Paint, Part 1

What's life without a little adventure?  It's a question shared by me and my daughter since she was little.  Whenever our daily plan or route or routine was interrupted we would just laugh and say, "What's life without a little adventure?"  It got us through some fun detours many times.  How appropriate then that when she was getting ready to move into her first apartment this summer the paint color she chose for her bedroom was named Adventure. 
    If only we had known when we bought that paint what an adventure this move would be!  Please allow me to share.....

     We began the summer traveling the almost 700 miles to her new city to find an apartment.  Our little girl is now an adult and is moving away for grad school.  We spent the summer gathering furniture and things to make this new apartment home for her.  Then several weeks later we loaded up the trailer and headed back to move her in. 
     The drive from our house takes about 12 hours if you stop for gas and to eat, which we did. The first time we traveled I had booked a hotel through one of those internet services.  Big Mistake!  I've stayed in a lot of hotels throughout my life.  Some have been fabulously nice, but this one was by far one of the worst.  As we settled in to our "cozy" little space my husband hobbled around because his achilles tendon is messed up.  To put it more clearly, he couldn't walk.  So, Caitlin and I did what any loving wife and daughter would do, we left him there to go eat! 
     I really didn't intend to be gone that long, but it was late and we didn't really know where we were, so we just went into the nearest place we could find...after a quick walk out to put our toes in the sand.  For those of you who are wondering, yes, we did get him some food.  The three of us finally got ready to try to sleep.  The next day was going to be busy.
     The next morning my husband seriously couldn't walk.  We still had to apartment hunt, though.  Thank the Lord for GPS gadgets!  We programmed in CVS and headed that way.  I ran in to buy some crutches and then off we went. (We did get a prescription transferred from home so he could get a little relief from the pain.)
     We drove through a couple of complexes and looked at one other apartment before we found the complex we all thought was best.  After looking around there and talking with the agent, we signed the lease and headed back to our cozy little room at the beach.  That afternoon at the urging of my husband we all went to the beach for a little while.  It would be a shame to travel that far and not actually see the ocean, right? 
     The next day we drove around to find the best routes to the school, the store, the mall, and the nearest Starbucks.  It wasn't a vacation.  We went to accomplish a task - to find a safe and convenient place for our daughter to live.  Yes, there was frustration.  Yes, there was laughter.  Yes, there were roaches on the porch of the hotel.  But, hey, what's life without a little adventure?!  (Part 2 will come later - you won't want to miss it!)