Long Overdue

Well, this is a LONG overdue update... and I promised some of you it'd be the best ever... so I'm starting it with a NEVER BEFORE SEEN picture of David and I and our proud little guy on his graduation day from Puppy Training Class. That's right... you're seeing it here for the first time! So there! That's a great way to start right? :-) So our much loved little Oskar is an official puppy school graduate. He can officially sit, lay down, roll over, shake, stay, leave a treat and take it when told, and come. Now, demonstrating them in class in front of the trainer and other puppies...? That doesn't seem to be his favorite place to demonstrate his new skills. But he's pretty good at all of them at home which makes us happy. He'll get better at dealing with the distractions as he gets older... we hope!

Things are clicking right along here in Philly. Hard to believe we've now been here over 8 months! I'm officially half way through my second semester and every day when I stop and look behind me, at what I've accomplished, it boggles my mind in a wonderful way. My class load this semester is very different from last semester. Fall was very "academic and research" heavy. Spring is very "practical and playing" heavy. I'm singing in choir, playing oboe in Wind Symphony, and taking oboe lessons. I'm investing a lot of time practicing, making reeds, and participating in rehearsals, but it's all very fulfilling. Definitely challenging at times, and feels like a lot of pressure (especially in the hot seat right under the director's nose in the top wind band), but it's also pushing me to be the best I can be and give the most I have which is part of why I wanted to come back to school in the first place. I'm also in an aural theory review course which I don't care for at all but am still appreciative of because I'm definitely improving and learning. So I GUESS it's good. I'm also in the coolest class ever though, it's the coolest because me and my grad student friend Jeanette designed it ourselves. Yep! We created it and got approval from the department and got one of our favorite professors to teach it and three other grad student girls to take it with us. We have three phases: jazz, rock, and fusion. We each compose a song in that style, rehearse the group informally on our song, and we all get to play secondary instruments. So I'm playing trumpet, electric bass, acoustic guitar, and drums. It's so much fun! Every Friday afternoon is the BEST! And I hope I can take so much of what I'm learning from that class, about teaching informally and teaching popular music, and bring it into my next classroom.

In addition to all of this, the teaching side is going well too. I'm getting to conduct a new non-auditioned band on campus which also includes community members. It's SO exciting to have the opportunity to rehearse and conduct- especially at the higher level beyond middle school. It's been very challenging as well- really working on my conducting habits and rehearsal skills. But I feel like I'm improving so much every week and I'm really excited about conducting at our final concert in about a month!

David is doing well. I'm realizing that everyone might not know that he was promoted to an HR coordinator position within his company. He works with the HR manager of the company doing hiring, firing, and running special projects. We are so happy that he is with a company now that recognizes how much he has to offer and how hard-working and talented he is. Although he is working really hard, he really enjoys the job and the challenges it brings. He's sure this will be really great to have on his resume down the line and really likes what he's doing.

I'm just 6 short weeks from being done with the semester, meaning done with my first year of grad school, meaning half way through the program, meaning ALMOST summer! And boy are we getting some nice weather around here. We've been having 65-75 degree weather the last few days and it looks like it's going to be continuing for a bit. I'll take it!! We are hoping to make plans soon about when we'll be able to come back and visit the good 'ol Northwest, so stay tuned for updates on that. You have to know that after 8 months of being away from so many people we love so much... we are very eager to get back and catch up with many of you.

Love to you all!
Haley

Turkey Time!

4 months ago to the day, David and I were throwing everything into a moving truck to head to Philly. Tomorrow will mark 1/3 of a year that we've been away from home. I feel like anyone who has been away from home will understand when I say: it seems like forever and only a heartbeat all at the same time. When I think of how much we've done, what we've accomplished, and what we've experienced already, it feels like it's just been a blink of the eye since we left. But when I think of our family, friends, and "home," it feels like it's been SO LONG that we've been gone. Seeing David's adorable nieces and nephews in videos and pictures really puts 4 months in perspective. I can't believe how quickly they're growing! Today also marks exactly one month until Christmas and my parents come to visit for 10 days as well. Saying I'm excited would be an understatement. I think David will kill me if I continue on with my daily reminders of how many days till mamma and dad come to visit. ;-)

