The Beginning of Our Journey Part 1

My mind is in serious information overload!  Not sure where to start this blog post so I will start at the beginning of our journey on Friday.  Our plan was to leave out at 9am, however, our official departure time was probably around 11am.  Not to bad, considering...our first destination for the evening was Frankfort, KY (about 6 hours).  Someone graciously provided us a room there with their travel rewards at no cost, which was a blessing!   The kids did pretty well on the trip.  They took turns riding in the truck with Sam which left mom and I with the other 4 to entertain while I drove. We did stop at a McDonalds on the way for lunch and let them play for a bit.  I included a picture of Hudson on the slide because he was too cute!  He was so brave and kept climbing up the stairs and sliding down all by himself!

Friday was also Sam's birthday, which I am sure is one he will never forget!  We kept promising him to pick a place to eat his birthday dinner when we arrived at the hotel in Kentucky, however after we arrived, unloaded, got freshened up and walked over the Longhorn's it was a 45 minute wait and I just could NOT do that to my sweet children, so we ended up at Panera Bread (his least favorite place to eat).  He is a good sport though.

Everyone slept wonderfully!  All 8 of us were in one room and although it was a bit crowded at times (with noise), it was a very restful night.  We got up, ate the continental breakfast and again didn't get out of there until almost 10:30am.  Our next stop was Elgin, IL (Country Inn & Suites).  After riding in pouring rain and bumper to bumper traffic through Chicago, we finally arrived around 6pm (local time). We are now on Central Standard Time.  I have to say that was the longest drive ever!  Again, the kids were such great sports and really did well.  One benefit to the hotel was that it had an indoor pool, that was the best incentive for the kids.  We kept reminding them that this was the last swim of the summer!

We got up on Sunday morning and attended Harvest Bible Chapel (Elgin) which is the main campus where the training center is, the Christian school, etc.  It is literally 6 minutes from our apartment.  This was the kids first time at Harvest and let me tell you....they LOVED it!  They will also be attending AWANA there on Wednesday evenings.  We came back after the service (which was awesome by the way!) and packed up our stuff, let the kids swim one last time while we waited for the magical hour of 3:00!  Let me just say I seriously had butterflies in my stomach at this point...the drive to the apartment was so LONG for me, when really it wasn't.  I was like, "this is it...this is it!"  I pulled in and took a deep breath as this was home sweet home for the next 5 months.  We were greeted by another family that we had met back during our interview weekend...they helped us unload as I walked around our very spacious apartment, literally in shock!  It is wonderful....couldn't of asked for a better place to call home.  We have 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms a kitchen with a ton of cabinet and storage...a safe play area outside for the kids to run and play and lots of great neighbors that are in this as well!  I will end this post with a few pics I have taken so far.  I will take some more and post those later.  I will also finish up Part 2 tomorrow night.

Kids at the dining room table

That is the front door

My kitchen! Learning how to cook with a gas stove.

Living room (from front door) You can see back door which steps out to the patio

Down the hallway from living room