The Drive Home

This is my first chance to talk about how the trip home went. We didn't get going on time: the goal was 6 a.m. that first morning and we didn't actually leave til about 8:30, but we only needed to make it to Phoenix by 4:30 p.m., so we did ok. About halfway between Los Angeles and the CA/AZ state line, I got a call from my sis (the one that lives in TX), that went something like this:

Me: "hello?"
Sarah: "hey."
Me: "what's up?"
Sarah: "I have some good news."
Me: "oh?"
Sarah: "Yeah. I'm tired of living in TX; the EMT thing's not working out; Subway's not working out, and I'm coming home. Just thought I'd let you know."

Yippee!! Couldn't have heard much better news than that! See, she'd moved out to TX back in September to go to Paramedic school, but didn't know til after she moved that they wouldn't pay her schooling (like she'd been led to believe); they'd only reimburse her after the fact. So she got out there and got stuck working at WalGreen's and Subway. And was totally miserable. I was so happy to hear she was coming home!!! So, by the end of our conversation, we'd convinced her to load her stuff up with ours when we got to her place, and we'd take her home too. Which we did.

So great news by the time we got to AZ. We stopped at a cousin's to attend a graduation--incidentally, it was over a hundred degrees when we got there; hot as you know where. Only a precursor for the rest of the summer too. But no humidity, so my hair did great, haha.

We left out the next morning for College Station, TX. Mapquest said it was supposed to be a 16.22 hour drive from Phoenix to College Station. Well, we decided to go for it. Left at 7:30 that morning and trucked on towards our destination. 16 hours later we'd barely made it to somewhere around San Antonio....uh oh. So, about 11 p.m. CA time, Sarah called and said "hey, are y'all getting close?". Um. no. But, we decided to stop and grab a bite to eat and then keep trucking. So yeah...we finally pulled into her place at 3:30 a.m. CA time--5:30 CST! We'd been going straight for 20 hours!!!! By the last hour or 2, we were doing everything possible to stay awake! haha. Playing the radio loud, and talking and trying to stay awake. (and praying). But thank the Lord, we made it ok, and Sarah had beds waiting for us. We slept for a few hours and then got up and packed her up. We didn't have any room left in our truck, so we rented a little U-Haul and hooked it up to the back of our Honda; which is how we'd moved to CA in the first place. We started on the last leg of our trip on Saturday morning, and pulled into Birmingham about 9 p.m. that night. So, 40 hours/4 days later, we made it home safe and pretty uneventful.
I know we had several folks praying for us...thanks so much!