Texas or bust

We were not excited to leave Michigan, but had to head home eventually.  

We checked out of the hotel, stopped at Rosie's for one last breakfast and headed home.

To Illinois!

Ok, so we really just stopped for about four hours at my parents house.  I still had a few things left there, and my parents had taken all of our wedding presents home, and we needed to pick up my cat!

Mom had picked up lunch from LaGondola.  I always miss having LaGondola near by, and Cody had never had it before.  For my out of state readers (Hi Belinda!) LaGondola is a local spaghetti and italian sub place.  We get their subs (gondolas): sweet bread, salami, ham, cheese and lettuce.  Simple but so good.

My Grandma, sister and nephews came over to visit one last time too!  The boys had been talking with Jamie about where I was moving too on the way over, and as soon as Owen walked in he climbed in my lap and told me "I need a mooch and a squeeze!" He doesn't like living 'far away' as he always puts it.

Pretty present from an art gallery/antique shop in  Colorado. Thanks Uncle Lowe!

We opened gifts, visited, and then got to work packing up the car.

22 bottles of wine (please don't break!), luggage for two weeks for two people, one cat, one litter box, and a gazillion wedding presents.  It was quite a squeeze but with a lot of help from Mom and Jamie we got it all to fit.

That was about the point we realized there was no way to get our luggage out and we'd be driving straight through.

O and E played in the car while we packed it up.

I was worried about how Zoey would handle the car ride.  She stresses out going to the vet 20 mins away.  

15 minutes into the drive and she was already out of her cage and snuggled down with Cody.
She did wonderfully.  Mostly chilled in her cage but would come out and sit on a lap and watch cars or snooze.  A big car transporter passing us did scare her though, which was pretty funny.

 Last glimpse of the Arch in St. Louis. Yeah, I had to look through that for a week!

Obviously the straight through ride to Texas was not super fun.  Both of our allergies went crazy, and we were both super tired, especially Cody since sleeping in my little car is not easy, but we made it.  We arrived in Texas the next morning, with all 22 bottles of wine intact!

Oh yeah, remember how Dad was all "Oklahoma is great!  You can drive through in the middle of the night and not see a single deer!"?  Not true.  They all waited for me to be the one driving through Oklahoma, in the middle of the night in the rain, to cross the road.