On April 25, 2013 we were finally blessed to move out of North Carolina! It had been weighing heavy on my heart since August 2012 that we needed to move to a safe, healthy place outside of North Carolina. After planning for months to move to Washington our financing and job opportunities sadly fell through in February 2013. At that time it was ever more apparent that we needed to leave North Carolina for the sake of the children. We made the decision to take Hotch's parents up on their offer to come live with them until Hotch finished his Master's degree. (Major mistake! Turned out that everything we were promised by them was a complete lie. More on that later.) Since Hotch did not have a job lined up in CA we opted to leave our stuff in a storage unit in NC until we could afford to come back and move the whole house. We packed up the most important stuff (our scriptures, clothes, school stuff, kid's toys, bedding, etc) and left everything else behind.
Really puts life into perspective when you can only bring a van full of belongings. Makes you really evaluate what is most important.
Our turtles, Tank 'Em and Bud, were in for quite the adventure.
Alyssa was my navigator for the first few days.
Hotch had to stay behind and clean up all the crap in the basement that he had been collecting and avoiding for the three years we lived in that house. He had known that we were going to move since December yet he waited until the week of our move to start doing his part. That is one tired Hotch!
The kids and I had packed and sorted everything in the house ourselves except for the basement, leftover food and bathroom stuff. We were anxious to get on the road and out of Nutty Craplina (our nickname for the state).
The little ones were out before we even left the city limits. It had been a very long and tiring day! They ended up sleeping for two hours.
Alyssa missed the South Carolina state sign so we decided to turn around at the first exit so we would have a picture of it. Totally grateful to see "Welcome to North Carolina" for the last time.
The exit we took to turn around inside North Carolina actually led to the Kings Mountain National Military Park. Since we were already so far behind in our plans we decided to go check it out. During the Revolutionary War an hour long battle was fought on Kings Mountain. It was an important American victory. Thomas Jefferson even said that it was "the turn of the tide of success". Here is the Junior Ranger packet for this park. It contains tons of information on this Revolutionary War site. By the way, this national park has the largest sign we have ever seen. Seriously, isn't that a cool sign!
We were bummed that the Visitor Center had closed only 30 minutes before we arrived, but the drive through Kings Mountain National Military Park is breathtaking. I recommend visiting in spring or fall. It was so incredible looking at the sunshine filter through the soft green of the leaves. We plan to visit this national military park again when we come back for our stuff.
We were so relieved to finally pass into South Carolina.
Here's the Peachoid which is actually a 135 foot tall water tower shaped like an enormous peach. It is located right off the I-85 in Gaffney, SC. (Nicknamed: Peach Capital of South Carolina)
My sweet boy, Braxton, let his little sister sleep on his shoulder for an hour and a half that night. She was completely out! Every once and a while he would "nudge" her off of him. Love his face in this photo! He actually wasn't annoyed with her just really into his drawing.
After driving in major traffic at night, avoiding getting hit by the crazy Atlanta drivers and getting lost twice we were so grateful to finally arrive at our hotel. We were so ready for bed and no beds every felt so good. In the morning we were ready for the adventures that awaited us in Atlanta, GA.
Though our trip started off to a rough start we ended up having an epic time!
What an adventure!
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