The Drive

Being a California girl my whole life I was excited to drive across the united states to the east coast. Em and I left our home town of Redding, California on November 5th 2009 and drove (well my father-in-law drove) to Pahrump, Nevada where we lived for almost 2 months. After spending a wonderful Christmas with family we left Pahrump on December 28th and started on our way to Pensacola, Florida. The drive was pretty uneventful but good. I enjoy traveling with Zachary because we get a lot of time to just talk and neither one of us can escape. I took bonine the first part of the trip so I was pretty much out but the later part I was much more coherent for. Emily did awesome and was perfectly content to just sit in the back and watch her movies. Zachary and I pretty much have Monster's Inc, Finding Nemo and Veggie Tales memorized. The first night we stopped in New Mexico after driving about 10 hours. The next evening we were able to spend the evening with Nanny in Dallas. She made us a delicious home cooked meal and we were good to go the next morning. Having never been east of Dallas I was excited to see what the rest of the country looked like. I must say that it is a much prettier drive than the drive from Pahrump. It was so green and beautiful. It started raining just as we got out of Dallas and rained non stop to Pensacola. We stopped in Louisiana and enjoyed catfish for lunch at a great little restaurant. We finally arrived in Pensacola Wednesday night and stayed on base at the Navy lodge. Thursday morning we headed to see our apartment and it is a great little place. Emily was excited to see where she would be sleeping but more excited to be living with her Daddy again. Later that afternoon we headed out to buy stuff to live. We left all our stuff in Redding until we get to our first duty station. So for the mean time we are sleeping on air mattresses and living very simply. I will be very thankful to finally have my stuff again though. We are so happy to be living together as a family once again. Emily loves hanging out with her daddy and acts so silly when he comes home in the evenings. She just can't get enough of him and is constantly telling him that she loves him and it just melts my heart to hear. So far my take on Pensacola is that the people are super friendly, the town is spread out and there is a Wal-mart on every corner. I am looking forward to visiting the white sand beaches with Em this spring, meeting new friends, and finding a great church. Life is Good!