Things feels more settled here all the time, which is nice. But not enough to not want to come home, don't worry! I survived an insane week of projects and presentations last week and fee like I'm through the hardest part of the semester now. I only have one more full week of class, then a half week of classes, a few "study days," and then a few days of "finals." However, in my graduate courses, most of my work, projects, presentations and exams will be done by December 7th. I volunteered to do my presentations early so I could be done sooner. The week following that I mostly just have to show up to watch other people's presentations, which will be nice. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for this semester now, and I can't believe I will be a quarter of the way through my masters in just a few weeks. I have also heard from others that have spent more time in the graduate program that this load of classes we're all taking together is by far the hardest load they've experienced and that this has been the hardest semester they've had. I'm really happy to hear this because I feel like if I've survived this semester ok I should be just fine from here on out.

David is also settling into his job. He enjoys working downtown right in the middle of the city. He's right around the corner from the famous "Love Park" and he's discovered all kinds of exciting things happen downtown- like having Occupy Philly around the other corner for the last month or so. Ha ha! For both of us it's been really nice to use the train to get to and from work/school every day. It makes everything so much easier and is so much cheaper than gas for driving, paying for parking, and fighting traffic. It's also really nice to have a few times a week where we ride in or home together. David's work also has him taking on more responsibilities already. He's starting to train some of their new workers and they have him filling in spots in the sales department when needed. It seems like they are recognizing what a hard worker he is and how talented he is, so hopefully he will have opportunities to "climb the ladder" a little soon.

Besides work and school, which really does keep us pretty busy most of the time, we've been enjoying our free time. We got to spend an entire weekend cuddled up at home due to our "freak snowstorm" over Halloween weekend. The picture above is what it looked like when we went on a short little outing down the road to get some wood for the fireplace. We got all bundled up (notice my Phillies hat), and had to use the SCRAPER on the car windows! The snow melted away pretty quickly though and we've had pretty normal weather ever since. We also fill our weekends with watching the Husky football games at our "go to" bar downtown called Cavanaugh's. We've started to become friends with the small group that gathers to watch the games each week and look forward to seeing them, enjoying free wings with each pitcher of beer we order, and cheering our Dawgs on... even if they have been in a tailspin lately.

It was hard to spend Thanksgiving away from home yesterday and away from our families. But we did get the wonderful opportunity to host Thanksgiving dinner at our place for a couple friends I made through grad school. We made our first turkey... and when I say "we," I mean David pretty much did the whole thing himself. And it turned out wonderful! My butternut squash soup was a success and my slow cooker stuffing was pretty good too. We ate lots of wonderful, good food, played games, drank wine and beer, and LOVED having a day off to relax! Unfortunately David has to work today, but we are thankful he has a consistent job to go to, and I am thankful to have a day to work hard on staying on top of my projects before David gets home. And we both are thankful the Huskies have one more opportunity tomorrow to make this season a success by beating those Cougars in the Apple Cup! :-)

Miss everyone so much and think of you all often! Love you all.

Go Dawgs,

David and Haley

What's up Philly what's up?

Well hello friends! It has been much too long! Things got really busy as school started for me and we got in the swing of a new routine! But we are definitely feeling settled in and have so much to update our friends and family on!

School: Wow! It's great! I am taking three graduate courses: Quantitative Research, Measurement and Evaluation, and Learning Theory in Music. They are all taught by a different professor, roudning out 3 of the 4 music education professors. It's really fun to experience all of their different ways of teaching. They are all pretty challegning and require a lot of reading and studying. But it's amazing how much I've learned after only five weeks. It honestly blows my mind when I think about what I knew five weeks ago compared to now. In addition to those, I am also taking a graduate seminar course where all of the masters and phd grad student TA's sit down with all of the music education faculty and discuss current issues in music education. I'm also taking a choir class twice a week. I auditioned for the wind band on oboe and got in, but unfortunately they meet during two of my graduate courses this semester. But I'm really enjoying choir and am learning a lot in there too. My TA duties include teaching beginning oboe and bassoon to a bunch of the undergraduate students which I love. It's really nice to have my own class and be able to teach still. I think it's helping keep me sane. One of the highlights was having a student write me an e-mail to tell me why they were going to have to miss class one day and began it with, "Dear Professor Franzwa..." Oh man... made my day. :-) In addition to that, I TA for a class under one of the professors teaching undergraduates how to teach band in one of their last courses before they go out for their student teaching. My other less demanding duties include working in the "pet shop" where I check in and check out instruments for the undergraduates taking their classes on their non-major instruments, which we call methods courses. I spend 6 hours a week in there, but most of the time I get to just spend the time studying and help people every so often when they come in. It's like a library for instruments. Then I'm also helping plan and coordinate for a new non-auditioned wind band that will be starting up next semester that I will get to help conduct along with Dr. Sheldon, my advisor and the head of music education at the school. It's pretty time consuming, but I'm excited to have podium time under her direction next semester!

