Exodus Part 1: Plano to Santaquin

On the Monday after Brett returned from New Jersey, for the second time, we picked up the Uhaul trailer and began to prepare for our trip starting the next day. First stop, pick up my piano which had been stored at our piano tuner's house for the past few months. Norbert and his wife Paula helped us put the piano in the trailer. It took up slightly less than half of the trailer, and it took almost 3 hours because they are some serious talkers. Norbert even made Brett come inside the house and play a song for him. After this ordeal, we got back and found out that the Coast Guard did not have a 3 bedroom house available for us and that we would be given a 2 bedroom upstairs apartment. We then realized that there is no way we could take the piano with us and left it with my dad.

Because of all of that wasted time (and a not-so-quick stop at a Blockbuster going-out-of-business sale where we bought 7 movies for $8 each), we didn't finish all of our packing and didn't end up leaving until 1:00 pm the next day. We drove through Texas and Oklahoma, then decided to stop for the night in Wichita, Kansas. Kennedy was thrilled with the hotel room because she got to have her very own big bed.

The next morning we headed out to Salina and essentially turned left to head toward Colorado. Right outside Denver, a cop turned out in front of us and took up both lanes going about 40 mph. We had absolutely no idea what was going on, until about a mile up when we started getting pounded with hail out of nowhere. Traffic was completely stopped as we watched 3/4-inch hail build up about 3 inches on the road. This is how Kennedy felt about the hail.

Then, just as suddenly, the hail stopped and we were moving again. We stopped at Chili's for dinner, where Noah promptly threw up all over me. I went to the bathroom to get cleaned up. When I came back, we had our food. In the middle of the meal, Kennedy puked all over herself and the bench. I took her to the bathroom to get cleaned up, all the while listening to her almost crying saying, "Make a big mess a chocolate milk!" Needless to say, we stayed in Denver that night. We also discovered that like both her parents, Kennedy talks in her sleep. She talked about Utah.

Next morning we headed out of Colorado through the beautiful snowy mountains of Vail. Kennedy really loved going through the tunnels and being "in a mountain." We made it safely into Utah and into Santaquin where we stayed with Brett's parents.

We had a delicious dinner of Carol's potato soup and Kennedy got her own room again. We looked forward to spending a few days not in the car.