The Trip
Moving videos
by leapin.levi on Aug.14, 2009, under The Trip
Here are some moving videos
This is at home in our last moments in Lethbridge
This is Dad and I in the moving van close to the border.
This is us at the border.
This is in Shelby Montana.
This is in the middle of no where in the rain and lightning.
Mount Rushmore part one.
We really didn’t take any more videos because past mount Rushmore it was just flat and nothing was there to take a video of.
This is mount Rushmore part two.
From Lethbridge to Border Crossing to Valentine, NK
by marilyn on Aug.13, 2009, under The Trip
Something we should have blogged about, but didn’t get to:
Well, something we’ve known all along is now official as of July 26th. Dwayne is our “Primary Alien” according to the U. S. A., minus the antennas and pale skin. We got to the border on Sunday afternoon, told to pull over, park and come in. We didn’t have to wait long to be called to the counter and the gentleman taking care of us was training someone at the job. When they looked at our passports they commented on how much older the boys looked, and in true gentleman style, didn’t say the same about me 
That’s when it became common knowledge that Dwayne was our primary alien. We laughed. The rest of us are just secondary aliens. The process took a bit cause the new guy was learning, but it was interesting. Because we are Canadian they don’t have to take our finger prints. The boys were a bit disappointed. They went back to finish the paper work and handed over our passports. We had the map out trying to figure out the best way to get to Billings/Rapid City and our border guards become our tour guides. “You’ll be in Billings in 3 hours in time for dinner” (my first clue that we were finished). After talking about the up and down roads of Montana they said so long. I asked, “Don’t you want to look at the truck”, Oh ya, he looks over my shoulder out the window and said, “it looks like a truck”, so long. Funny enough, we had our Staples button in the van, so when we got in, we held it up to the walkie talkie for Dwayne and Levi in the U haul and pressed it, “That was Easy!”. Wish we would have took that into the office. So, it was a border cross, but no one at the border was cross.
It’s so cool to have everything you own (now that we’ve sold all our property) with you, and not have any physical ties left behind. There are too many emotional ties to mention, but to know that all our physical items are in one truck and one van is kinda neat. I am reminded of a friend who said what she learned doing something similar was “God is enough” and I woke up the first night, in the middle of the night, thinking everything of physical importance is in that truck and could go up in flames, get stolen, whatever, and what about my engagement ring I took off to pack boxes and our birth certificates and marriage license and pictures and negatives and that stupidly heavy marble table (that promised Dwayne I wouldn’t make him move again). I thought, yes, God is enough, rolled over and went back to sleep.
So we continue on our adventure and hope that we are becoming more of who God wants us to be in the process. Thanks for loving us and caring about us and praying for us during this transition. We are hoping to be in Abilene by Thurs.
An update. It’s now Tues. eve and we only made it to Valentine, Nebraska. Lovely little town. We spend more time at Rushmore than we anticipated. Very nice place and really awesome site. I had to nap at a truck stop cause a quad shot then a triple shot of latte wasn’t enough to keep my eyes open. So that put us behind, but we’ll just keep going tomorrow. So we are off to the pool for some fun and then maybe get another good night sleep. Who knows how far we’ll get tomorrow. It’s quite a delightful time between talk radio, walkie talkie and chatting with my side kick of the hour.
My Turn
by marilyn on Aug.01, 2009, under The Trip
I’ve been putting this off, mostly because I’ve never blogged before. Given that so much has happened in the last week, I can’t claim to be without content, so here I am.
Yesterday reminded me of boot camp at Teen Missons in Florida. It was hot, humid and we had much physical labor. We arrived in Abilene on Thurs. eve and took what we needed for the night up to our apartment. It was hot enough for the evening and the pool was closed for cleaning, so we were a tad disappointed. The next morning we decided we’d better get the uhaul unload at a storage place and then the work began. It was 90F (hot for me, I think that’s 32C…still can’t convert) and high humidity. We unloaded everything in the area outside the storage place to get to the boxes that we wanted to have in first. The skies were grey, black, blue and sunny on and off for the next 5 hours that we rearranged and stacked and moved our house hold wares. Where did it all come from? We thought we lightened our load! Something happens in the back of uhaul trucks…your goods multiple. After angsting over the ridiculousness of it all, and sweating like an overworked TMI bootcamper we dug in and finished the job. We didn’t take a picture to show how spread out everything was, but a few times it looked like rain, and as much as we wanted to be cooled off, we had all our worldly goods at the mercy of the skies. Just as God would have it, He reminded us that He was taking care of us in our daily plans, cause just as the last potential soggy, therefore destroyed, items was resting in it’s spot in safety, the clouds opened up and we experienced our first Texas rainstorm. From a couple of drops…to an all out gusher, the only thing to get wet were our bikes, some weights and two extremely pleased boys who danced and played as they cooled off. It couldn’t have played out better. Refreshed we were able to get everything back to our apartment that we will need for three months, showered and off to a great Chinese buffet for dinner.
Today brought such encouragement to us as a family when Jim, Kathy and Kara Van Dine drove up from Dallas to spend the day with us. We haven’t seen the VanDines for 4 years and we touched base with Kara when we were here for an interview in April. They are all well and smiley and encouraging as always. Jim and Kathy had drove down to Dallas from Dubuque to pick up some things from Kara’s and this was planned many weeks back, so we were an added side trip for them that we really appreciated. Finally the pool was opened and the boys and I took our first, on many, plunges. Makes me want to have one for my own.
So that’s our last couple of days. We are discovering that apartment living is nice…small, not so neat yet, but easy and that’s a good thing for right now. Dwayne’s back at work on Monday and the boys are over there next week for a few hours a day at “Apple Camp” to play around with some computers and be photographers, musicians and actors. We get to see the production at the end of the week. This will give me time to get a drivers license and set up this tiny kitchen so I can function and we don’t have to eat bbq everyday not that there’s anything wrong with that.
WERE HERE!!!!!!!
by leapin.levi on Aug.01, 2009, under The Trip
Mnt. Rushmore
We got in to Abilene on Thursday night and we got unpacked Friday and we were almost done and it started PORING RAIN, it was CRAZY. And it was really HOT, it will get to 101 (40) on Tuesday.
LeVi