David: He finally found a job! Well.... several. In short, he wasn't hearing anything back from anyone and it was just beginning to get a little stressful and a little disheartening. He was definitely bored with sitting around at home, especially with me in full swing at school, and we were definitely starting to feel the stress of budgeting. But then he heard back from a temp to perm agency with openings for two different positions that he was qualified for: an office assistant position and a sales position with an internet company. He went in and interviewed and was offered both positions (because he's just great like that). ;-) That same day while he was in interviewing and be offered these positions, he heard back from a company that he had a lead on previously and had been trying to get in touch with for several weeks. He called them back when he got done with his interview and they TOO wanted him to come in and interview. He set up an interview for this last Friday with them, but went ahead and accepted the sales position at the internet company because there was no guarantee with this company he set up the Friday interview with. On Friday he went in to interview with this other company and it went really well! It's right downtown and is a "sales retention" job for a company that sells a language learning product, like Rosetta Stone, but different. He liked the atmosphere a lot and it would be a much easier commute. We have our fingers crossed that he will hear back from them tomorrow (on Monday) for an official job offer, which he would gladly accept. In the meantime, he is going in for training tomorrow for the other job he accepted. I think we both feel happy and blessed that so many opportunities are finally coming out of the woodwork. Now we're just praying for guidance on which is the best for him. We should know by mid-week this week what he'll be doing for sure though!

Highlights other than school and work include a few different fun things. We've been going downtown to a bar called Cavanaugh's (where we get a plate of free wings with each pitcher of beer) and watching the Husky games each Saturday. It's a great way to be able to watch the games on TV, hang with other Husky fans, and just get out in general. There's usually around 5-10 people there including us on any given week and everyone is young like us which is fun (no offense to mammas and pappas)! ;-) It's a fun crowd and we always have a good time! And a couple of weeks ago our good friends Mike Leichner and Rachael Bauer came to visit us for a weekend! We went to the Phillies game with them on Friday night when they came in which was really fun. I am modeling the super awesome free knit caps we got as a giveaway! And on Saturday we watched the Husky game and bar-hopped. And then on Sunday we visited historic downtown Philly and took a tour of Independence Hall and visited the Liberty Bell which you can see in the picture above! I can't really even put into words how nice it was to have friends visit us here. Like a little bit of home here in Philly!

So we are definitely settling in out here, but we OF COURSE miss home so much. Whenever we see pictures on facebook we sit down and look at them together and think of all of our friends and family back home. But at the same time, we are really excited about how things are going out here and how much we're growing together. I will update again soon, but in the meantime, now you know "what's up" in Philly!

xoxo

Haley and David

Sunsets, Earthquakes, and Hurricanes... OH MY!

We have had quite the week here in Philadelphia. Just in this week we've seen beautiful sunsets, like the picture I posted here, right out our living room window most nights, we've experienced an east coast earthquake, and we are about to experience our first hurricane. Clearly, we are much bigger fans of the sunsets than the earthquakes and hurricanes, but it's definitely made things exciting!

The earthquake happened this last Tuesday and we definitely felt it! I was in the extra bedroom studying on the bed and David was in the living room watching TV. I thought I felt the bed actually moving but I really wasn't sure at first, because an earthquake is not something I even realized was possible out here. Then we heard the person above us loudly run across his floor (and we've NEVER heard anyone upstairs before). After that the movement picked up and I could definitely tell something was up and "earthquake" started registering. I came into the living room and David said, "What the heck?" Standing in the hall way and looking out the living room window I could really tell we were definitely moving. Then it stopped after about only 30 seconds or so. I looked at David and said, "I'm sure that was an earthquake, but can they even have those out here?" We turned on the news and sure enough, there had been a shallow 5.9 earthquake in Virigina just minutes before. It was nothing very serious, but definitely exciting and a little unnerving. Weird to think about how that affects this big, giant, tall building we're in. Hopefully that's the last of the earthquakes for now.

