Day 1, Saturday, September 27th

We woke up early with the intention that we would be on the road out of the city by 10am. We still had to pick up the cat from boarding, stop by the house for a final goodbye and clean out the freezer. I forgot the freezer the day before. I can't remember everything.


As I cleaned out the freezer Tony and Jayden were gathering the baby gate hinges off the staircase. I was nearly done when I suddenly heard whailing from Jayden upstairs. I run up asking what happened and there in a heap are the Tony and Jayden with tears flowing. No one is talking they're just staring at me as if I spoke to them in some foreign monkey language. Finally, Tony gets out that Jayden was standing in his now empty room and just lost it. He didn't want to move and leave his room. He liked his Hillsboro, Oregon house. So we all sat at the top of the stairs crying...Landon was downstairs playing in his car seat. I dried Jayden's tears and took him outside for one last picture on the walk path to the front door. Within minutes he was fine.


By now the car was at it's capacity and we still had to get the cat. With the cat and all her medications, bags of food, litter pans, water bottle, food bowl, water bowl and comfy bedding thing, my car was about to burst. But, we were on the road and ahead of schedule...which allows for a quick stop at Starbucks.


Day one was one the job trainning. We had to stop about every 30-45 minutes to clean up cat puke. Then Landon was hungry. Now Jayden. Tony needed to stretch the legs. See, with all the extra stuff we ended up with in the car Tony had to actually hold stuff on his lap! Gas time and the last time someone else will pump it for me...wooohooo. Everyone but the cat was in high spirits and loving the car ride. We were traveling 440 miles today. It should have taken about 8 hours, instead it took a little over 10. We pulled into Boise, ID a little after 7pm. Tony wasn't done unloading the car until almost 8pm.


Let's talk about Boise. Don't go there unless you have to. They only have a few Starbucks, and the one we stopped at didn't serve breakfast foods, so we try McDonalds. The McDonalds didn't serve anything on biscuits, only the McMuffin versions. Our hotel was as scary as they come. I wouldn't let Jayden walk in the hotel room without shoes on, it was just a little scummy. Unfortunately only a few hotels take pets and in Boise, this was only one. To top it off, I had already reserved rooms in all our other stop points with the same chain of hotels but Tony was about to rescue us.


Tony had grabbed a brochure from the Lakespur, which showed it was a Hilton hotel. The night before I had noticed it was a pet friendly hotel! On the phone I was and within 15 minutes of checking into the 'Bates Motel' I had cancelled our other reservations and found Hiltons in all but one city.