Back from the Dead

...my laptop that is! It fried right after Easter. After replacing the hard drive and re-loading everything, it seems to be working okay for now. In the meantime, things went crazy with the house selling, buying a new house, signing and organizing tons of paperwork, inspections, and appraisals. We will be closing on the townhouse June 7th and closing on the new house June 10th. Our buyers are allowing us to rent back through that weekend so we can complete our move.

Last October, Travis and I decided it was time to move. Travis would look for a better paying job further south for six months. If nothing worked out, we would move based on his current income, but it would be great if something better came along. Travis applied at Mitre, even though he thought he wasn't quite qualified for the job. Around January, he interviewed and things quickly fell into place with an offer and a new job in Quantico starting in February. We knew moving south would be perfect for us.

The next couple months were insane. Long story short: we got the house prepped, put it on the market, had 45ish showings, and finally, the perfect offer came in after five short weeks. Within two days we were house hunting. When we left to look at our list of houses that day, I told Travis that I was sure it would be pretty clear to us which house would be best for us. And it was! We fell in love with a house that I almost didn't even look at. It needs lots of painting and a few upgrades in the kitchen, but the neighborhood, yard, finished basement, porch, and square footage for the price won us over. Once again, everything has been falling into place for our move. We even were given tons of moving boxes from someone that just moved into our ward.

Tonight, we decided to have family night about moving with the main activity of making a paper chain to count down the days until the move. The kids have been really excited for the move and looking forward to having their own rooms and a yard. Blake's our sensitive one and he has been sad a few times about leaving his school and teachers. As we built our chain tonight, we wrote one thing we would miss about the townhouse for the first ten days of the countdown. Then we would write 16 things we were looking forward to for the last days of the countdown.

I was surprised with the emotions that came out as we made our list. We weren't surprised by Blake breaking into tears about school, but when Grant started crying, I lost it! He was sad to say goodbye to his third grade class and his home. Awwww...what sweet kids! Their friends, teachers, schools, and the neighborhood parks were top things the boys will miss. But the sadness quickly ended once we started talking about our new home: the new schools, safe neighborhood, fun kids, and new parks got them happy again. I'm sure we'll have a few more sad days as the countdown continues, but we're all so excited to be moving to our new home.

26 days to go...