I thought since this adventure of ours it going to be really new, unique and exciting to us that I might go ahead and blog about what we are up to. I figured Facebook friends might get an over load of what we are doing and up to. Blogging is a great way for us to share what we are up to and how we are doing in this transition of ours. I had considered blogging this move of ours a few weeks ago and then was shown a really cool blog about a family that did something similar and felt "It is possible to blog this"!
One thing as I am typing this is I am not all that great at writing, grammar, punctuation, run on sentences etc. Please know this if you decide to read up on what this "Crazy thing we are doing" you might be bothered on how bad of a writer I actually am. Sorry ahead of time.
So this is pretty much in a nut shell how this all is going down!
My husband Bradden and I starting dating our Senior year of H.S. back in 1996. He went to Southview and I went to Whitmer. We actually went to the same Jr. High school and ran into each other through a mutual friend our summer going into our Senior year. At first we started out as friends and then over time (not that long) we started dating. So crazy how life is as I never would have thought I would have married a guy I was dating at age 17 and we would later have 3 wonderful children and a really loving marriage.
So pretty much (and I only know this from looking through a bunch of photos as I have been packing) from the very beginning we have been doing and going to water related places. Constantly finding water as part of our enjoyment. I had been working at 5/3 Bank 4 years ago and kept hearing about how my clients were finding really good deals on FL properties and decided maybe we should look at getting one. Bradden and I went down to Ft. Myers, FL in the hopes of finding a little piece of paradise. We chose Ft. Myers as we had honeymooned there and Naples, but also they have decent flights from Detroit.
We were fortunate to find a great property down there and began heading down when we could. Our original thought was that we would have this sanctuary that we along with our friends/family could go to in the colder months and or for fun vacations. The more often we went the more we didn't want to come home. What I think happened was that we weren't necessarily just on vacation when we went down there. We were actually living there. We go to the store, belong to the library, clean, do repairs around the house, make meals in the kitchen, all the things we do up here in Toledo. Yes we do some of the touristy things, but really have began living in Florida. Needless to say the anticipation of our next trip would weigh on us big time. We count down the months/days. Talk about it, plan for it and then getting very depressed when leaving there. The last 3 times we went it was getting more and more difficult for us to come home. We decided last year to begin looking into schools, neighborhoods and really trying to figure out the actual ins and outs of what a life could look like for us if we moved. The hard thing for us was Bradden had a job in Toledo and wow that sounded hard for him to find one in Florida. Plus the grades that our children are in would be a difficult transition for them. We made a commitment to plan for when Madison graduated H.S. We felt this would be a good transition that we could get her down to a college in FL and then our son Blake would transition for his Freshmen year. Even though we had this master plan we were still having the itch to get down there or when down there not wanting to leave.
A pretty exciting thing happened for my husband in November of 2013. He was offered a consulting job for a health care system out of New Jersey. The job is partially remote from home and then the other part out in NJ. This opened our discussion back up for possibly moving sooner than the 2017 timeframe. The reason being is we don’t know what 3 years will look like. It could be possible that Bradden’s consulting job could end and he would go back to position locally. Also what if Madison doesn’t’ t want to go to college in FL, or doesn’t want to home to us on her breaks as she wants to go back to Ottawa Hills to see al her H.S. friends? Maybe Blake will not want to leave for his H.S. and to committed to his sports and we feel bad pulling him out? Also our baby will now be in 2nd grade versus starting kindergarten down there? Just a lot of decisions that we don’t know in 3 years that might prevent us from wanting/being able to move.
We
had our kids spring break planned in March to head down to Ft. Myers and our
condo. This was the VERY first time we
were getting depressed about going for the knowledge of leaving! This had never
happened before. Mostly we just were
giddy about going and then sad when leaving.
This trip we couldn’t stop talking about how we wanted to stay forever
and how badly we wanted to do this. So we decided to line up a realtor to tour
some neighborhoods/houses. We also
scheduled a tour of the high school we were considering. We thought by gaining some of this
information it would really help us in deciding if this is something we could
do and wanted to do. Along the way we
had read some really good reviews on Naples and wanted to peak around there as
well. We went for 2 days and enjoyed our time in Naples. The thing though is we were so unfamiliar
with Naples and felt like we were starting all over as far as figuring it
out. We decided even though Naples was
awesome, that the place for us truly is Ft. Myers. We were going all over the place, from
neighborhoods, to types of houses, to our budget, to the schools, it was
actually a pretty stressful vacation. There was fighting, crying, happiness,
sadness, you name it. Making this
decision was so huge as it doesn’t just affect Bradden and I. This is our children’s future and if we get
it wrong, it ultimately can affect them. We actually had the High School tour
scheduled on a Tuesday and I emailed the admission director and cancelled. I just felt we were so all over the place and
asking her to spend time with us wasn’t fair.