Then of course, we now have Hurricane Irene making it's way up the coast towards us. I also never really realized they got hurricanes in Philadelphia either, probably because I didn't really realize before we moved here just how close to the coast it is. The hurricane is supposed to make it's way in late tomorrow (Saturday) and be the worst during the night and then slow down by Sunday afternoon. They are telling us to expect anywhere from 4"-10" of rain and sustained winds of about 50mph. There is a hurricane watch, flood watch, and we're supposed to expect power outages. We feel totally safe here in our apartment, but I worry about all the other people and places that may not feel as safe as we do here and are bracing themselves. David and I went to the Wal-Mart today to stock up on some food and water and it was NUTS! The places was PACKED with people, there were long lines at every check out station and the shelves were pretty bare. I asked the check out clerk if it had been like this all day and he said, "Yep, since 8am this morning. This HAS to have been worse than Black Friday!" He looked exhausted. I also heard they were sold out of flashlights and batteries! Wow! We are all set to go though. We have plenty of food and water and our flashlight ready.

There ARE other things going on besides mother nature's excitement though! I was on campus three days this week; taking tests, going to meetings, going to orientations, etc. I can't believe how much more comfortable I feel now than I did three days ago. I got to meet with the music ed faculty and the other music ed TA's. I found out I am actually the only first year graduate student that was selected to be a TA this year! I'm excited to work with everyone and everyone has been incredibly helpful so far. I also took 4 tests this week: "music history, aural theory, counterpoint, and theory analysis." I wish I could say they all went "GREAT!" But they were all INCREDIBLY difficult. Most students I heard walking out all felt the same way. In fact I haven't talked to one person yet that didn't think the tests were pretty darn hard. I've even been studying for them, hard! Ask David! But I guess it just means there is more for me to learn (and remember) in these areas and it's worth taking the remedial courses so I'm an expert! Besides, it's free! Anyway, I'm happy all those are over and excited to start classes this week. I'm still not sure of my classes yet because I have to audition for ensembles on Wednesday. After that, I'll know whether I'll be playing in an ensemble this semester and whether I'll be in oboe lessons, which will affect the rest of my schedule. For sure I'm TA'ing a class on "band pedagogy" (basically the undergraduate's last class before their student teaching), and I'm teaching the "oboe/bassoon methods class" on my own (for undergraduates to learn how to teach those instruments in their band classes). I'm excited for both of those! :-)

David's job search is coming along. He has applied for several jobs and is giving it time to hear back from some before doing some follow up work this next week. He does have one great lead with our friend Heidi out here who put him in touch with a job hunter friend of her's out here. She said she would like to find time to meet with David next week, so hopefully that will help move his process along. It's certainly been nice having him around all the time and coming home to a clean house (yep, you heard me right. I'm talking dishes, laundry, bed made, countertops cleaned; don't know how I got so darn lucky)! But I also am so excited for David to have the opportunity to do something new and further his career.

We both are enjoying the excitement that Philly has to offer us and are looking forward to all that is to come. Until then, a toast to Irene! ;-)

Cheers!

Jersey, Sure!

Well things are finally starting to settle in around here. Our apartment finally is "live-able," we are starting to become familiar with the area (we can definitely get to the Target without the GPS now), and we have food in the cupboards and fridge. In fact we felt settled in enough the other day to make a trip to the Jersey Shore. We've had quite a bit of strange weather lately, including a daily record of 5 inches of rain in one day earlier this week. Strange coincidence that just after the Seattleites move here we help Philly set a "rain record?" I think not. ;-) We've also had plentiful thunder and lightning storms too. It is definitely fun to watch the lightning out the window, since it's something we don't see all the time in Seattle, but I'm over it now. The other morning the thunder woke us up at 8am (a little too early considering we didn't go to bed until 1am), and then kept me up most of the night last night. And we're not just talking rumbling in the distance. I'm talking woke you up in the middle of the night because it was rumbling the floor and felt like it was clapping down right on top of the apartment building! It's cool, but I could go a few days without it so I can get a good, solid, night's sleep in.

