We have arrived!

Well I really can't believe we arrived in Florida this last week.  WOW!  What a whirl win it has been.  I sometimes can't believe I am still going.....  I think exhaustion is going to set in at some point!  The last few weeks in Toledo were jam packed of finishing packing our whole house and trying to close on both our old home and new home.  We had some hiccups with our Toledo home and it took a bit longer than anticipated.  It ended up working out ok though.  During the process though my nerves became a little shot.  About a week before we were going to be moving, my middle son decided to take a real baseball and a bat and practicing hit in our back yard!  Of course I told him not to do that, but he did anyway and yes he hit our garage window and broke it.  I thought I was going to have a complete melt down!  Bradden had been out of town the whole week and I had a lot to finish up to get us out of town.  It was pretty overwhelming.  My Mother-in-law plans a yearly vacation and it was planned for the same week we were moving out.  So I had Bradden gone the week before, I had a wedding I was photographing the weekend he got back and then we headed up to meet my husbands family for a few days.  We got home a few days before we were moving and I think I hadn't anticipated how much work was still left.  Never the less we finished up everything and the help of both my Aunts the night before we were moving and headed out at 8:15 am on June 20th with a 26ft UHAUL towing Bradden's car and my mini van.  My middle son went with my husband and my daughter, youngest son and our dog went with me.  We made it all the way to Valdosta, GA the first night.  It ended up taking way longer than we thought.  With gas breaks, food breaks,dog potty breaks, family potty breaks and one child having to puke, plus traffic it added several hours to the first leg. We got in to our hotel at 3 am.  Ahhh I can't even believe I drove all that time by myself.  This was a complete first for me. The next day was pretty easy a little over 6 hours of driving.  Went by just fine and no traffic.

We arrived in at about 2:45 pm on Saturday June 21st.  It was pretty exciting pulling up to the house.  I was very nervous though as I was the only one who actually saw the house. So I didn't know what everyone would think.  We were having our cupboards in our Kitchen painted and in our Master Bath.  They were supposed to be close to done when we arrived.  Well they weren't!!  They were not even 10% done.  It was a huge disappointment :-(   Luckily the owner of the company came right over and made it right and they were able to get everything done by Wed. They threw in some extra painting in the house and a cleaning service.  It ended up being ok as we just stayed at the condo and I was able to over see the work.  Another disappointment is I didn't realize all the work that needed to actually be done at the house.  It looks one way when there is furniture and I was really caught up in the layout of the house, the neighborhood and the uniqueness.  I didn't quite pay attention to ALL the details of the house.  So we kind of all went from YAYAYAYAYAYAY our new home in Florida to,  hmmmmm well we have some work to do. Really though it only took a few hours and us putting a few things of ours in the home to cheer up and feel like it was gonna be like home. Even when we were leaving our home in OH I didn't realize how much work really needed to be done there as well. I am convinced all houses ALWAYS have something wrong and needing fixed at them. We did about 35% of unpacking the truck on Saturday and then Bradden and I got up early on Sunday and we unpacked the rest of the truck and dropped it back off by noon.  Bradden had to fly out at 3 to go back out to NJ for the week.  Soooo you know what that meant!! I was home alone again for the week with 3 kids, unpacking our new house, working with all the different contractors that were doing things at the house, packing up the condo, editing of clients photos, taking care of 3 kids and attempting to stay sane!!! But I made it!!  Yeah!!  Bradden arrived home this afternoon and it felt so good to see him get out of the Taxi!  Like my savior!  We joined the local church and the kids had VBS this week which helped with giving me some free time in the mornings.  Also this was a great chance for the kids to meet other kids that are going to their new schools.  Minimal swimming happened this week, we have not seen the beach yet and can't wait to be all settled in. In just a few days I think we will be mostly unpacked and will start feeling like this is Real and all the work will have been worth it.  We finished packing up all the condo today and hopefully the furniture is gonna be moved here tonight by a company.  After not paying for a moving company to move Toledo, we decided to splurge and pay $400 to have them break down all furniture and put it all back together.   I will be happy on Monday when we close on the Condo and another piece completed.

I really can't believe we put our home up for sale in OH on April 7th and I am sitting here on June 27th and we officially have moved and can call ourselves Floridians.  WOW what a few months!

A few pics below from our road trip.  Thank you to Maddie for a lot of the fun road ones!  It was a lot of fun and I think we will talk about this the rest of our life!


xoxoxo

Crystal