Our Drive from Maryland to Texas

We checked out of our apartment on Monday morning, June 11. We finally got on the road around 11 am--Two hours behind schedule. The military housing forgot that we were checking out, so we had to sit around and wait for them. I was anxious to leave. My emotions were all over the place. I was so sad to leave such wonderful people. I loved our ward and made so many great friends. My sister, who had been living with us, was moving back to Utah. I loved how green Maryland was. I loved how close we were to so many cool places. I was also anxious to get to Texas to see what we were getting ourselves into.

The girls were great the first day. We stopped for a later lunch at 

Chick-fil-a and Hallee played in the playground. We made it to Knoxville TN around 7:30pm. We stayed at a Best Western, ordered pizza, and went swimming. 

This was Jared's attempt at getting the "Welcome to Tennessee" sign.  It was raining pretty hard. 



Leaving the Best Western 

 Our next stop was Little Rock, Arkansas. We got stuck in HORRIBLE traffic. Our Garmin said there was a 2 hour delay. We thought there is no way there could be that long of a delay. Well the Garmin was right for once. We were stopped completely for a good 2 hours. We were less than 2 hours from our hotel. It was brutal. We let the kids out of their carseats while we waited. We finally got to our hotel around 7pm. We stayed at another Best Western. Which they both were very nice. We ate Subway and went swimming. 

Arkansas was really pretty, lots of trees. 



We hit the 1,000 mile mark just before entering TX. 



I'm not going to lie, I got emotional when we saw this sign. I  thought to myself is this really where we are going to live... There were hardly any trees, it was just dirt and cactus everywhere. I immediately missed Maryland! 

Day 3: This was going to be our longest day, the girls did really well the other 2 days. But day 3 was hard for Mckenna. She was not having it anymore. She would only sleep for 45 minutes and then wake up crying. So I sat in the back for the first 5 hours, and then Jared sat back there some of the time while I drove. 


such a little sweetheart

We stopped for lunch at DQ, and then found a park. We fed the ducks and let hallee run around. It was pretty hot so it didn't last long. 

Hallee was a champ! I was more worried about her, but she watched shows and played games on the IPAD. That saved us! She also got to open present 2 times a day--I just got things from the dollar store. She also read books, played with magnets on a cookie sheet and ate snacks. She was awesome!!

We got stuck in traffic in Austin! By then we had all had it! Mckenna was crying, nothing would make her happy and Hallee wanted to go back to Maryland to play with her friend Calle. It made me so sad that Hallee, who was 2 already missed her friend. We finally made it to our hotel at 8pm. When we pulled up our thermostat said 100 degrees. We were shocked that it was still that hot, that late into the evening. We got the car unpacked, ordered pizza again, and went swimming. The pool water was like a hot tub.
Jared and I just laughed.
We were so blessed to make it to San Antonio without any car problems or accidents. We just dealt with pretty bad traffic. We were glad that we made it safely, but I was still unsure about it all.