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……now I don’t have time to write anything!  I’ve been in a dry spell for what to put on here in the past few months.  But now that all this exciting stuff is happening, I can barely find time to keep up with the day to day stuff around the house let alone put coherent thoughts together before my eyes are shut by about 9 pm every night.  Here’s the run-down.

August – I was finally offered the promotion that I applied/ interviewed for in about March.  So that meant move to full-time which has been a huge adjustment.  I feel like I am not doing a very good job of being a wife/ mother with the increase in hours.  Less meal planning, less fun time with kids, less time with hubby.  But overall the job has been going pretty well.  I’ve made several changes which seem to have improved organization and efficiency.  The employees seem to be happy with most of them and the feedback I’ve received from management has been very positive.  There are frustrating days per usual but overall I feel good about the progress we’ve made there.   However, later in August, my husband finally received a real-live offer for a job from a company he’s had dealings with for several years.  They’ve always joked about him working for them but never thought he’d consider moving to Florida.  Well they finally put on paper what they’ve talked about and it made us start thinking.  I could tell the way he talked about it that it was a dream opportunity for him.  While it wasn’t the greatest timing considering my recent job development, the fact that I wouldn’t have to work and could be a mom/ wife only for a while made us think a little more. Add into the consideration the fact that I’ve come to despise cold weather as I get older, and I was willing to keep my mind open.  So he convinced me to take a trip and look around, check out housing market and visit some churches/ schools.

September – V and I went down for a long weekend.  Visited Joker Marchant standium first off when we hit Lakeland.  Definite contender in the reasons to live in Lakeland is the fact that the Tigers are there for Spring Training every year.  We drove a ton that weekend.  Most of housing communities were gated though so we couldn’t see many houses.  We did tour a model home and were pretty sure we were going to build.  The best part of that weekend was finding a church/ school that we felt we could call home.  It was of prime importance to us that we find a Lutheran school for our children.  They aren’t as easy to find in Florida as they are here.  You can pretty much hit a few within a mile from anywhere up here. But we found St. Paul.  We loved the contemporary worship service and and hit it off with the pastor and principal (both Valpo grads!).  The school is similar size to Peace but the big difference is outdoor hallways!  For a northern girl this was huge!  The curriculum was fantastic, especially once you hit middle school.  So we left Florida thinking a bit more seriously about the move.

October – Negotiations continued with V’s new company and they finally agreed.  We did the numbers and feel that we will be ok with just his income. 🙂  We prayed a lot about it and felt nothing but peace.  So by the end of them month we had agreed to make the move.  We truly feel that God is the one behind this since all of it was falling into place without us really going looking for it.  The kids weren’t all that excited when we told them so we made sure to remind them about all of the nearby locations for fun in Florida. 🙂

November  – He started officially with Labtech and is splitting his time working from home and taking trips back and forth to Tampa.  I had to tell my boss because I wanted her to have as much notice as possible.  She was disappointed but incredibly supportive. By the end of the month I told the other employees as well because I do not excel at keeping secrets and knew it would slip out somewhere.  We decided that we better look at existing homes before we committed to building in Lakeland. So we planned another little trip.

December – We took the kids with us this time for the first weekend in December to look at houses and try to take some of the mystery out of the whole idea for them.  We also planned a visit to LegoLand to put a positive spin on the whole trip for them. 🙂  We had a real estate agent line up a bunch of houses for us and it truly was like a House Hunter’s episode.  We drove from place to place.  The ones we “thought” we were going to love based on pictures on internet didn’t live up to our expectations.  And the one that we only saw because Mark really thought it was a good deal in a great neighborhood, ended up surprising the heck out of us.  To be honest the neighbors across the street should get part of the commission.  They were so friendly and it made us feel like this was the place we want our kids to grow up.  We went back the next day to look more and ended up writing an offer before we left town.  The kids felt more positive after the trip down there and really enjoyed the weather.  After a week’s worth of haggling, we had an agreement.  V took another trip down for the inspection which then instigated more haggling.  We had a wonderful week of Birthdays, Christmas and all that.  Then came NYE.  We started what we hope is an annual tradition.  We went to a hotel with 3 of our favorite Peace families for a super fun crazy night.  It was a great way to end 2011.  A little bittersweet to think about not seeing these families as much as we do now once we move.  We’re counting on them using our place as their vacation home and then repeating the hotel stay every NYE from now on if we can manage the trip back to Michigan every year.

January – Well it’s only a week in but we’re in the midst of  getting all of the paperwork in place for closing which is scheduled for the end of the month.  The kids are getting more excited I think.  Rachel is thrilled about planning / decorating her room.  Luke can’t wait to have access to a new library since he’s exhausted his choices up here!  LOL He has 318 AR points so far this school year.  The goal is 40 for the year.  🙂  Makes a mama proud!  We need to get going on some repairs to this house before we can list it and packing/ organizing things to clear out a bit and make it presentable.

Well I guess I finally caught things up a bit.  Hopefully I can blog more regularly. It should be an interesting few months to come!