The next great adventure

For those of you who haven't heard, we have moved out of California! It all happened so quickly, we can hardly believe it happened at all. Within the span of 7 days, we had packed up, rented a U-HAUL and driven 20 hours to settle back in Texas. What does life hold for us next? We have no clue. But we really feel like we are where the Lord wants us to be. And we are so HAPPY to be back in the Dallas area. We love being close to family, surrounded by good ol' Southern hospitality, and the feeling of living in suburbia again. We are hoping that Dave finds a job in this area, because we definitely want to stay! Lately, I've gotten into the habit of house hunting online and it's really got me wanting to buy a house and not move for several years. I am sick of moving!

On the way to Dallas, we made a couple of fun stops. First, we stopped in Phoenix to see my family for Thanksgiving. It was also the last time I would see my little brother, David, before he reports to the MTC on February 5th. He is going to the Irvine, CA mission and I couldn't be more proud of him!

My grandma fell in love with this little lady

Uncle Roy and the girls

Baby girl likes to eat Daddy's hair

I love this Princess!

All the Deakyne grandkids...with many more to come!

We also got to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah

One of Cage's favorite uncles

Phase 10 and cheesecake bites make a great family night

My adorable family

All the girls

The future missionary!!

We got to shoot guns in the desert...

Aaaaannnnnd...Dave and I might have jumped into a freezing cold fountain for no good reason

soooooooooooooooo cooooooooooooolllllldddddd

And my dad set up an awesome neighborhood 5K that we all participated in.

Cage wanted to help Grandpa paint the sign

After that, it was time to hit the road again! We stopped for a little bit of rock-climbing...

...and a little bit of exploring at an aircraft graveyard. Dave was like a kid at Christmas!

This was cute- the museum put up a list of all the aircraft that were in the Planes movie. Cage had lots of fun figuring out which planes were Ripslinger and Dusty Crophopper.

Dave's favorite airplane- SR71 Blackbird

This was only 10% of the planes that we saw. The lines of planes went on forever!

Check out this weird aircraft

How would you like to be the pilot of this plane?

Finally, after two days of driving, we made it to Arlington, TX. I'm not gonna lie, I was a little nervous about this road trip. I mean, the kids have never gone that long driving before. And, I was driving by myself with them, since Dave was driving the moving truck. But it turns out that my kids are superstar road-trippers. I had one temper tantrum from Cage the entire trip and it only lasted a few minutes. Mia never did anything more than sleep and eat. I feel so blessed to have had a safe trip with minimal issues. Keep posted for more news about where we end up (hopefully it's in a house in Arlington ;-)!