Great American Road Trip: FL>ATL

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." -Helen Keller 

     So much catching up to do! Starting with a job offer for Randy this past June to the west coast, to moving/driving across country, to a hardcore San Francisco apartment hunt experience (still hunting)from the day we arrived & currently experiencing a pretty crazy case of the shingles, I am now forced to lay low and take a breath. I'm excited about some things in the future with this blog/newfashioned/and the direction of it all and this new adventure we've begun! But for now I want to catch up those who've asked about it all and have been so supportive through this crazy new journey with cards, travel gifts, starbucks giftcards, finances, prayers, etc., that we've prayed about & truly believe God has called us to.  I'll start with our cross country adventure, in case you ever find yourself on the same journey and want to know some good stops. 

     With only a month to move we decided the most cost-effective way, since it's just the two of us, was to sell everything (the only thing my materialistic heart misses is my Jeep and a box of clothes if you're wondering) and pack up our tiny Scion with whatever we could fit. Mainly all of Randy's music equipment, suitcases for a couple weeks while we apartment hunt (not sure why we thought it would only take two weeks-more on that later) and one box of kitchen/picture stuff. After some hard goodbyes,celebrations, meeting 2343 people for craigslist deals, leaving 50% of our stuff at our apartment dumpster the day we left (oops), a few garage sales and getting a storage unit last minute,we left one day later than we planned. But we did it! 

I also just need to tell everyone that I literally have the worlds most amazing parents. The weekend we left they dropped everything they were doing, sometimes/usually past 12:00 a.m, to take things to storage, clean our apartment, move our stuff out, comfort me while I had crazygurl emotional breakdowns, praying over us, financially blessing us, and driving up right as we were about to pull out to tell us goodbye (for the third time), they're seriously the best and I miss them terribly. 

We finally got on the road Monday morning, after Randy packed/repacked our car literally for hours. Thankful for his attention-to-detail personality which made everything fit like a puzzle eventually. We headed to our first stop: Atlanta. We spent a night with some favorites, who were the best hosts (seriously who sings/plays the triangle for you when you go to their house?? exactly). 

We spent some much needed time catching up, playing hours of pictionary, eating some delicious Pure spending time with my bff sister Michelle and re-packing our car for another couple of hours. We realized we needed to rearrange the car-puzzle due to our only sleeping option, pictured on the right. We were a little closer to the windshield than we thought safe. BUT- we eventually left and headed to our next stop: Memphis. Stay tuned! 

Cross Country Travel Tips (maybe obvious ones):

*Get a storage unit if you're moving, it was so worth it and wish we would have thought of it right away. 

*Get a car bigger than a Scion.

*Start the craiglist process the second you take the job offer-don't wait a single day. ever. 

*For food/hotel/sights/stops we used: trip advisor, design sponge city guides, diners, drive-ins and-dives, man vs. food, and wherever Siri said was the closest stop when exhausted. 

*For hotels we used Priceline and booked name-your-own-prices 20 minutes before we arrived.

*Have a route, but be prepared to stop before or if you're feelin' crazy, past your destination. 

*Download some good travel apps- we started losing our minds around Arizona and that saved us for a couple hours. Madlibs is a great choice. 

Those are my tips for now: stay tuned for stops in MEMPHIS. And a few other boring states!