Our Journey to our new home.

 This is where our Journey began. We left the edge of Arizona and drove into New Mexico. Very boring and dry state as you can see from the picture. not sure what they were thinking when they named it the land of enchantment. 

 Same day we went into Texas, Yet back to my old area from the mission. wow has it changed but still the hot and dry area I remembered.

 The next day we went into Louisiana. Sorry not a good picture. I caught Jason by surprise. I saw the sign and told him to take the picture fast.

 That day we drove through Louisiana which took like 3 hours:) and then we made it to Vicksburg Mississippi. Sorry no pictures of the sign since it was dark and the sign was half behind a tree. But we stayed in Vicksburg that night and to our surprise there was a civil war battle field across the street from our hotel. We decided to go check it out the next morning. it was a 16 mile drive around the battlefield which was just amazing to see the grounds they fought on. this is the entry into the grounds.

 I wanted to show you how beautiful it was there and how thick the trees are. I can't even imagine how they fought in this.

 Here is the Union trench...

 Battlefield...

 cannons... these holes they dug for the cannons are still the same way as when they dug them.

 More Union trenches that they dug for protection...

 Huge monument to those that died in this battle. I counted 60 panels on the walls of this huge stone building. They were filled with the names of the men who died. There was a tour guide in there telling the kids stories of some of the men. I still can't even imagine what they went through. We walked up the stairs to this building and there was a group of middle school kids on a field trip in there standing in a circle holding hands and singing "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord..." and so on. It was beautiful and the feeling I felt when I walked into that building was amazing. I felt them there.

 This is a house that is next to the stone monument. This house and land was owned by the Shirley family. they woke up one morning and saw the whole Union army camped in their yard.

 This is the view from the Confederate side. That is the Mississippi river. The Union side also attacked the Confederates from the water and cornered them and that is why the Union one.

 The Union Navy... huge ship! sunk in the Mississippi during battle and they pulled it out.

 Now onto Alabama. What a beautiful state this was. but again it didn't take long to get through it. we went into Georgia as well but the silly state didn't have a sign.

 I was not expecting a Tennessee sign since Georgia didn't have one an hour before this. so it was a side picture.

 We stayed the night in the Great Smoking mountains. it was beautiful as well. We decided to take the next couple days slow since we were almost there and couldn't get our house till monday anyway. so we went for a hike in the mountains. I loved it there.

 The next night we stayed in Salem, Virginia and the next morning we stopped at a park near by to get the kids out. they enjoyed that.

 Jonathan loves Turtles:)

 No that is not Washington state that is Washington DC!!! We made it!

Yep that's the white house!
Our journey started in California and ended in Maryland. I am loving it out here but I am sure missing family and I am missing Monterey. We have been in our house for a week now and we are still waiting for our stuff to come. I am really hoping we get our stuff soon and that things will start getting better or back to normal. Anyway this was our journey and I hope you enjoyed it:) love you all and miss you.