Come Wednesday though I thought if we don’t at least see it we will
wonder about it and I should just do it while we are here. So we rescheduled for Friday. In touring the
H.S. both my two older kids (15,11) absolutely loved it. WOW, just soo different. Their lockers are in a hall way that doesn’t
have a wall, so it is all exposed to the outside with a courtyard that goes up
two stories. So you can look over the
half wall where your lockers are and look down into this courtyard with all
these palm trees and benches. Just so
cool. The school has so much to offer
and I believe will be a great fit for our children. This made a huge impact in
our decision because our two older kids were pretty excited about the
school. My daughter even said “I wish I
didn’t have to like it so much”.
Knowing we had a plan for the school really helped us feel confident we
can do this.
So
we have the schools figured out, the neighborhoods we are interested in and
feeling pretty good we can actually do this.
The next piece was finding out if Bradden’s job is ok with him now
moving to FL. Even though it is remote, we just weren’t sure if it would make a
difference or not. So Sunday night the last night we are in FL, my husband
emails his recruiter to make sure this is ok.
We fly in Monday morning to Toledo and he has an email stating that absolutely
this is the beauty of his job! So now we
had another plus in our favor! Ok so we are moving along, we actually say hmmmm
to many positives working for us. We
both felt that it was really important to get our Toledo home right on the
market for several reasons: for me it was to actually make us go through with
the move, (I knew coming home and back to our life would make it much harder to
actually move), buying another house in
FL, would be a lot easier if we knew our home was sold and the thought of
leaving our house without being sold would make the transition much harder and
we would question doing it.
So
I took pics of our whole house and put it up for sale 4 hours after we arrived
home on April 7th! By April
17th we had an offer and a signed contract! WOW we are really doing this!! The family that is moving into our home seems
amazing and it feels so good knowing a great family is moving into the home you
completely and absolutely adore. We have
our inspection this Friday and I really hope it goes well! You never know on this piece of the sale
until it is done.
Ok
so now we have our house sold, Bradden’s job is a go, Maddie has been accepted into
her school and I am close to finishing up the boys school piece. Awww all along these last weeks Bradden has
been in New Jersey for 18 of the last 21 days, we had a huge benefit for our
kids school, 2 Easter celebrations, my
daughter’s school musical and the start of baseball season. I have
been a hot mess!!! But we are moving
along! I have been selling our life off!
On a daily occurrence I have sold items on craigslist or Facebook, taking a ton
of stuff to goodwill and packing 1-3 boxes.
So I am feeling really good about the process.
Closing is supposed to happen on June 1st
with a move out date of June 22nd.
Yikes, 2 months to go. We will
get there; I am trying to take one day at a time and not try to over think it.
There are some days that I feel like I can’t think of one more thing and then I
remind myself we are doing this to ourselves!
Self-inflicted pain and work! I keep reminding myself nothing in life
worth having is easy. TO be honest I can
see why people don’t want change, change is hard. It really is easier just to stay in what is
comfortable. There is Fear of the
unknown, having to figure out all the moving pieces and wondering if it is a
wrong decision. I did have a friend tell
me though that the great thing about decisions is if you make the wrong one you
can just make another one. On the
opposite of that though some decisions are irreversible and you only get one
chance to make the right one (lesson to be learned for teenagers and young
adults) or anyone that doesn’t know this consequence :-)
So
pretty much all of what I have said above leads me to today. I am currently typing this on an airplane
(sprit, who just got me really mad and made me pay for my purse because it didn’t
fit in my free back pack-not sure if I am gonna fight this one or not) heading
down to Florida to hopefully find a place for our family to call home! Both Bradden and I wanted to do this
together, but just felt it would be to hard to find someone to help with the kids
and they have a lot going on in the next few days. We have had in the last week or so some
awesome houses we liked and just like that pending!! Grrrrr it has made us
pretty upset. So we are hoping of the 10
we have to look through we can find a contender. Our biggest challenge is
finding one that is in a decent proximity to the kids schools. Today we live in a community that our kids
schools are all in walking distance. I realize we are in a unique situation,
but am fearful it could be a huge adjustment if we move to a place that is 25
minutes away. The thing that we are struggling with is the newer homes in the
more active family neighborhoods are further away. Where as the homes closer to school are
older, higher insurance (due to being closer to the water) and neighborhoods
are not as active such as having pools, bball courts, tennis courts ( all the
fun stuff of the newer communities). We
like both areas and just can’t figure out what makes the most sense for “our”
family.
I
think this is all I am going to write for this post. This was a lot of typing, more than I
expected. This is going to be a really
fun journal for me and hope that our kids will enjoy looking back at this and
say “Wow, mom and dad took a chance and we sure had a great time” Please note though we are having an extremely
hard time leaving our family, friends and community. This adjustment is and has been really hard
on us. We continually are faced with another piece of what we are going to be
missing. I will probably do a separate post
about this piece. I think my next post
will be how it went with the house hunt!- we might be on house hunters again as
well :-) will definitely share this once we know for sure.
Until
next time,
Xoxoxoxo
Jozsa
Clan
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