A traveling road show...

It's been almost a month since we haphazardly crammed every inch of a 27' moving truck with seemingly endless amounts of stuff. If you live alone and have moved the only way you can relate is if you...actually you can't relate. After over eight years in a city we love deeply we started a traveling roadshow complete with a three vehicle caravan and embarked on the journey south. I had the privilege of taking my oldest son with me in the semi truck while my gracious wife endured the other four kids in her van and my kind sister in law followed in back with her kids crammed between the "junk" we couldn't fit anywhere else. As every wise human would we loaded the entire day then decided we were superhuman and would drive overnight so the kids slept the majority of the drive...

It's was 10:45pm on a Saturday when we pulled off the beautiful tree lined street in Lincoln Park and navigated toward Georgia. If you've been to Chicago (at any time/day) then you know we got stuck in traffic and spent an hour just to get on the highway. It was an adventure!

Remember that superhuman strength we have? Turns out we were more fragile than we wanted to admit, at least my sister in law and I were. We made it until 1:45am then slept amidst a sea of semitrucks in rural Indiana. When I woke two hours later I found out that my wife was actually superhuman and was currently hours ahead of us in Kentucky. By this point the dawn was about to break and Anderson was awake. It's one of my favorite memories. We were talking about the sunrise and how faithful God is to bring a new day each morning. Anderson had so many great questions and told me he was getting hungry and he was wide awake. I looked left to see the sun rise over the horizon and when I looked back Anderson had passed out. I learned that you can't always trust what a six year old says at 6am. Still I pressed on with the thrill of trying to catch up with my beautiful wife!

Once we made it about 45 miles north of Louisville my sister in law and I were having serious Starbucks withdrawal so I googled the closest one and we raced to get our prize. After wandering two miles off the exit the destination was on our left. The only problem was that it was now an autozone and when I looked at the Starbucks that was in Google Maps I realized that I failed to notice the "permanently closed" message directly below. This trek, while adventurous, was keeping me from catching Thiele. Kinsey and I rushed to find the next Starbucks which turned out to be 2 1/2 hours later in Bowling Green Kentucky. 

Once caffeinated we pressed onward with a vengeance through the rolling green hills of Tennessee. It was around Nashville when the A/C went out in the semi and the temperature began to soar into the upper 90's (Welcome to the South!). It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. Our road trip took the ultimate step in memory making when we then had to cruise with the windows down and the jams on blast! For a little over four hours we endured the heat and pressed on. Finally in the late afternoon we arrived to our new home in sweat soaked clothes. It was a feeling of both victory and complete exhaustion (we also NEVER caught Thiele...). 

From that day forward we've been sifting through our belongings and wandering through the hoarder-esk trails that exist between stacks of boxes. It feels good to say we're making progress (even if it's going slow). I've loved seeing our kids enjoy the adventure. In the little things like gardening, running through the forest, eating on the deck and playing ping pong. While no one is settled at this point there is a feeling that this is where we should be. It was a long journey to get here but we all survived. I hope that my older kids will share stories of our cross country move with their kids and the little kids will create new memories as they grow up in metro Atlanta. For me it's all about the story that's being told and I love that we have little roles along the way. Someday when we're rocking on a porch swing and our grandkids are running around the estate I hope to call them up to the porch and recall all of the little stories being written in the moments of life. Stories of our move, of dance recitals, of times things went wrong, of times things went right, of where we saw God move, of where we witnessed redemption first hand, of the falls, of the comebacks and of the love that overflows. 

We're transitioning well into our new southern digs but appreciate your continued prayer over our crazy quirky family.