deck the halls

monday again. jared is at the airport right now about to leave for africa, and maria is in florida visiting her fam while jared's away. i don't love the feeling of them not being here. they are an underlying layer of comfort in my life. here's what i keep telling myself about the trip to africa for jared, if he survived a road trip to new mexico with sam and josh and our josh, he will be juuuust fine on a trip with elevation. but i covet your prayers for them as they go.

the apartment is slowly coming along. i've been working a LOT, and will continue to, and the time i have to nest is in very small increments. i did manage to get my chalkboard wall done quickly on friday night/saturday morning. it's super fun.

let's talk about this for a second. last week i messaged jess during the day, but got nick instead. caught up with him quickly, and somehow the subject of victorian christmas came up. let's rewind to this time last year, shall we?

me, nick, jessi, and babes were all still living at new beginnings home in puyallup. every year the founders of the ministry had a booth at the local victorian christmas festival, where they had a raffle for a handmade quilt. all of the staff (ehh, like 5 of us?) were supposed to split of the time at the booth and work shifts. oh i'm sorry, did i forget to mention that we were required to wear full 'victorian dress'? and by 'victorian dress', i do of course mean, weirdo lacy dresses with bustles, and nick wore a coat with tails and a top hat. lest we forget, jess was about 20 weeks pregnant at this point. we looked a little more like the cast of dr. quinn medicine woman (on a bad day) than we did anything having to do with the victorian era.

i worked two shifts, but the most hilarious one was undoubtedly the shift i worked with nick, where we just sort of scowled at each other the entire night. i'm laughing right now thinking about it. the thought of the two of us being in charge of selling a mennonite quilt is just about the best thing i've ever heard of.

seriously, you should really explore those links above. and here's a taste of some victorian christmas show goodness:

[to be totally fair, we raised money that allowed each of us to be able to have some christmas money last year, so it was worth it, but this is not something any of us talks about very often, as it was not our finest hour].

alright, so that's my gift to you today, a secret that none of us really wanted to get out. and now it is yours for the ridiculing.

best part of my year, part II

i was nervous as we drove down our street. we had an entire country to cross, and i had made all of the plans and routes myself. things were resting pretty squarely on my shoulders. not to mention that my dad had just been diagnosed with bronchitis.

this was a big undertaking, and we were also feeling the anxiety of having to navigate potentially treacherous roads as we wound our way up and over the snoqualmie pass.

highway 167 that runs through puyallup was packed, and almost immediately i was convinced i'd made a navigation error, but it turned out fine and we got on i-90 after waiting in plenty of afternoon traffic. beulah slept quietly in her bed that had been tucked in between boxes and bags.

almost immediately we started making our way up, up, up. within an hour and a half we saw feet of snow packed on the sides of the interstate. definitely the most snow i'd ever seen. the roads were surprisingly clear, and we made it through without a thought.

soon after we got past snoqualmie, the scenery changed. before i knew it, this is what we saw:

(not my picture)

i had no idea that eastern washington had so many rolling hills and farms. but i loved it, and as we drove through this, the sun started to set. we passed through spokane, and crossed the line into idaho, and stopped for our first night on the road.

[i am pretty sure it was during our afternoon drive down from the mountain that i realized i had left my purse in the new beginnings van. i called jessi, and could not believe i left my wallet in puyallup. i'm still kicking myself about that. nick or jess, not sure which, fedexed it to one of the hotels along our route. thanks friends.]

we stayed at this hotel in post falls, idaho that didn't have an elevator. if you could have seen how much stuff we hauled in and out of our hotels each night (we streamlined SO much by our last night)-- coolers of food, dog bed, dog food, our bags, computers, it was ridiculous. not even to mention a dog on a leash. getting our stuff up the stairs was a workout, and not funny after a very full day, that had started with a trip to doctor's care, and was now finally ending.

as soon as our room was quiet, and beu had been walked, we closed our eyes. phew, deep breath, settle in for a good night's rest. pretty quickly, i realized-- i had not thought at all about my dad's snoring. oh the snoring. my dad had stinking bronchitis, so i was just glad he was resting at all, so i didn't want to tell him or make him feel bad, there was nothing he could do. so of course, i took to my blog in the middle of the night to talk about just how horrible it was. ha. and twitter (see above). as you can see above, that first night, i laid there, and thought of anything i could do to make it go away. finally, i decided the most logical (?) choice would be to use my nail clippers, go in the bathroom, and shred the inside of a maxi pad and shove it in my ears. i was obviously dillusional. i had an iPod. that was suggested later, and i felt quite silly.

we woke up that next morning, made our 16 trips back and forth to load up the car, and kept going east. this leg of our trip was one of my favorites. we drove back up a very tall mountain and into deep snow.

there were several well preserved mining towns, so we stopped in wallace, idaho to check things out.

b girl loved the snow.

not too long after these photos, we crossed over into montana. my favorite state (maybe i love wyoming more? toss up). this day was the most oddly perfect one of our trip. we stopped at the university of montana and threw the ball around the university's practice field for beulah. ate taco bell (which became our go-to fast food), and got some coffee. after that break we drove on, and this afternoon was the most picturesque leg of the trip, in my opinion.

after several hours of driving after our break the university, i asked my dad to pull over on an exit* and let beulah use the bathroom, and maybe there'd be room to run her around a little bit to keep her tired for the rest of the day in the car.

