From Leland to Linden

Greetings from Leland...or am I in Linden...or, hmmmmm, where AM I? I've been on the road so much this week I can't really remember anymore! Knowing that we had a lease in hand for our tenants to move in on February 20th, I hit the road on Monday morning with the girls with one mission - find a house in Fayetteville! We had looked at quite a few houses over the internet and had an appointment with a Realtor to see the most probable one (and thankfully it worked out!!!).

Here are my beautiful girls at lunch:



Here's Katelyn playing in the snow, waiting for the Realtor:



After just a quick tour of the house, we decided that this was good enough for us and we'd take it. It met all the basic needs - vacant and ready, semi-clean, affordable - and it covered some wants - fenced back yard, 1/2 acre lot, two car garage, attic storage, and the big bonus was a HUGE building outside where Scott can do his "man chores."



It's weird to be renting again and even weirder to be doing it while OWNING a house. We took this house because it was in a great school district with a pretty low rent, so that, God forbid, anything happened with our tenants in Leland, we would be ok financially. I definitely see this year as a rebuilding year for us and hopefully we can climb out of some of the debt we've accrued over the years. There should be some money leftover from Scott's severance package, and that will go against credit cards. Our tax refund will go against either credit cards or the hospital bills from Abby's birth and Scott's surgeries.

Soooo, anyway, by 5pm on Monday, I was walking out of the real estate office with keys in hand to our "new" house! We picked Scott up for dinner and then showed him the new house, and thankfully, he liked it! He stayed there that night, sleeping on the floor, and we drove back to Leland to gather some essentials for the week. On Tuesday I gathered up the girls and as much as I could pack into the van and we made our first moving trip!



Even Dixie got to come along:



We took care of some essential business yesterday, like getting the water account transferred to our names ($100 deposit because we're renting...) and hitting the local Wal-Mart for shelf liner (since it's apparent that no previous tenant has felt the need to do this and, let me just say, ewwwwwww). We spent our first night as a family in the new house last night and Abby slept just fine, but Kate woke up in the middle of the night and ended up sleeping with us for the rest of the night. Hopefully once we get her bed there it will be easier for her to sleep in her own room! She's terribly confused right now by the whole idea of moving, so we're just trying to take it one meltdown at a time...I just really don't know what else to tell her to make it all better. She wants to stay here in Leland and just doesn't understand why Daddy can't work here. Try explaining the basics of a major economic recession to a 4-year-old one time just for fun...and let me know how that goes.

So this morning we decided to return to Leland to pack more of our belongings and get everything ready for the moving truck, which comes on Saturday. After we get our belongings out of the house, it'll just be a few trips to clean and paint, and then we'll turn the keys over to the tenants and say goodbye to our house for at least a year. I get the feeling that they're responsible, family-oriented, quiet people...and I really hope I'm right. This is the biggest investment of our life and we're about to hand it over to people that we've only spoken to for a few hours. Scary stuff!

The time has come for me to say good night, but I will do my best to keep everyone posted on our move througout the process! The best way to reach me in the meantime will be on my cell phone either with a voicemail or an email, or on Twitter (@PortCityHokie).

All my love,