I started out so good about blogging our cross-country trip, but quickly realized that if I wanted to enjoy the moment, I would have to focus on the moment rather than documenting it.  So as it has been said, here’s the rest of the story…

Day 5 & 6

Day 5 was a long one, 13 plus hours as we motored our way through Texas, New Mexico, and into Arizona. As are typical with long road trips, our conversations ran the gamut, from contemplative exchanges of existentialism, to heated debate on the correct pronunciation of saguaro cactus. We played all manner of music trivia, name that tune, who’s that artist, what year was that record released, etc., and thanks to the Internet, we learned all kinds of general facts about the topography, geology, and history of the areas we passed through.  We watched the landscape change from lush green, wooded, rolling hills, to vast desert wilderness. And as sunset approached, we watched, in awe, as the desert sun slipped behind the desert mountain peaks, transforming them into a majestic purple; a nightly event, yet a truly profound and mesmerizing transformation. An unmatched show of beauty and splendor, as God put the desert to sleep. Day 6 was not so long, only 6 hours. We were anxious to get to California, so we didn’t make many stops, but we did make a stop to take photos of the saguaro (suh-gwahr-oh) not (sah-wah-ro) cactus (never came to a consensus on the pronunciation haha).  We rolled into San Clemente, California just as the sun was setting on the beautiful Pacific Ocean.

Day 7-17

California, beautiful California!  To say we were glad to see California would be an understatement!  We hadn’t seen our precious granddaughter Peyton in over a year!  She had grown so much, and was talking like a little adult; so smart and so cute, we could not get enough of her!  We went to the beach, out for ice cream, to Disneyland, and shopping for little girl stuff!  It was awesome!  And of course, it was wonderful to have most of our family together, Aaryn, Hailey, Brandon, Shanan and Peyton, but we were missing Blair 😦

As the week flew by, I began to realize, it would be just a few short days and we would be saying good-bye to Peyton, Brandon and Shanan, and then Hailey…as much as I tried not to think about it, it gripped my heart and I had to fight back the tears…a battle I didn’t win. As predicted, when that dreaded day came, and we had  to say our good-byes, it was hard, very hard.  With a lump in our throat and tears in our eyes, we loaded up and left for Phoenix…more good-byes to come.

Back across the desert we drove.  We stopped in the lovely town of Blythe, California…it was 120 degrees, 120 degrees!!  And there are people, actual people who live there!  When we stepped out of the car, it was as if God had a heavenly blow dryer set on fire from Hell, blowing down upon us!  Needless to say, that was a very quick stop, we were back on the road and headed for cooler temperatures…Phoenix, it was only 110 degrees there!

Phoenix! Our first day on campus began with lines, long, long lines of parents moving their kids into the dorms.  It was chaos, in 115 degrees, that’s right 115 degrees!  The campus is situated a little south of the surface of the sun…we were melting!  We went to the orientation expo and the freshman orientation, from what I can remember, I was in and out of consciousness from heat exhaustion.  We made numerous trips to Target to stock up on all the necessary dorm room essentials.  Target had to have had record sales that week; it was a sea of parents of college students ravaging the shelves like swarming  locusts.  I overheard a sales person say to a wide-eyed parent looking for a twin XL mattress pad, that there was not a Target within a 20-mile radius that had any.  Despite these battle conditions, we got Hailey moved in and settled.   The rest of the week, while she was doing school things, Jeff and I checked out Phoenix, and made a few more Target runs, then each evening, we met up for dinner, and of course a little shopping in between.  We spent all the time we could together, as we knew, soon it would be time to say good-bye.  Suffice it to say, when that day came and it was time to leave our daughter, the last to leave the nest, it was a very difficult and tearful good-bye…before we knew it we were on the plane, and headed home.

That first day back home was so strange, I felt like I had been sucked into a wormhole and spit out the other end, disheveled and disoriented!  It has taken a couple of days to reorient myself, but things are beginning to get back to normal, a new normal I suppose…as…gulp…empty nesters.