*exits in montana are much different than i was used to. they all have cattle guards and are free range, meaning cattle just roam where they please.

it was late afternoon by now, and we drove up over a hill as we exited the highway and saw the prettiest scene..ever.

turns out we had stopped at a historical marker, and this was a campground for lewis and clark. as i walked beulah around, i looked down by the river bank beside me and saw a group of horses walking over to me. history, animals, farmland. i was in heaven. this is still my favorite memory of the trip.

more to come..[this is getting long:)]

best part of my year

as i drove up to starbucks this morning, i started thinking about my trip across the country with my dad. i think about it a lot, actually. to say that i loved that trip would be an understatement. it was perfect. i realized today, that besides a few quick pictures, i never really told you about any of our tales from the road.

i need to get out the binder that i made (with directions, phone numbers for hotels, starbucks at each stop, and dog parks near our hotels, etc.) and look at our route and all of the receipts and stuff that were collected along the way. that would probably bring back a flood of other memories. for now though, we'll just go with what i've got stored in the ol' mind grapes.

i picked up my dad from the airport the night before we would head out. i was not particularly 'excited' about everything that was about to happen, i didn't have a job, and was not sure where i would live when i made it across the country, so it was the next step in the process, but it wasn't particularly exciting. i made it through the heavy traffic to the airport, picked up my dad, and quickly realized that he wasn't feeling too great. we stopped by trackside pizza on the way home, and then back to new beginnings.

i don't remember thinking anything out of the ordinary about spending the last night in my bed in washington.

the next morning i went to take beulah for a walk, and fixed my dad and i some toast and eggs. the first thing out of my dad's mouth that morning was that he needed to go to urgent care. he avoids the doctor more than anyone i know, so hearing him say that i knew things had gone south over night. before we headed out for urgent care, we checked the condition of the snoqualmie pass, which we would have to cross to continue on our way east. on the washington DOT website they have a 24 hour a day webcam of the conditions of the pass. when it came up on my computer, all you could see was white. all white, with maybe a swirl of white once in a while. we would have to re-route.

i was familiar with the local puyallup doctor's care, because i just been there myself after getting bitten in the face by a dog about a week earlier. so he and i made it up the hill, and got in and out of there relatively quickly. turns out my dad had bronchitis, and the doctor put him on an antibiotic that was 'one rung below hooking him up to an IV'. all morning i had been trying to convince dad that we should take another day, let him get better, and hopefully allow the pass to thaw out some.

there was no convincing him, and after a stop by fred meyer for his prescription and some food to fill our cooler, we decided to go ahead and pick up our rental car. on our way to get the car, i dropped beulah off down the street with her best friend tucker, so she would be nice and tired for the first leg of our journey. tucker's mom, vicki and i talked about the pass, and she said that many times it will snow all morning, but then be 'passable' by the afternoon, but that the window is very slim, because as soon as the sun starts to go down, everything refreezes. we were on the clock, we had to make it to the pass at just the right time.

that rental car trip turned into an ordeal that lasted a couple of hours. after some frustration, including waiting for a car, hertz taking back a car, and then waiting another hour for a new car, we drove off the lot. the wait was only intensified as watched our window of time dwindle smaller and smaller.

on the drive back to the house, i texted jessi and told her that we were on our way. she was waiting to leave for her doctor's appointment until i got back. she also waited to put glory down for her nap until i could say goodbye. this trip home before saying goodbye was the first time i really cried about leaving the connollys. i walked in, and hugged the kids on the stairs, hugged jessi, and she left quickly for her doctor's appointment.

we just ripped it off like a bandaid.

my dad i packed the rental car quickly, and it began to rain. we packed and repacked the car trying to configure all of the puzzle pieces of boxes and luggage, and dog beds. finally, we had everything placed. we hugged nick goodbye, and pulled out of new beginnings, and drove down the street to pick up a tired and wet beulah. i said a tearful goodbye to our friends vicki and tucker as well.

then we were off.

[longer than i expected, will continue soon..]