Making it to Tulsa

 We made it to Tulsa, but not without jumping through a few hoops.

Things happened much faster than I originally planned. The new practice wanted Scott to get out to Tulsa mid-March. I wasn't quite ready to say good-bye to our house and our friends yet so we had him go out for training a few weeks earlier than I was planning to leave. While he was in Tulsa I would finish packing up the house and spending a little more time with friends and family. I have so much respect for single parents. I only had to do it for 3 weeks and that was hard. 

I forget how much time it takes to get packed. That moment when you think that you are so close, but then several hours later you feel like you still haven't gotten any closer to being done. We got everything loaded up on the truck with some help from the neighbors and then spent the next few nights with Scott's parents. The plan was for Scott and I to drive together and maybe stop for a couple over nights. Last minute our plans changed and Scott needed to fly out to Oklahoma to take a test to finish the last step in the process to get his license to practice in OK. 

I didn't want to drive by myself with 3 kids and my mom volunteered to drive out with me. Scott only had to be in Oklahoma for a few hours to take a test, so we got him a plane ticket to meet us in Denver (roughly halfway to Tulsa). Then we got my mom a plane ticket home from Denver. It was nice having the extra hours with her before having to say good-bye. The drive to Denver was pretty good, until it started to get snowy. I was hopeful that the snow would let up when we got out of the mountains and lower in the elevation.

When we all got to Denver Scott and I were still feeling like we could drive for a bit and the roads weren't very bad. We figure it might be easier to pass some driving time while all 3 kids were asleep. Then only10 minutes into the drive the snow started to stick and it got really dark. We could hardly see a few feet in front of our car and saw several people spin out and off the side of the road. At least we could see their headlights spin off to the side of the road. We decided to stop at the next town and find a place to stay for the night. The only way were were even knowing where we were going was by following the tail lights of the semi-truck in front of us. Turns out they shut down the whole highway about 30 minutes after we got off due to low visibility. The next morning it was a few hours before the roads opened up so we just hung out at the hotel for a bit. 

You can see the road much clearer in the picture than you could in real life. 

Before we got back on the road we stopped at a gas station and bought a snow scraper (even though at the moment we didn't need one). The roads were pretty clear, a little slush between lanes, the passing lane a little less clear than the right lane. We were in the left lane and hit a patch of ice. We started to spin and ended up going off the right side of the highway. We ended up about 50 ft off the highway and about 2 feet from going down a steep hill. I was able to use the ice scraper we bought to dig out the front tires and we were able to get within about 10 feet of the highway before we really got stuck. We were able to call a tow truck and he was there within about 10 minutes. It only took about 30 minutes to get back on the road. My car lost a side bumper piece, but other than that we were in pretty good shape.

 

After that, I kept going over the whole thing in my head over and over again. We really were so lucky. Lucky we didn't roll, lucky we didn't go off of the left side into on-coming traffic, lucky there wasn't anyone near by to take down with us, lucky we didn't slide 2 feet more and down a huge hill that we never would have gotten back up, lucky we stopped for the night and didn't get stranded on the side of the road over night, lucky that my car still worked, lucky that we were able to get back closer to the road so a tow truck could help us back to the road. So many things went just right when so many things could have gone wrong and drastically changed the outlook of our day. 

We got to Tulsa that evening without another hitch. It was a crazy way to get out here, but it's good to finally be here. 

Our decision to shake things up a bit

There is something about being away from family that makes me want to make sure that I keep a record of my life. Maybe it's just being away from the normal, being away from everything that I consider safe and within my comfort zone? Either way, here I am with an update. 

We moved! Honestly, once Scott graduated from dental school I though the most adventurous part of our life was over. We would move to Utah, live a very predictable life, settle and be there for the rest of the life. Well, that's exactly where our life was going. Scott was working as a dentist with his dad. We found the perfect neighborhood with some of the most amazing friends for both us and our kids. I never in a million years would ever thought that we would leave. Then COVID... Scott had just bought into a dental practice and then it got shut down. Some loss of patients is normal when a new doctor comes into an office, but when you add shutting down the office for a couple months due to a worldwide pandemic things didn't turn out quite the way we had envisioned. 

Every once in a while, during the last 4 years (especially after a tight month financially) Scott would throw out the idea of leaving Utah to practice somewhere else. Usually it was just his way of letting me know he was frustrated about how things were going at the office. The conversation never went past that. 2020 was a strange year for everyone. Mid-January Scott threw out the same comment about maybe looking elsewhere. This time we jumped online just to get an idea of what was out there, buying a practice, working for a practice? In Utah and out of Utah. We looked to see what the salaries are for dentists in other states. We figured that it would be better if we were at least informed about what our choices were if we ever actually NEEDED to find another dental job elsewhere. 

There happened to be a dentist from Oklahoma looking for a new associate. He was making a trip out to Utah a week later and we decided to meet up with him to see what this opportunity could be. After the meeting Scott and I felt really good about the opportunity. We didn't think it would happen as fast as it did, but the way things happened it didn't really allow for things to progress much slower than they did. Mid-February Scott and I both flew out to Tulsa to check out the area and see if it was a place that we could see ourselves. A couple weeks later we listed out house for sale, a week after that Scott moved to Tulsa while I finished packing. It's crazy how in a couple months life can be completely re-directed. There are so many things that I already miss, but we are excited to see where this adventure takes us.