Saying Goodbye

OK, it's been a few days since we've posted. It has been an emotional, fast-paced, crazy couple of days. Time for a little background. Our house has been on the market since May 1st of last year. If you're not familiar with the Michigan marketplace, to say it's depressed is a bit of an understatement! Spring has finally sprung in Michigan, and we had 5 couples come through the house last weekend! The floor plan of the house is unique, and not conducive to those with children (which is why it appealed to us, but NOT good for resale!). A mid 30's childless couple was one of the couples that came through last weekend. They fell in love with the place immediately(as we did) and put in a full-price offer the next day.

This is a great relief to us, however, in two days we had to schedule movers and book flights home. I was, initially, going to fly home alone to finish up the packing and oversee the movers. Laura's dad actually suggested that we needed to 'close out' this part of our lives together, as a team. After thinking about for awhile, he was right. This was a very emotional thing for us, not just selling the house, but cutting our final ties to Michigan. So, here we are, both of us, in Michigan, closing out the details of our former life. Thanks Mike!

The past few days have been a blur. The weather, on the other hand, has been fantastic! It's been in the mid 70's and sunny both Friday and Saturday, very unusual for mid-April, in Michigan.

We got into town late afternoon on Thursday. We had dinner at my mom's house and dropped Snuggles off for the duration of our visit (Snuggles just LOVES her visits with Grandma!).

Friday started out way too early for us (7am = 4am west coast time) with a trip over to the title company to sign most of the paperwork. It turned out to be a good thing that Laura was here. We saved close to $1,ooo by avoiding doing all the signing through a third party title company at our next location in St George Utah. We then headed over to the house and finalized all the packing. We had most of it done, when we left, back in October, but had odds-n-ends to complete. It managed to take most of the day. We spent the evening with our friends, George, Mary, their son Yale and Hunter the lab. They made us a great dinner, and we brought over some wine. This was almost a weekly occurrence for us during the winter month's and something we'll definitely miss. We also stayed the night there so we would have a close drive for Saturday. Thanks, guys!

Saturday, another early day, moving day. Up at 7am, over to the house to meet up with the movers at 8:30am. The movers were impressed with how prepared we were for the move. All they had to do was load it in the truck and get it into storage. " We only hired you to move it, not pack it", was my comment to them. "You'd be surprised what we walk into", said the crew chief. In about 4 hours, the guys have everything loaded up. They were happy campers, the weather was beautiful, and this was the only job they had scheduled for the day! We took some stuff we didn't want in storage over to Laura's moms.

By afternoon, we were looking for something to do. We called our biking friends Pam and Mike. We had missed visiting with them on our last trip here, for Christmas. Luckily, they were home and didn't have any plans. They invited us over and we were treated to another fabulous dinner. They had just returned from a trip to Japan, so we had tons to talk about! The conversation lasted to around 10:30, and we were wore out. Thanks for dinner and great conversation, guys!

Sunday, Easter. Finally, a chance to sleep in! We had no commitments or destinations until early afternoon. I think I slept in till almost 9:30, very unusual for me. We spent the morning reading and surfing. The plan for the day was to go over to my moms for early dinner, 1pm to 4pm. Then, over to Laura's moms for, yes, another dinner. The plan was to spend the night at Laura's moms. Both dinner's were great, we ate too much at both! It was great to get everyone together.

So, the house is empty, our stuff is safely tucked away, to await a new location. I think our time on the road gave us distance and closure on the house. It was easier to say good-bye then I thought. I still had a lump in my throat as we shut the door for the last time. When we originally bought the place, it was our dream house that we had planned to be in for a long time. Life happens and situations change. We look forward to setting up another dream house, location to be determined, but Thank's old house....

Thanks for everything!

-Rich-