While our house doesn’t have free high speed internet…our neighbor’s does.  So we are stealing borrowing a bit of their bandwidth.

Before we left, Sabrina discovered the joy of the Johnny Jumper while mommy frantically threw things into suitcases.  This picture cracks me up!

This is hour 5 of day 2 on the road.  Somehow we moved south but ended up 3 hours farther from the beach.  Total travel time, excluding hotel stop?  16 hours.  Ugh.  Sabrina says “Are we there yet?”

Sabrina’s sun hat matches nothing else but she looks so freaking cute in it!

Ignore the painfully white woman in this photo:

Sabrina wasn’t particularly happy sitting in the sad and the cold ocean water also mad her a bit angry.

After getting used to the water, she decided that the pool was much more her speed than the ocean.

How stinking cute is she?

First, I have to show off a couple of photos of Miss Sabrina.  The first 2 I took to include with a thank you note to my cousin for the dress and toy but they are cute and I know you all need your Sabrina fix.

These 2 I am posting for Aunt Rusty.  Aunt Rusty bought Sabrina a bunch of outfits – each of them had a matching hat.  I thought I would show off Sabrina modeling her hat for Aunt Rusty this morning.

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We leave in less than 12 hours for our annual beach vacation.  It snuck up on me this year.  Every year we rent a big house at the Outer Banks with a group of Steve’s childhood friends for a week.  This year, with the addition of Sabrina, the children officially out number the adults (oh yes, they are a fertile bunch lol).  We have 9 adults and 10 children this year.  The oldest child is 8.  Sabrina will be the youngest this year.  As you can imagine, the volume level in our beach house around 4 pm is deafening.  The trip has changed over the years.  Everyone used to put the kids to bed before it was dark and we adults would spend the balance of the evening playing games and drinking.  Now, some of the kids stay up later, bedtime takes longer, we are all tired at the end of the day…yada yada, yada.  About 1/2 of the adults wind up in bed shortly after the kids do.  Very little drinking is done but we do usually manage to play a game or two each evening.   It is just a function of getting older and our growing families but it makes for a tamer trip each year.

Our house claims to have internet access.  If this is true and it isn’t dial up (Corolla is pretty shaky on technology…you have to stand on one foot in the north corner of the driveway while singing Friar Jacques to get 1 bar of cell phone reception), I will try to do a couple of posts next week.  I know there are several grandmas out there who can’t wait to see Sabrina’s cutie patootie in a swimsuit.  But if it is dial up, forget it.  So you might not hear from me until next Sunday…or you might see a post as soon as this Sunday or Monday.

I have to admit it is pretty darn exciting to have Sabrina with us this year.  Two years ago, we were actively trying to conceive and last year we had decided to adopt.  During the past 2 years, we’ve imagined it was our last year without a child with us.  We would take a nap and say “we better enjoy this now, because next year…” or I would lounge around reading a book and say “I won’t be able to do this when a little one comes along…”.  We finally are making the trip to the beach as a family.  That’s pretty damn cool.

I didn’t realize that an 8 hour trip without baby translated into an 11 hour trip with baby.  We officially spent as many hours on the road as we did in Pittsburgh this weekend.  There was a mix-up with U-Haul and we couldn’t get the trailer unless we wanted to pay $786.  Yeah, I don’t think so.  We ended up moving the odds and ends left at the house into the basement then cleaned the house so it is presentable for viewing.  We took an emotional last look around our home and got back on the road.  We arrived home at 2:45am.  I still wasn’t feeling 100% this weekend and I passed a touch of what ever I had on to Steve so we were a fun crew.

Sabrina had her first doctor appointment scheduled this morning.  I realized as I was getting the diaper bag ready that I didn’t have our new insurance cards in my purse.  I have no idea where I put them so I had to cancel the appointment.  She is healthy so it wasn’t a really big deal but it frustrated me.  Her poor little face has scratches on it – she and the dog were sharing the back seat on the road trip from hell and he apparently got a little excited about something and scratched her.   She is fine but we felt bad.

Plans for the day?  To move as little as possible while unpacking boxes via telekinesis.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Since my blog is still down, and Michelle already shared her thoughts on the move, I figured I’d share my experience of driving the truck here.

It’s not for the weak of heart. It’s not even for the strong of heart. I’d not recommend doing what I did to my worst enemy, and I’m surprised that U-Haul doesn’t require some quick training before handing over those enormous trucks to unsuspecting customers.

The truck was so top-heavy and back-heavy that even the smallest imperfection in the road caused the cab to bounce up and down at least 3″ to 6″. On several occassions – our dog was asleep next to me – the bouncing was so bad it actually lifted him off the seat into the air causing one panicked dog. Because I was back-heavy, the front wheels weren’t exactly hitting the pavement heavily which made steering a constant battle of preventing the truck from drifting off the side of the road. A few times when bad road conditions caused me to bounce, I was certain I was done for because, for a few moments of pure terror, I couldn’t stop the truck from drifting.

However, even when I was able to gain control again, the fun wasn’t over because I then had to jerk the truck back onto the road, and, because I was so top-heavy, it made the truck lean very precariously and seemed like it would tip over. Luckily, I was so far behind Michelle, she never saw any of this happen.

The one time when I truly thought I was going to find out what happens when we die was when I hit Tennessee. One stretch of highway is being paved over with asphalt, but the road crews only have one lane paved. But not the whole lane, perhaps about 3/4 of it, and then the asphalt stops causing this seemingly innocuous 4″ ridge in the road. Never had a problem with my truck, but this monster had a trick up its sleeve.

The rear wheels are double on each side with an inch or two gap in between them. Well, my right rear wheels split this asphalt ridge perfectly which caused the entire truck to violently veer uncontrollably into the right lane of traffic. I’d say I swerved about 6′ to the right before I was able to stop it and get it going left again so that I didn’t slam into other vehicles. Well, this happened three times before people to my right realized that their lives were in imminent danger as well and backed off allowing me to get into the right lane.

From that moment on (about 25 miles to the new apartment), I didn’t go over 50 mph. My adrenaline was pumping overtime, and I came to the decision that I’d rather arrive 30-40 minutes late than experience the interesting, but frightening event watching the truck drive into a cliff wall, into a ditch or into another vehicle.