WOW what a year it has been! For those who try to keep up with us we have been doing contract work close to home in Georgia for the past 18 months. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long but we had a lot happen such as the pandemic hitting in the middle of a contract working in a hot spot city to finding out we were pregnant with our first baby! Working during the pandemic was stressful but being pregnant and working through the pandemic made things a little more stressful. Matt and I were very fortunate and never got sick or had symptoms and I had a great pregnancy. I worked up until 36 weeks pregnant and we had a beautiful baby boy at 39 weeks 6 days! Matt continued to do more local contract work and I stayed home with Archer for four months then took a contract locally while we had family to babysit! Matt and I still want to travel in some of the places we love and still find new areas to visit so we decided that we would take off for the summer and fall and Matt was able to take a contract in Idaho and I will be staying at home with Archer since he is still so young! Leaving our family is always difficult but we know this time it was way more difficult now that we have Archer… but we love travel nursing and we still want to make it work even as a family of three now. We would never know if we could still do it unless we tried and we are so thankful that our family supports us in everything we do!
We knew traveling with a 7 month old was going to be different since we had never taken him anywhere for more than three hours in a car. After the first day of traveling we got into a groove that worked for us. We would wake up in the wee hours of the morning to get a good bit of time on the road. We would transfer Archer into his car seat while he was sleeping and get a few hours in until he woke up for breakfast and play time! We would usually stop every two to three hours to get him out to play and eat and then he would usually do his normal naps but a little more broken up since he was in his car seat. Matt did most of the driving and I sat in the back next to Archer to keep him occupied with toys when he wasn’t sleeping. Another life saver was stopping in the early afternoon and having the evening out of the car where ever we decided to stop for the night, because Archer was usually over the car and car seat by four in the evening and we were too. Traveling was mentally draining and we enjoyed our evenings outside the vehicle. From Georgia to Idaho we made it in about four and a half days.
After getting settled in to where we will be living for the next few months we did some exploring and took Archer on his first hike. He absolutely loved it and laughed a lot! We are so glad that he loved it, because Daddy and Mommy love to be outside in nature. We hope that introducing him early to what we love to do he will love to do the same things as well! We are excited to be back on the road again and cannot wait to share our adventures with you!
