A New Week. A New State.

Today finds us in Longview, Texas just a hop, skip and jump away from the Louisiana border. Thus far I have viewed the driving portion of our journey as merely a means to an end; we needed to get to Atlanta and to do that we had to drive through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. However, today starts with a feeling of anticipation and excitement as we venture into Louisiana, both because it is a state I have never visited and because we are now over half way to Atlanta.
Thankfully, Mercy slept well the last two nights in complete contrast to the two nights before that when she felt the need to sleep very close to me and nurse all night long. We think that she is going through her six-month growth stage because she seems to look longer every time we change her out of her sleepers into her day clothes. She also had a milestone moment yesterday when she drank milk out of a sippy cup. I know that to most of the world this seems totally anticlimactic, but to those of us who are breastfeeding moms, this is brilliant! She doesn't like bottles but with the new found acceptance of the sippy cup, Mom (that's me) can get a break. As well, we're pretty sure that she's ready for solid food because whenever one of us holds her in our lap while we're eating, she starts sucking on her tongue and reaching out to grab whatever we have. We're trying to put off starting solids but I think we're going to have to break on this one.
We noticed yesterday that as we left Abilene and started heading further east, trees began to appear at first just in little clumps along the road and eventually sprouted into entire forests. It's amazing how Texas seems to be divided right in the middle with the east showing mainly plains and the west bearing quite dense forests. I'm really looking forward to the drive today to see how the landscape changes as we head further east. We've been in the desert so long that I can't wait to see some serious green. Thankfully, the weather has been amazing and we've been able to drive without much thought to preparations for any sort of conditions. Longview, where we spent the night last night, had some fog roll in, but that should burn off by late morning. Hopefully, we'll have some more pictures to put up after today's journey. I pray that we make it as far east as we can before the day's over.

Getting Out the Door

I can't believe that we have now been on the road for a week! The original plan was to leave in time to get to Atlanta by Joseph's Birthday on the 11th but, of course, the best laid plans ... Instead, we spent his birthday mostly on the road with a stop in Deming, New Mexico, the birthplace of his maternal grandfather, and Van Horn, Texas, where we got some authentic Tex Mex in a little hole in the wall joint just outside of El Paso. While we got out later than we had planned, there is no doubt that God's timing was/is perfect. We started getting down to serious packing last Saturday and got most everything boxed and ready to go in our trailer by Sunday morning. Joseph stayed up all night on Sunday trying to get the trailer loaded before the first wave of rain storms rolled in to Southern California. My amazing husband and our dear friend Kas re-packed our trailer three times before they got it balanced and road-ready. Some residents and retired missionaries at Casa Robles where we live saw that we were struggling to get on the road and graciously offered their hospitality. It started with inviting us over for dinner and then breakfast and then lunch and eventually ended in them giving us a key and letting us stay the night in their guest room. I was blessed by spending time in their home and hearing their stories about being in the missionary field in Bolivia and South Africa. No doubt, spending time with them bolstered my faith in the middle of a very frustrating start to our trip.
After multiple repacking attempts and a few trailer hiccups, we finally got on the road at 5 pm on Tuesday night! Though we knew we couldn't get very far, we were thankful to be out of our apartment and finally started towards Atlanta. Another blessing which seemed to come out of our late departure was that Joseph's parents, Jerry and Olivia, were in Arizona and drove up to meet us in Indio. At one point, we had all talked about driving to Atlanta together. Now, here we are on Sunday morning in Abilene, Texas and they are still on the road with us and are planning to go all the way to Atlanta. Praise God! As well, since they have their RV, they took over hauling the trailer which is a great relief to our little 1987 Volvo. We have now traveled with them for 5 days and have enjoyed great visiting time.
Mercy is a great little traveler and is doing so well! We are hoping to get to Atlanta by Tuesday. We'll try to keep up with blogging as we go!