Carolina Bound

A suburban, one trailer, and 15 hours later my husband and I arrived at our destination in North Carolina on Wednesday. We were blessed to borrow a trailer from a friend at church and spent ALL day Tuesday loading the thing. It was SO incredibly hot and humid - as in over 100 degrees. Of course, this is expected in Florida, but a little break would've been nice. We managed to move all our furniture ourselves and leave behind a small portion of what will be needed when we go back for two last weeks of Florida living. Here's a photo of the accumulation of boxes in our family room with the exception of furniture already loaded in the trailer. It'll be crazy to go back and hardly have anything left! Matthew said it'll make our next trip seem like a breeze.

Oh, I can't forget to mention the little fact that this trip is really only supposed to take 10 hours... with a trailer we drive slower of course, but with a broken alternat0r which leads to a dead battery means no driving at all. Yes, we were stuck at a rest area 2 1/2 hours away from my parents' house for an hour(thank goodness it was there and not on 95!), then managed to get the car jump started and drove on little to no battery for another hour before deciding that it was too dark to not turn on our headlights... which we were avoiding using because we didn't want to suck all the life out of the battery. We managed to exit to a gas station, as the lights on the car were slowly dimming and waited another hour for AAA to bring the tow truck. Thankfully, my dad was in a very late meeting only 15 minutes away and happened to have a hitch on his truck so he could take the trailer, and the birds, and us home. What would a girl do without her dad? Needless to say, my dear husband fixed the car himself the next day and it appears to be working well. I am quite proud :) Guess the true test will be tomorrow when we drive it 650 miles back to our apartment... God has us in His hands that day as it could've been a whole lot worse!
The night before we left we added a new feathered friend to the family. Meet Monte (pronounced monty) - at least we think that'll be his name. We had several ideas, but Monte makes the most sense given that Altamonte is the city of our first "home" together and Sunny is already named after the Sunshine state. He is a blue parrotlet, which is the smallest parrot in the world. We had discussed getting one before to keep Sunny company during the day while we're at work, but didn't have easy access to any. I just happened to be at the pet store dropping off the last of the gerbils (thank goodness they are ALL gone!) and they had just weaned parrotlets in sky blue and then the darker blue. Our family may think we're crazy for getting another bird, but we didn't feel like it was a bad idea and having a friend for Sunny will be good. I guess that makes us bird people? We hope one day the birds will like each other, but for now we have to keep them supervised at all times when they're both out of the cage. Our Monte has a lot of character already and is much more active than our Quaker. He's a big bird in a tiny body! And he was quite a trooper as his first full day with us was spent on the road to NC. Our birds will have some miles on them!

Isn't he cute?