Move to MN

It has been a week since we moved and we are settled in enough for me to write a little about the move itself. First off, Jeff is no longer allowed to mention Murphy. Loading the truck and trailer and packing all went pretty well. We left Kansas City a little later then we had hoped but that wasn't terribly unexpected. The plan was to make it to Ames, IA Monday night and travel the rest of the day on Tuesday to the new house. However, as usual, plans failed. Monday we only made it to Bethany, MO, about an hour and a half from KC. At some point down the road, Jeff noticed that he was having a problem with his truck which was loaded down with some of necessities for the next week. We kept driving (no smoke or anything that seemed serious) hoping to still make it to our goal for the night, until someone mention the possible need for a bathroom. When driving with young kids, you take those suggestions pretty seriously, so I told Jeff we would need to stop at the next exit. Said exit just happened to have a gas station and restaurant (The Dinner Bell which we didn't actually eat at but sounded really yummy. Ya know, the type of place where all the local farmers gather periodically throughout the day for coffee and pie.) right off the exit ramp which was probably a good thing cuz I don't think Jeff could have gotten the truck much further away from the highway. Apparently, the problem that Jeff had thought was his transmission while driving, was actually a problem with the clutch and once he pushed in the clutch to shift, it froze in place locking the truck in neutral. Have you ever tried to drive in neutral? Doesn't work very well. I didn't really know what was going on at first (bathroom break remember), just that there was a problem. So after Jeff's initial freak out, call mom and dad moment, we discussed our options and decided to leave the truck where it was for the night, drive back to Bethany (where the closest Uhaul and chain hotels were) about 15 miles and find a place to stay there for the night. Luckily, we found a hotel that was a decent price, with a pool (one of the things the kids were looking forward too) and settled in for the night. Tuesday morning we made some phone calls to see if getting the truck fixed was an option, which of course it wasn't, and then headed to the local Uhaul so we could rent a truck with a trailer to tow Jeff's truck the rest of the way. As fate would have it, the Uhaul did not have any trailers and the closest one that did have one was about an hour away. So instead of driving to MN on Tuesday, we drove through the farmlands of northern Missouri to pick up a Uhaul, unloaded Jeff's truck into the Uhaul, and bought a come along to get the truck onto the trailer. By the time it was all ready to go, it was about 6pm and we were 1 1/2 hours away from Ames (our original destination) and we were exhausted. We ended up staying in Ankeny, Ia (just north of Des Moines) for the night and then spent a leasurely morning watching cartoons before headed the rest of the way to our new house. The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, luckily, but by the time we made it too the house (just in time to get the keys from the office before they closed), we were pretty exhausted. Let's just say that General Conference was a welcome break and Sunday was DEFINIATELY a day of rest. We did manage to do some fun things with the girls during Jeff's week off but we are looking forward to an actual vacation.