Wowzers. The weekend of the Fourth of July. I’m posting now from our hotel room in Oklahoma City. After roughly ten hours of driving, we’re safe and sound for the night. Because of all the commotion in the past few days, I wasn’t too keen on blogging tonight, but as Aaron reminded me, the longer I wait, the harder it will be to remember everything. Here goes…

The movers came on Friday and packed everything up. Well, mostly everything. It was strange at first, seeing them touching all of our things, but then I got quite used to it and decided it was nice that we barely had to lift a finger!

Friday night we went out to eat with my family (Mom, Dad, sisters Emily and Leah and Leah’s awesome boyfriend Tim) at Chili’s. The “children” then went across the street to get coffee… duh!

Saturday we saw my grandparents and then went to my in-laws for swimming and dinner.

Sunday morning we went to church at Faith for the last time for a long time. Pastor Rick, his wife Leigh Ann and lots of people prayed over us, and then we went to the all-church picnic and were able to visit awhile. We will miss our church family!

Sunday afternoon we got together with a good friend, Mila, and she took some pictures for us in the Pekin Park. We hadn’t had pictures done in almost two years, and we wanted some taken at one of our favorite spots in Illinois before we departed. Here are a few…

Sunday evening after we got pictures taken, we went over to my cousin Bryan’s house and had dinner with him, his wife Michelle (who has become a great friend and older sister to  me!) and this cute little Miss Thang…

Monday was so much fun! We went to my in-laws’ house to swim, relax, and then go out to the fireworks. I definitely got some sun and had a great time with family. All four boys were together this weekend! Too bad I didn’t get a picture of that. Now you have to see our mugs again. 😉

After hanging out at the house, we went to the place at the park they had staked out since the morning. I never really went to the fireworks until we started dating. Last year Aaron missed them; the year before, we spent the Fourth at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.

Speaking of this little girl, we were all up early Tuesday morning and on our way to the Children’s Hospital for Zaia’s open heart surgery to correct her sub-aortic stenosis. The surgery went perfectly (as I knew it would!), and we’ve been getting updates today from my sister-in-law and her mom, Anessa. Zaia no longer has a heart murmur! So glad we were able to be there. We didn’t get to see her awake before we had to leave, but I still gave her a kiss! God is truly our Jehovah Raphe, our Healer.

While she was in surgery, we ran around Peoria to get a few errands completed. Last evening, we went over to my sister’s new house in Farmington. She and her boyfriend, Tim, moved in a couple weeks ago and have made the place look fantastic! I should have taken pictures. Emily came over, too, and we had a nice time just relaxing after a long and stressful day.

I was up at 4:30 this morning.. I just couldn’t sleep any longer. Our goal was to get out the door by 6AM, onto Starbucks, and on the road. We had a long day ahead of us, as we were planning on driving about 700 miles from Peoria to Oklahoma City.

We got everything, I mean evvveryythinng out of the apartment. We were 30 miles out and realized that we hadn’t dropped the keys and check off at the office… whoops! We had to drive back and drop them off. So we did, and were behind schedule about an hour and a half. After I stopped freaking out and realized the world wasn’t ending, all was well.

Annnddd.. we’re cozy in our hotel room in the OKC, like I said. No major incidents, no major scares. We stopped in Springfield, MO, for Arby’s and man did it taste good. Aaron drove the rest of the way.  Luthor did great, even after the sedative wore off. I think he slept most of the time.

It’s still hard to believe that…

• 1) we’re in Oklahoma. Where the wind…. (you know the rest).
• 2) the interstates in this state are great… very clean and well-kept.
• 3) we will be in Albuquerque tomorrow!
• 4) we get to actually live together. Craziness!

Please pray for safe traveling and good weather. I will post later with a blog of our trip! Thanks for reading; I love sharing mundane fun all things that happen in my life and it’s a pleasure to share it with you!