Hello blog! Long time no see!

Here I am, finally in Dallas. We've been here about two weeks now, though it's been three weeks since we left Los Angeles. It's a long story, but it ended up taking our movers 8 full days to get our stuff from Los Angeles to Dallas, so instead of going straight there, we stopped for two days in Oklahoma City, where Charles' mom lives.

The drive from Los Angeles was really long. It would have been one thing if it had been the two of us in one car where we could have switched off driving. Unfortunately, we have two cars and three morotcycles between us so we caravaned in two separate cars, each of us towing a motorcycle trailer hauling the bikes. To make matters more interesting, we also have three dogs. Kraut rode with Charles and Wally and Grace rode with me. Since Wally gets really anxious in the car, I asked the vet to give him some sedatives. He was still anxious, but much MUCH better than he would have been without them!


Our first day was the longest. We left Los Angeles around 6:30 in the morning. We could have easily been in Flagstaff, AZ in about 7 hours, but wanted to see the Grand Canyon since we were so close (I'd never been there). I'm glad we made the side trip, but it took us almost 3-4 full hours as a side trip, and it was probably the quickest tour of the Grand Canyon ever taken!

We stayed the night in Flagstaff, had lunch with friends of Charles' in Albuquerque the next day, then ended the day in Santa Rosa, NM. New Mexico was really beautiful. I wish we would have had more time to explore, but it was hard, especially with two cars and all the critters. On the third day, we made it to Amarillo, TX just in time for lunch at the Big Texan, home of the 72 oz steak (eat it in an hour and it's free). I settled for only 16 oz and was STUFFED. We made it to Charles' mom's outside Oklahoma City by nightfall.


The dogs loved Charles' mom's little farm. She has a huge yard, a couple of horses, and a bunch of goats, including some kids (baby goats - I think). All the dogs had a ton of fun running around in the long grass, and Grace really REALLY wanted to play with the goats.


The next day (Sunday), it took us only about 3 1/2 hours to get to Dallas from Oklahoma City. Unfortunately, the movers wouldn't be there until Wednesday, which meant too may nights on a very uncomfortable air mattress. (I don't care what anyone says, air mattresses are NOT comfortable)! We spent three very long days painting my office and our master bedroom to be ready for the movers on Wednesday. Our entire first week in Texas was spent either painting, or unpacking for long hours every day. We just started back to work last week and are still busy, but not as much so as before. We're continuing to get things unpacked little by little.

Living in Texas has already been both educating and entertaining, from their ridiculous regulations to obtain a drivers license, to the way the streets are set up, to the way people just ARE here. Hopefully, I'll have many things to blog about in the near future. Until then, stay tuned.