We’re home. It’s been one month since we slept in our own beds. Over 3,000 miles logged in the car. And we’re finally home.

With four young kids in a car for 17 hours each way we found we kept our sanity best while driving one leg of the trip through the night. I mean all the way through the night. Start driving at bedtime and arrive at our destination as they were waking up in the morning. It makes for two very exhausted parents (we switch back and forth through the night) but it’s also almost 9 hours of a quiet car ride. It is so worth the sacrifice!

The redeeming quality of traveling this way – watching the sun peek over the horizon as light starts to spill out across the sky. Typically I’m not up early enough to see the sun rise, so this is a treat.

We rolled into the desert in the wee hours this morning, unpacked the car and then crashed while the kids watched movies. Coming back to Arizona in July is always a shock to the system, I forget just how hot it is, 24 hours a day. (We’re used to cool Idaho mornings and evenings.) But even with the wave of heat that we were met with, it feels good to be home. Our own beds. Different clothing to wear. Favorite toys. The pool. Friends. It’s going to take at least a week to get caught up on everything and get back to normal; we’re going to take it one day at a time.

I love going to Idaho and more than anything I love spending time with my family in Idaho; it’s where I was raised and the core of who I am. But it feels equally good to come home, as if our house was sitting with open arms saying, “welcome home.”