We're in North Carolina!

We arrived super late Wednesday night (which is quite a story in itself), and we have since spent our time shopping for cars and looking at townhouses. Last night we bought a car, and we are signing a lease on a townhouse on Monday night! We are so excited for both. Everything has gone spectacularly, aside from one thing.

Tuesday night Johnny and I stayed up late finishing up the last of our packing, and then we woke up bright and early Wednesday morning---moving day! We both barely slept because we were so stressed about moving out of the North End. The streets are teeny tiny, and finding a parking spot is pure luck. Johnny left to go get the truck, and the missionaries, our home teachers, and a guy we hired from Craigslist arrived and began hauling our stuff down to the sidewalks. From there on out, everything went better than we could have planned. Johnny parked right outside our apartment, and everything was in the truck in under two hours. We then put Persie in her kennel and were on our way! Within an hour of leaving, Persie pooped and peed herself twice, from anxiety I think, so we cleaned that up and then continued the trip. Driving a moving truck is stressful, but we had no hiccups along the way. Fourteen hours later we arrived at our corporate housing in Raleigh. It was 1:30 in the morning. And this is where things got tricky...

There was a lock box on the apartment door and we had been given the code to open it. However, after many tries and trying different combos out of pure desperation, we realized that they had given us the wrong code. It was 2:00am, and we were in an unknown city in a gigantic moving truck, with nowhere to stay for the night. We started driving and calling hotels, but we had to find one that accepted cats. By this point, Persie had been in a tiny kennel for 15 hours, and she had peed again. We felt so bad for her, but there was nothing we could do. We called one place after the other, and nowhere accepted pets.

Finally, at 3:00am we found a Holiday Inn Express that accepted pets. We pulled up to the hotel and headed to the front door, where we were greeted by glass sliding doors that didn't open as we were expecting. Soon after arrived the front desk attendant to tell us that they were full. This is where I lost it mentally. In my dramatic, sleep-deprived state, I felt like we were Mary and Joseph not being let into anyone's inn, except instead of a baby, we had a cat. It was now past 3:00am, and we finally found an extended stay hotel that accepted cats. It was old, dirty, and full of shady construction workers, but it was a place to stay. We got into our room at 3:30am, and because of the quality of the hotel, we were concerned about the possibility of our truck being broken into. Therefore, we got a room with a view of the truck, and we sat up until 6:00am, making sure no one tried to steal all of our worldly possessions. We then slept for two hours, woke up and got our stuff together, and headed to our now-unlocked corporate housing. Although we were exhausted, we lasted through the rest of the day, and from there on out, everything has gone perfectly. Somehow, Johnny and I managed to laugh through most of it, even though it was the least funny situation ever. Now that it's all over, we're just grateful we made it to North Carolina in one piece.

And now the fun stuff begins!