Back to the Jersey Shore. We decided since we knew it was going to be one of the only nice days (nestled in amongst the storms), that we ought to take advantage of it while we still can. I had never been to the Jersey Shore or boardwalks before, so we decided to go for it. We picked a beach called Point Pleasant. It's about an hour and a half drive from us, but we hit quite a bit of traffic heading in so it took more like 2 hours. At first we couldn't find parking, but then we lucked out and ended up with a spot on a little side street (don't worry, it was a safe street), and didn't even have to pay for it. I learned on this trip, however, that on nice beaches like this on the east coast, you have to PAY to go on the beach. What the? I guess that's normal out here. I also learned the beaches are SO DIFFERENT (and nicer) than the PNW coast. The sand was... sandy (not rocky), the water was the perfect temperature (didn't have to dip in and come running back out with goosebumps), and there were actual waves. I've never seen David with such a big smile on his face as when he would body ride the waves in and crash onto the shore cracking up. It was true happiness. Ha ha!

After we enjoyed the sunshine and waves for a few hours, we walked the boardwalk to look for places to grab a drink and a bite to eat. I had never seen a real boardwalk before, so I'm pretty sure I was just walking around in awe. A carnival right there ON the boardwalk? Whoa! We ended up stopping at a Tiki bar right on the beach. I'm sure David could give a better description of how the interactions went with our waiter- but let's just say he was less than pleased. The guy was pretty flamboyant, and as David said, "much more interested in dancing and putting on a show then getting us our drinks." He went up on the stage and started booty dancing to a Miley Cyrus song, meanwhile we had ordered our bucket of Corona nips at least a half hour ago and still hadn't received them. Once we finally got our drinks we relaxed a little and ordered some food. I had a dozen steamed clams and David had BBQ Pork Sliders. Both were really good and it was very fun to hang out in the Tiki Bar and relax. It felt like a little mini-vacation for a day. The picture of us above is from the Tiki Bar (post receiving Coronas). It was a good day and I'm so glad I got to experience the Jersey Shore before the summer is over!

I am enjoying my last few days of freedom and David is full swing in his job search. I am actually going to make my first trip to Temple today to get my id card and turn in some paperwork. I'm going to practice taking the SETPA (regional rail) and everything. David already is getting some responses to resumes he sent yesterday and is excited to be getting going with the job search. We also are starting to actually have plans on our calendar too! Looks like Saturday we are going to get to see David's good friend Tina play soccer here in Philly (she plays for the WPS Magic Jack), and then Sunday we are going to have the couple we know that lives in the same apartment complex over for dinner. We love each other a lot, and we love our new apartment, but it's fun to have plans too! :-)

More to come soon! Miss everyone so much!

Get Moving!

Hellooooo everyone! It has been a few days but that's because we've been so busy with moving into our new place! You'll see why I've chosen the picture of David with his head in his hands as you read. ;-) We arrived Monday evening in Phiadelphia and got to stay in Villanova with a family I knew from a family I taught at Chief Kanim. Beautiful area, beautiful house, wonderful family. Other than that, pretty uneventful as we basically just slept and headed out to move in to our new place on Tuesday morning. What follows is the highlights of the last few days that usually ended with our head in our hands (as seen in the picture). However- I'd like to preface all this by saying- these were all small things in the scope of life, "character building" as I'd like to say. We are both healthy, happy and safe and that is what is most important. That being said....

Move In Morning: We discovered, after getting our keys, that where we had to park the truck in relation to where our new apartment was .... was a LONG way. And the freight elevator we had to use to do all our moving, ya, not so "freighty." It was the same size as the resident elevator only it was metal instead of wood paneling and you could reserve it so you wouldn't have to hold it up while other residents tried to use it. We also chose the hottest day this week to move. 95 degrees and humid. We each made about 25 trips with all of our stuff up a long ramp into the basement, up the elevator, and down to the end our apartment was on. I don't know that we'd ever been so hot and exhausted. We must have gone through about 5 bottles of water each.

