EXHAUSTED!!! Yeah…to say the least.

It was a mad scramble to get packed and load the mini-van before 12:30pm, and that was with Doug and Jeanie helping! They were nice enough to stay over at our apartment last night and help us today.

Hind site is 20-20 and having a wife that plans well can even be better, as long as you listen to her =). A couple weeks ago, Tina thought we should ship some items home before we packed the mini-van because she didn’t think we had enough room. Oh…but I was confident that my mad packing skillz would prove her wrong. Yeah…not so much. When you have trouble finding room to put a pair of shoes in a mini-van, you might as well give up on the 5+ remaining boxes…DOH!

So we gave away a bunch of stuff to our friends, and my Brother-in-Christ (Mr. Matt) offered to ship the remaining boxes for us (Thanks again bro!). Well, it did work out in the end, just probably not exactly how the wife wanted, which isn’t a good way to score points with her. Hoping that giving her a foot rub tonight will make up for it a little!

Ella behaved herself all day. One surprise: her g-tube fell out unexpectedly while we were in the midst of packing! That was a first. Fortunately, we were able to locate what we needed to fix it. Going through this drill made us realize that we did not have a spare g-tube, so we stopped by Shands on the way out of Gainesville, just to make sure that we had an extra.

Ella did well during the drive, although it did look like she was battling some gas so she definitely had her fussy moments.

By the time we finished everything, we were not on the highway leaving Gainesville until 5pm. Originally, we had planned on meeting the Richards and Dirriams for dinner in Atlanta. When we called to break the news that we would not make it, we discovered that both houses had kids that were sick and they were planning to cancel too (they did not want to risk possibly getting Ella sick – – thank you). It was a bummer not to be able to see them, but it seems like it was not in the cards for us to this trip.

We arrived in downtown Atlanta at 10pm, exactly a 5 hour drive. I think Ella scored us an upgraded room too because once the bell hop saw how much stuff we were hauling, he upgraded our room for us to a corner suite with a nice view. Way to go Bun!

At this moment, Ella is sleeping soundly and Tina and I are about to do the same.

Please continue to pray for our safe travels. It looks like we may get a little rain tomorrow, but we don’t expect to see anything like Doug and I saw a couple days ago (Thank God).

COLORADO HERE WE COME!

P.S. Our friends haven’t shared any of the pictures that they took of us today leaving our Gainesville apartment, but once they do, we’ll share with you too.

Thank you Lord for bringing us safely into Atlanta. Father we ask for your continue protection during this trip and for the weather to cooperate. We praise you Jesus for our beautiful girl. Amen.