seet home alabama part two

i am so sorry for the grammar and misspellings in th last post. i find that i type really fast and don't stop to proofread until the end. i typically type until i have no time left and then i realize i don't have time to proof so i just hit the publish button. just know i really do know how to spell most words and most grammatical rules ;-).

ok. lets pick up where i left off on friday april 24...

so we pack for a little while longer once micah gets home until time to have dinner with our neighbors at 5:15. they had become such good friends in such a short period of time. we ate at our usual double daves pizza and we did our usual kids booth and adult booth :-). by 6:15 it was time for me to leave and go to another dinner my friends at the ark planned for me. however this one was full with free frozen margaritas!! they are methodist, so the drinking thing is a non issue with them. i did try one and thought it was actually pretty good! the night culminated back at home where the family of the little girl i had been picking up from school in the afternoons had dropped by while i was gone to leave me a gift. it was very sweet. we worked till we could no longer work, but i soon realized i wasn't going to have it "just like i wanted" before i went to bed. bret had trouble sleeping. he finally got u and went to get few more boxes at walmart. byt he way walmart cereal isle at 2:00 am is the perfect place for free moving boxes!! when he retruned and again ttried to sleep he still tossed and turned. after a little while knowing there was nothing i could do, i just reached over and put my hand on his cheek and told he deserved rest and he actally fell asleep in about thirty seconds!

SATURDAY APRIL 26/LOADING DAY/LONGEST DAY OF THE WEEK
we got up and began doing a few last things. we left to pick up the truck. when got there it looked smaller than anticipated. (on a side note for those of you wondering, the church here at vaughn park offered to pay for us to have movers. they gave us a lump sum check for moving and said we were free to use it however we wished. we decided since our house had not yet sold, we would do the move ourselves and save a few thousand dollars to go toward a house payment.) bret took the truck home and the kids and i stopped by our favorite donut place to bring home some breakfast. only a few days before, we had about ten people who had offered to help us load the truck so we thought we would be able to get i done fairly easily. by the time we got home with the truck all but two of those people had had to call us and for different very understandable reasons bail out on the mvoing day. i was never so grateful to see two guys who had not replied to our email just show up!! also the incdredible hawkins came and helped from start to finish even though at times it seemed like our stuff would never go away. i left at 11 to go and pick up my parents from the air port. yes, my parents bought them selves one way tickets to dallas to help us load and actually drive the three vehicles to alabama from texas. did i mention in the former email that this was their 38th wedding anniversary weekend? and that i had not even remembered until just about twety four hours ago?? i felt so terrible about that. anyway, very few times i have been as grateful to them as i was for this weekend of help. we literally could not have done it without them. so we got home and got lunch together for everyone. by this time, it had become obvious that the truck was just not going to hold all our stuff. at that point bret and i were ready to just give it all away, but david and valerie and mom and dad were't going tol et us do that. bret was really not feeling well all day to boot (bad cough, chest hurting and pulled back). he began to call the company we rented the truck form to see if we could get another one. we did not have any time left. we needed it right away. she told him shoe would check and call him back. after about fourty five minutes of nothearing form her. i just got on line and started calling companies till i cam across one that had another 10 ft. truck. i found one but it was going to be another $500 plus gas. bret did not want o do it, but we did and that is when the stress let up alittle. my dad offered to drive it so now there was going to be four vehicles. my dad and i went to pick it up and thankfully they actually gave us a 15 ft. truck and a really new one that drove easlily!!all during the times that i was out and about that day picking up my parents and pickup the other truck, valerie and others just kept packing us up and loading us up. on our way home with the second ruck bret calls me the good/bad news. someone wanted to look at our house in two hours!!!! we only had this day to get everything loaded and the house set for leaving it. we didn't know how we were going to do it, but bret just told us to get everything to the garage and if we weren't done when they got there, we would just close ourselves up in the garage and keep working. that was actually the little push we all needed because let me tell you, that house cleared out fast and as a room was emptied my mom vauumed it and made sure all the sinks and counters were shiny. finally arond 5:45 we were done enough to be done and we took them al to on the border for dinner! how fitting for our last supper to be there. they practically knew us by name, we went there so much. everyone was exhausted. after dinner the sweet hawkins went home and we did too. we worked on a few touch up things to the house like putty and paint nail holes and such. i stayed up and super cleaned my kitchen and then retired with the rest of them on our airmattresses for hte night. bret did not sleep well again since he was really having trouble with a chest cold. finally we all found rest.

SUDNAY APRIL 27/LAST DAY/MOST EMOTIONAL DAY
we made it to church for our last tech rehearsal and last sunday altogether. it was pretty clear when we got there the rain from the night before was going to be the culprit to cancel our going away picnic scheduled for lunch that day. first service was good, class was good, second service went over without a hitch. we sang "you are god alone" as our last presentational and was nearly flawless. at the close of the service there was a suprise powerpoint video with pictures of our family at presotnroad and a icture of them at the end holding up a banner that said we will miss you. we cried. after that they had all five of us go to the stage and they presented us each with crosses and an authentic rolando diaz painting! they prayed over us and sung the lord bless you and crysty and i blubbered!!the hugs came for quite a while but soon it was all over. then we got to see scott and tricia who came all the way form fortworth to see us on our last sunday. that was so special. the last thing was my good bye to crysty. that was so hard...we had very few words because all we could do was cry. it is rare and special to find someone in this life you can truly call an authentic friend. she was that for methe good bad and ugly, she loved me all and i love her all!!
since the picnic was canceled, we had lunch at celebration (my favorite dallas only place) with several of the praise team members. it was good, but hard to eat on such an emotional stomach. we talked and said goodbyes and were on our way wack to rockwall one last time. we got back to the house about 3 and got a call that someone wanted to look at it from 3-4. we clearly were out of time and had to finish up last things and get on the road, so we worked with micah on post watching for people to pull up. apparently they never did. we cleaned and touched up and set automatic timers for things and with one last walk through, we prayed over it and over our journey ahead and pulled out right at 7 pm. since we were leaving a bit later thatn originally hoped our goal was to make it at least to shreveport,la that night and find a hotel. that meant driving in dark and i was a little nervous about that since my mom and dad who are used to going to bed early were each driving alone. we played follow the leader like a flock of geese. finally we made it to shreveport and between mom and i got a suite at the nicest comfort inn and suites for 69.99!!! it is actually a great story, but one for time sake i'll save for another time.
we get sleep, all of us, but bret. between the chest cold, pulled back and stress of movinghis family half way across the country, he did sleep well.

ok. this gets usthrough to morningof travel into sweet home alabama. i'll stop for now and finish up the last week or so soon.
so for now the rest of the story is to be continued....
s