Returning the Truck: After all that moving, David decided he REALLY just wanted to get rid of the truck as soon as possible. So we decided to drive to downtown Philly and return it that same evening. We might have re-thought that idea had we known we were about to experience an east coast rain storm. We gassed up, got on the freeway, I was following David (who was driving the truck and empty car carrier) in my car. And about 5 min in, it started to dump rain. Now- I need you to step back and picture it really dumping the rain... like big FAT raindrops, really hard, so hard and fast that I couldn't even see out the windshield. People around us slowed down to about 30mph and put their flashers on. I couldn't even see out my window. I literally started praying out loud. Somehow, we made it, with me following behind David. I honestly, truly feel blessed that we both got there at the same time with no issues. But when David pulled into the PENSKE parking lot, there was no where to go. There literally had to have been about 25 other trucks parked there that had been returned that day. We ended up helping the guy who worked there (becuase he was there by himself), in the pouring rain/thunder/lightning (yet still about 90 degrees and humid), move the car carrier by hand away from the truck. What a fiasco! But we got it there safely and had our first Philly rainstorm experience. ;-)

Target: We discovered there is one right up the road. Which makes us happy. We've been there at least three times already. There is also a California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle, Starbucks, and a take out PF Changs place next door. It's pretty much awesome. We have also memorized how to get there and get home from there. Just thought I'd share that. It's kind of a big deal.

The Apartment: We love it. It's very big. 1400 square feet feels huge when you've been living in 625 sq ft. We have cabinet space we still haven't even used yet in the kitchen and plenty of counter space. The dining room is an actual room with a cute little chandelier, the living room is really big (with a fireplace which I love), there is a long hall way, a half bath and a full bath, two bedrooms and lots of closet space. The area around the complex has a locked gate, in order to enter the parking lots you have to have a resident sticker in the window or register with the management that mans the gate, you have to have a special electronic key to enter the builiding, and we have two locks on our door. I feel VERY safe and everyone we've seen around here so far has been friendly and looks pretty normal.

The Hitch: So we noticed the first night that our toilets didn't really seem to be flushing properly, either one really. Then Tuesday evening the half bath one clogged up out of nowhere. We just figured we'd leave it for the night and go to Target the next day. Then the main bath one clogged up as well... and OVERFLOWED! We cleaned it up and called the emergency maintenance. They came up about 2 hours later (and 3 phone calls later), to unclog both. It seemed they just needed to be plunged. So then we felt a little stupid that that was all it was. Then the next morning, the main bathroom toilet overflows AGAIN! So we go up to Target on Wednesday morning and get a plunger (it was a good excuse to go get Starbucks too since the coffee pot wasn't set up yet). We come back and attempt to plunge it. Then we flush it again. It starts to overflow for the THIRD TIME but David turned the water off JUST IN TIME before it actually overflowed again. We called maintenance and he cam up and worked on it for about a half hour. Everything finally seems to be working properly but we both still get nervous anytime either one of us needs to... well... put "something" in the toilet so to say. ;-)

Wal-Mart: Neither of us have every been Wal-Mart shoppers before. But when you have so much you need and you're on such a tight budget, Wal-Mart is pretty helpful. We found one the other day and did a little bit of shopping there but it seemed a little sketchy. The curtain rods we purchased weren't the right ones and we needed to return them so we decided to head out again today, but this time we went to an area of town we thought might be a little better... BINGO! Super nice and normal Wal-Mart! With food... which was awesome... cuz we needed to restock our fridge and cupboards. We even got a few pieces of furniture we needed for cheap (like a new desk set, a little bookcase for the CD's and extra DVD's which David told me I was going to have to put together myself but I plan to distract him and find a way out of it, and a SUPER CUTE little Italian clock with vino bottles on it for the kitchen (only $8). It was a good trip and our kitchen is full so we can stop eating out, which let me tell ya, after more than a week of eating out... I cannot WAIT to make home made tacos tonight! ;-)

The Plan: We are working on trying to get our Comcast internet and cable set up out here but apparently whoever lived here before us hasn't cancelled theirs yet and they are having some issues they want to take care of before they come and install ours. Luckily the downstairs lobby here has wi-fi which is what I'm using now and we have plenty of movies we can watch (and David is happy to be able to play video games still). Hopefully we'll get all that resolved early next week. We are hoping to get the artwork and photos up on the walls today and do the finishing touches on the place. Once it's done, we are planning on doing a video tour of the place, loading it on the computer, and sending it out to many of you so you can see the new digs!

