since the boys get me up early and she has to get up early for school and the like.

How I was planning for it to go was that I would put the boys down at 7 rather than 8, they would play for a bit because they weren't tired and eventually fall asleep right on schedule. I would get home and be in bed by midnight since I usually don't end up going to sleep before then anyways, the boys would get up at 530 like normal and we would have a regular day.

Not what happened at all.

Apparently the boys were tired enough that they were out long before 8. Apparently Shauna and I were both bestie starved because I didn't get home until right before midnight. I had to then take an hour to shut my brain off before I could sleep, so I got to bed a little after 1. Of course, wouldn't you know it, if you put the boys down an hour early they wake up an hour early too, so at 430 on the dot, their light was on and they were up playing. Attempts to get them back to sleep were unsuccessful and now here I sit, watching Totoro with the boys at an even more ridiculous hour than normal.

It sure was good to get some time with the bestie tho. We talked a lot, like we always do. We also went exploring and found this community (for the lack of a better word) of stores. The buildings and everything looked like something out of Italy and quite a few times I gasped at how beautiful it was. If there weren't a million people to get in the way, it would be an amazing place for pictures. They had this adorable forest themed playground that had me wishing the boys were with us so we could watch them get excited over all of it.

It was worth it, just won't be happening again for awhile. At least... until Sabe's with me so he can get up with the boys while I sleep in a bit!