The Last Few Days & Our Road Trip Home

I love to travel and be on the road and just go, but I also really just love to come home. I’ve heard that a lot of people are this way. 🙂

Heading down south for a month while Jamie was in California was a really great idea for a number of reasons, but being able to spend so much time with my family and friends while also helping my mom around the house with her broken ankle tops the list.

Tuesday morning I loaded my Jeep back up and headed northwest back home to Kansas. Hadley and I left my parent’s house at 11 a.m., and Hadley slept the whole 2.5 hours to Clarksville. We stopped at my friend Amanda’s house for an hour to let Hadley play with her daughter Marlee while I loved on her new baby boy Rocky, and at 2:30 Hadley and I were back in the car headed to our rental property down the road to check things out before we hand it over in a few weeks to the new owners.

We moved out of our house a year ago, so I was extremely caught off guard when all these melancholy feelings rushed over me as I opened the garage and pulled in.

Please don’t mind the yard. My lawn care guy is supposed to get it all spruced up today!

Teddy couldn’t get out of the car fast enough and had a grand time running around the yard owning the place. He definitely knew where we were! Seeing Hadley roam around the empty house, more specifically her first (or three) nurseries, made me the most nostalgic. That little house was so good to us and still very much felt like our home. Such a mixed bag of strange feelings.

After checking things out and moseying around for a while, I loaded Hadley back in the car around 3:30 and we drove for six more hours to Columbia, Missouri. We had to stop a few times for gas, food, bathroom breaks, crying fits, etc. but for the most part Hadley was well behaved and easy in the car.

There were a couple times I told my girlfriends on the phone that I was surely about to slam my head against the steering wheel if she threw her pacifier across the back seat of the car one more time, but we all made it through in one piece and got a great night’s sleep at a La Quinta in Columbia.

At 6 yesterday morning I was up and getting things together to hit the road again. The weather radar said that the whole state of MO and much of KS were in the red for tornadoes late morning/early afternoon, so I knew we needed to hightail it home. I got Hadley up shortly after I woke up so that she could run around the room to burn off some energy, and shortly before 7 we grabbed some snacks in the lobby and were out the door.

The sky looked grim for most of my trip through Missouri, but the emergency weather announcements on the radio kept me updated that the really severe stuff was behind us. Some torrential rain was the worst of it, and by Kansas City we had mostly clear skies and coasted the next few hours home.

By 10:30 a.m. we were pulling in the driveway just as happy as could be, and I somewhat felt like a super version of me for having that much-anticipated trip behind us. Hadley was so happy to be reunited with her toys and her highchair that she sat and entertained herself with toys and snacks for well over an hour while I unloaded the car and started the get unpacked and settled.

Seeing our front yard in bloom was such a welcomed treat to come home to.

The rest of the day consisted of unpacking, doing laundry, going through three bundles of mail (I’d put it on hold), playing outside, and heading out on a quick trip to the grocery store. Hadley crashed hard at 7 last night, which gave me some much-needed quiet time. Jamie comes home in a few hours, and we are over the top excited to see him! I can’t wait for him to see how much she’s grown and developed. A lot can happen in a month when you’re 17 months old!

Hope you’re having a good week, friends! I’m anxious to get back in our old routine, so I’m off to the gym. Whoop!

Bonus posts: Road Trip from Kansas to Alabama (Hadley’s Perspective) / Rental Property Update