Goals: Ikea trip either this weekend or Monday, find a movie theater so we can watch the last installment of Harry Potter, and start the job search/studying!

We love you all and can't wait to share our new place with you and keep you updated on all the Phiadelphia adventures ahead!

On The Road Again...

"On the road again...." This is what I got to hear David sing each morning as we got back on the road to head out! Nothing like starting each day with a little singing! As I write this, we have completed 5 days of driving. So much has happened, and so much hasn't happened. What I mean is- the trip has been filled with things I will remember, and at the same time there have been so many opportunities for things to go wrong and we've been blessed with a very smooth trip.

Day 2 was one of the harder days of our trip. It was the first "long" day of driving and it took nearly the ENTIRE day just to get through the state of Montana. I can appreciate some of the beauty of Montana, and I never imagined I wouldn't like Montana, and I realize there are probably many other parts of Montana than just what we saw from i-90... but after 550 + miles of trees and ranches- I was ready for some new scenery. It was particularly stressful for David because the roads weren't well taken care of, there was LOTS of construction areas (often down to just one lane), and lots of hills and passes which are hard on the truck. By the time we finally got out of Montana we were both pretty exhausted. We made it just inside the border of Wyoming and stopped. We were desperate to stop and there was nothing out there really so we ended up paying $90 for a CRAPPY 1 bed room at a Super 8. It was the second most expensive room of our trip and by far the worst. Amazing what circumstances will allow you to justify paying for something.

Day 3 was much easier just because we were happy that we weren't in Montana anymore. It was probably the easiest day of driving too. Wyoming was very beautiful and South Dakota was super easy driving for David. He said, after reflecting, that if he had let me drive at all, it would've been in South Dakota because it was a lot of straight, flat, easy driving. One of the highlights of day 3 was when we stopped just inside the border of South Dakota at a Safeway to grab lunch and ice. We met this old man, he was probably 80-85 years old, who chatted it up with us for awhile. He never told us his name, but I imagine it would have been Bob or Bill or George or something. He saw our car was from Washington and said, "Looks like you kids are a long way from home." He told us all about his ranch in Wyoming, his wife he lost 20 years ago and misses every day, and the Bible. He gave David advice on "loving your girl every day and not staying mad at her," and told us a story about Joseph from the Bible. He asked David what the writing on his arm was and David told him it was Hebrew because he is half Jewish. The man responded with, " Which half?" Like meaning, literally his right or left half. He was so cute and funny. It was one of those things where it didn't matter what kind of hurry we were in, we both knew it was worth stopping and enjoying this conversation with this man. Definitely a Day 3 highlight for us. We ended up stopping just before the South Dakota border that evening and hit our 3rd Super 8 in a row and even got to enjoy a nice little hot tub at this one to relax after the long day!

Day 4 was pretty uneventful. We got through Minnesota and Wisconsin and stopped part way through Illinois. The best part of THIS DAY was the hotel. David was following signs to the Cracker Barrel because I had been talking about it ever since we got into Cracker Barrel land. For those of you that don't know what Cracker Barrel is, I am so sorry. I grew up going to Cracker Barrel's with my dad's side of the family every time we would come back to Indiana in the summers. My family has MANY great memories there. It's delicious country home cookin'. We're talked chicken fried chicken with gravy, buiscuits, country green beans, country fried apples, and peach ice tea. That's what I had for dinner. Hee hee. And the other half the restaurant is a fun country store. And there are rows of rocking chairs out front that you can rock in if you have to wait to be seated. If you ever find yourself nearby a Cracker Barrel, I recommend going. Anyway, I had been making an ordeal out of every Cracker Barrel sign we saw out there (cuz what else is there to do on a 2800 mile road trip), so David being the sweetheart that he is decided to arrange our stop so that we were nearby the Cracker Barrel so we could go to dinner there. We decided to try asking the hotel that was right next to the Cracker Barrel if they had availability and sure enough they did. They quoted us $100 for the night which was more than we'd been paying, but we decided we had done well with saving money other places and would save money by being able to have breakfast there and not have to go buy it somewhere else like we had been with the Super 8's. So we went ahead and unloaded and stopped there. Then once we started to check in and pay, the girl at the front desk said, "how about $85 instead?" And we were like, "REALLY? That's awesome! This is our 4th day on the road and we are exhausted and you just have no idea how much that makes our day!" David headed out to go grab suitcases and she starts to hand me the keys and says, "I also upgraded you to the King Suite." I looked at her and said, "Are you serious?" She said, "Yep!" It was AWESOME! Beautiful room, big bed, 3rd floor. It was great. AND we had a good breakfast in the morning. Best night we'd had so far.

