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Beginning of a new adventure!

I decided to start this blog to keep everyone informed of our happenings. I realized that I kept repeating the same thing to the same people and other people weren't updated on what was going on. I will try to keep everyone up to date here.

To back up a bit:

Andy and I got the offer to move to the Philadelphia area back in March. We knew it would be an option but we weren't counting on anything until we saw it in writing. There is still an office in MN, but the PA office is where the curtain wall factory will be. This is a great opportunity for Andy to be near where his projects are, mostly in New York.

I turned in my resignation at Sky Oaks Elementary in April once we had everything settled. While it's hard to leave the school where I started my career, teaching jobs are everywhere so it's easy for me to relocate in relation to my job. Little did I know that I had to retake ALL of the Praxis, specific to Pennsylvania, and then get a criminal check, FBI fingerprint clearance, child abuse clearance, verification of employment, and the list goes on. About 7 pieces of paperwork later, I THINK I've done everything. Now I just need to fill out pages upon pages of essay questions for employment. Good thing I will have plenty of time since we won't be doing yard work!

We went and found our new apartment in May. It is currently being build and will be move-in ready on August 1. It's a beautiful building with tons of great outdoor space that WE don't have to take care of! There will be plenty of room for visitors so if you are looking to go to the East Coast, get a hold of me.

Downsizing into an apartment is a bit of an adjustment. We decided that there are some things we will keep in storage until we find a more permanent home. That being said, for moving we are using U-Boxes, similar to PODS. A couple will be used for long term storage and a couple will be used for moving our stuff. We needed to account for time to ship the U-boxes out East so we will be loading them up and moving out of our house this Saturday. THIS Saturday! Since our house will be empty and the apartment is not ready until August 1, we will be staying in a hotel around here for a few weeks. This is actually quite great as I will have time to come back and clean the house and focus on saying goodbye to friends and family without the stress of packing and cleaning at the same time.

Which brings us to Deb. Deb will have to learn to be a hotel/apartment/city dog. I think she will be just fine. There are dog parks everywhere and now that she is trained (thanks to Fischer Kennels in Albany, MN!!!), I think she will do great being around so many people. Our new apartment has a dog park which will be really great for her.

We will need to drive both of our cars out to PA so we found some family who are willing to take a road trip with us. We will leave August 1 and drive to Chicago for an evening. Then we will wake up early on August 2 and drive the remainder of the way to Glen Mills, PA. We got a hotel very near our new apartment. On August 3, movers will be bringing our stuff and moving us in at 8am. Then we unpack. And unpack. And organize. And unpack.

Our house sold a few weeks ago and timing worked out great. We hope that the new owner is very happy with the updates we did and loves this house as much as we did. It's hard to imagine we are leaving our first home, but we are SO excited to see what the easy coast has for us!!!

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