The Saga of my Life

Well, this family has officially moved, and many have asked me for the insanely crazy details of leaving North Dakota. Well, here ya go....

We packed up all of our stuff in one of those U-pack type trucks the Friday before Christmas--(it was scheduled to be at our new house on the 30th--I'll get to that later!) We planned on driving out the next day. Well, when Matt went to get our snow tires put on our van they discovered that there was a crack in one of the wheels. WHAT??? Well, apparently wheels are not that easy to find in Bismarck. We called at least 100 places and none could find the right size. And, to ship one it would take FOREVER because of all the snow in Bismarck. All of our stuff was gone in the truck, so we had nothing except our suitcases and an empty apartment! Thank goodness for awesome friends that outfitted us until we got out of town.

Well, finally on Tuesday we got our wheel fixed and thought we would head out. Of course it turned out that there were many roads closed in Oregon--they are getting record snow there. We finally decided that we would drive to Billings and then fly out. The earliest flight was Friday morning, the 26th. So, Thursday, Christmas morning, we packed up and drove to Billings to spend the night. We got up at 430 am and went to the airport. When we got there, they could only find Matts reservation in their computer, and by the time they found mine and the kids, our flight was already gone. I don't think I had ever been so freaking frustrated! The airlines then proceded to tell me that they couldn't get me on a flight until 730 pm and I would have to pay the fair they would have charged that day. $750 per ticket. Well, since we got to the airport at 5am, I wasn't really interested in sitting at the airport all day with 3 little kids. So, we took the shuttle back to our hotel, picked up our car and started driving.

We drove at about 50mph most of the 1400 miles. It took forever. About half way through the day, we discovered that our windshield wiper fluid was frozen, which you wouldn't think is a big deal....well, when you can't see the road it is a HUGE deal. When the roads were slushy, we were stopping every 5 minutes to clean the windshield with snow. After about an hour we got it fixed and were oh SOOO happy! Then, that night, we got stuck again in a storm--and spent the night. We finally celebrated Christmas on Saturday....

Then-on the 30th, I called the moving company to schedule a time to drop our loot off and they realized that our stuff was still sitting in Bismarck. They had forgotten to move our trailer. It finally came on the 5th.Needless to say, we are all moved in for the most part! I am glad to have those few weeks behind me. Bring on 2009!!!