Day 5 (yesterday) competed with our Day 2 Montana day in stressful-ness. We headed out and within a half hour or so were getting into Chicago mess. Tons of traffic, bad drivers, bad roads, tolls. We felt like we had been on the road for 8 hours by the time it was 11:00. David said he was pretty sure going through that mess took years off his life. Ha ha! Once we got out of Chicago the traffic wasn't bad, but there were many poorly kept roads and tons of tolls. We paid nearly $100 in tolls yesterday going through Illinois, Ohio, and the Pennsylvania border. Crazy! We wanted to get over the Penn border badly so we pushed through our drive until about 8:30 at night or so, and then started looking for cities off the highway like we'd been doing all along. But last night we learned when you're on a turnpike, it's really just a way of travel. There isn't really anything along it as far as lodging and gas. So we decided to head about 15-20 min south to a couple of towns we could see on the map that had hotels. We started calling around about 9:00 and EVERY place was full. All the sudden it clicked for me. We had waited until 9:00 on a Saturday night in the summer to reserve a place to stay. It was probably gonna be a lot harder to find a room that night. I found this one place called "The Inn" nearby that had one room left and was by all the other hotels so we decided to go check it out. David pulled into the parking lot and we were immediately regretting it. It was a tiny parking lot with NOWHERE to turn around. I went inside to ask about where we could park and they didn't reallly have anywhere for us to go. The woman working the desk was really nice and tried offering suggestions (unhooking the trailer from the truck, parking at the other hotel lot next door, backing down and around the corner of the hotel), but none of them were very good options. After a half hour or so of being exhaustede and trying to decide what to do, we decided it was best to just keep driving and move along. This moment was by far the most stressful & challenging time of our entire trip so far. We had nowhere to stay, no idea where to go, it was late, we were tired, there didn't really seem to be any cities around. We had to take a moment to just stop, say a deep breath, and ask for a little help from above. The nice desk person inside the hotel had suggested a place before I left and gave me their phone number. So I called ahead and reserved a room and we headed to the Comfort Inn and Suites just outside of Pittsburgh. It was a miracle! They had enough parking, it was only $110 for the night, and it was somewhere safe to stay. RELIEF! The girl at the front desk even gave us a brochure for her favorite delivery place nearby that was still open and we ordered in pizza. And the room was great. It all ended up working out fine and we had survived our first real adrenaline rush!

We woke up this morning ready to take on Day 6, the last leg of our journey. Luckily we only have about 6-7 hours of driving left today so David FINALLY let us have a slightly lazier morning and I had enough time to finally update this thing. If it hadn't been for David keeping us on track I probably wouldn't arrive in Philly for at least another 5 days! Ha ha! We just ate a good breakfast and are ready to leave our last hotel of the journey. It's hard to believe we will arrive in our new hometown today!

Tonight we are planning to stay at a friend of a friend's house of mine that has offered their guest room to us for as long as we need it. Such a blessing to already have someone to stay with. I still need to call her and make sure we can- but we had previous e-mail confirmation so we're pretty sure we're good to go. Then Monday we get to move in to the new apartment. We are so excited and anxious to see it. We rented the freight elevator from 9-1 on Monday so we're hoping we'll have the truck empty in the afternoon and be able to return it that evening. Then the mess of unpacking will begin. Ha ha! But we will have a place to stay and get to start making our new home for now which will be fun.

So now, for the last time this morning, we sing....

"On the road again...." ;-)