The Moving Misadventures of the Traveling Praters

July has just flown by, hasn’t it? What an incredibly crazy month.

We left Alabama for a visit to Ohio.

My computer died.

My husband decides he’d like to move back to Ohio.

The kids and I drive back to Alabama on a Thursday.

With the help of some dear friends, we attempt to pack our entire house by the time my husband flies in to join us on Saturday. 

Saturday night we realize that there is no way that we’ll be able to hit the road back to Ohio on Sunday.

We give away a ton of stuff and still can’t fit everything in the van or on the trailer so we rent a storage unit.

Somewhere between the storage unit and the two minute drive back to our house, I loose the keys to our lock. The office manager will not allow us to cut our lock to add more items to our unit but insists that we need to call a locksmith.

My vacuum dies. I borrow my neighbors  Kenmore vacuum to finish sweeping the carpet and the belt breaks.  It is 5:30 pm on Sunday night, Sears is across town and closes at 6:00.

Monday morning I pull away in a van packed so full you can barely breathe in it, two sweaty teenagers and an anxious, upset beagle-mix, towing the trailer behind. My husband and older son follow behind us in my son’s car with all of our money. In hindsight, that wasn’t such a great idea. Especially when they sped past us near Louisville, Kentucky.

It begins to storm horribly.

Somewhere around Cincinnati, with my husband and son nowhere in sight, I begin to fear that we won’t have enough gas to make it the remaining three hours home.

I call my husband. His phone is dead. I call my son. He doesn’t answer. I continue driving and pray that I don’t run out of gas.

Finally find my debit card and use $10 or the $12.16 balance for gas and think I can make it to my destination.

Our normal 10 hour drive has turned into 12 because of unbelievable road construction.

15 minutes to go and I’m so close to falling into bed and falling fast asleep that I can almost feel the mattress under my head when I notice something is wrong. Suddenly the van swerves and I hear a loud popping noise and smell the stench of hot rubber. A blowout at midnight on a dark, unlit stretch of  highway.  

We find the jack only to realize that we don’t have the tools to remove the spare tire from the back of the van. Thankfully, my son notices a missed call from me at about that precise moment and decides to call me when he and my husband had stopped for gas. They are 45 minutes behind us, but they’re heading our way.

Nickolaus stops and picks up Chelsea and a scared, whimpering Vincent. My husband and Josh change out the the tire with our nearly flat spare- figures, huh?

We limp to the gas station for air only to find the air pump is broken.

We decided the tire can wait until morning and head to our new temporary apartment. I fall into bed exhausted and for the first time in I don’t know when, I didn’t wake until daylight.

Life may not be perfect, but it sure is memorable! This is one move we will never forget.