1-27, Leaving MD

So, here I sit...in Colorado.....1.5 months later....trying to reconstruct the journey we've been on since the end of January.  Time has passed so quickly, but so slowly at the same time.  We left Maryland in January in the middle of a snowstorm and arrived in Colorado in February in the middle of a snowstorm.  It's been a whirl, it really has.  Alas....here are the highlights:

Can you believe the movers were able to get Nikolas' fort out of the yard and into the truck?  Sven says that dad and I aren't allowed to build things together anymore.... =)

Our truck driver was very cool.  Here is Nikolas sitting up in the big rig ready to go.

Of the nearly 3 years we lived on Fort Meade, I'd never witnessed 2 moving trucks unloading/loading houses on opposite sides of the street.....until the day we moved.  A new family was moving in as we were moving out.

Yep....nobody's squeezing through there, better find an alternate route!

Ironically, the week we moved out, one of my best friends in the neighborhood was moving out as well.  What's that saying...."the only thing constant is change"?!  No kidding.  I'm going to miss my friend!

And the plot thickens.  Here we sit in a very empty house in Fort Meade.  We have hardly any food, nothing but air mattresses, sleeping bags, our suitcases...and a rabbit. It starts to snow...and snow...and snow.  What are the odds that we're really going to be starting our cross-country drive tomorrow or that anyone from housing will actually show up for our move-out inspection?  Twas a night of worry with little sleep!

Had it been Christmas instead of moving day, I would have appreciated the beauty a whole lot more.

Really? That snow-buried car is supposed to get us across the country starting tomorrow?

We may have lost sleep that night, but thankfully we didn't lose power.....like so many Fort Meade neighborhoods did that night.  (That would have been scary having no extra blankets or anything to keep warm!) The next morning arrived, the snow stopped falling, the streets began to clear, the inspector showed up and checked us out.  It was time to say goodbye.  Here is Nikolas with a few of his pals from the neighborhood.  Sadly, with Nikolas having been sick the week before and the snow days the followed, Nikolas didn't get to say goodbye to his classmates.  However, I think I felt worse about it than he did!

While waiting for Sven to sign out at work, I took Nikolas and his buddy up to the community center to play a little pool (since we were officially homeless then!).  I know Nikolas is really going to miss his friend.

Goodbye, Maryland!  We laughed, we cried, and we drove like crazy people to get away from the east coast and back to something more familiar to us.  The memories are priceless and our hopes are grand.