Almost over

We arrived in Georgia, our final destination, this passed Sunday night. The next morning we immediately started looking for houses to rent. We had some print-outs of houses we wanted to look at, as well as a list of ones we found on the internet but were unable to print.

The first day we saw a couple of nice houses and a few 'ehn' houses. One that we were the most excited about was a 5 bdrm 3 bath (can you imagine all that room?!), for a lot less a month than you might expect. We had an appointment at 10 am to see what we thought was an empty house. After all, the listing did say Available Oct 1st. The agent calls us and says that the carpet cleaner is coming that same day so we'd have to take our shoes off. No problem.

We get there and not only is the carpet cleaner there, but so is the family that still lives there! Can you say "awkward?" The family stayed on the porch, though, so it wasn't that bad. The house was nice, but they couldn't be out of it for 2 weeks! We did not like the prospect of living in a hotel for that long, so we passed.

The next day, we had a longer list of houses to look at. We called the agent we were working with early that morning, and we spent the better part of the day looking. As we left each house, we noted key things we liked and disliked about the house, the neighborhood, and our first impressions on the print out the agent gave us for each house. We wrote pros and cons, things we just didn't like for whatever reason, and things we did, etc. All told, we got it narrowed down from 13 houses to 2.

Ya'll that know me know that I was very diplomatic and Type A about the whole thing. :-)

We have been praying since we left San Diego that God had the perfect house set aside for us here and could He direct us to that house. We prayed that prayer several times throughout the two days we spent looking at houses as well. With some of the houses, we knew as soon as we walked in that it wasn't our house. There were several houses, though, that the 'niceness' of the house was clouding our judgment.

At one point, my emotions were clouding my judgment. We went to the park to let the kids play while we could talk and make our decision. One house is everything we've ever wanted in a house. It's a 4 bdrm 3 bath. It's beautiful. It's functional. It's plenty big. It has a HUGE kitchen and a screened in porch, and a JETTED TUB! [oops, did I say that outloud? :-D ] It has a room I can dedicate to be a school room, even! BUT (you knew there was one LOL) it's in a secluded neighborhood and the backyard isn't fenced. There are woods on three sides of the house, and there didn't seem to be kids living anywhere near us.

The other house is really nice, though not nearly as nice as the first house. It's a 4 bdrm 3 bath also, with a huge loft that we could do school in. It has a huge fenced in backyard, and it's in a great neighborhood with kids everywhere!

So you may be asking yourself "so how did your emotions get in the way?" Well, I was having a real tough time choosing which house to get because of the prospect of friends for the kids and myself. We'd been looking for churches the night before and it looked like the places we really wanted to try out are all the way in Jacksonville. Granted that's not that far, but it's not down the street either. We haven't plugged in to any homeschool groups yet, which is another place we could make friends. In my mind I was thinking "take the lesser house in the kid-rich neighborhood just so life can become normal again quickly."

After some tears and talking it through, I realized that in the grand scheme of things, the neighborhood really doesn't matter. Other than The Best Neighbor Ever (Hi Jen!), I don't really talk to my neighbors. I haven't liked the neighborhood kids and their influence on my kids anywhere we've lived (except for TBNE's kids, of course.) Our friends come from church and families from Jerry's command.

I was struggling because I'm just sad. I miss California. I miss our friends there. I miss our church. This is every bit as hard as I thought it would be. It helps that I can still keep in touch via computer (I love my computer, it's where my friends live! LOL), but it's totally not the same thing as walking over to their house, seeing them and chatting at church, going out to eat, or playing 'kid swap'. I'm very thankful that Jerry isn't going out to sea for a while, because then I'd really be lonely!

My heart hurts for the kids, because they don't have anyone to play with and until we find a church, or homeschool group, or meet some families from Jerry's command, they really won't. Honestly, though, I really don't think they're as sad as I think they are. It's probably me just projecting :-)

Anyway, long story short, we chose the first house :-)

We went through several hurdles with the property management company for the house, the criminal background check from CA, and the personal property company that has our household in storage. We were looking at not being able to move into our house until right before or after Thanksgiving. But I believe that God's hand was on the whole situation, and by His grace we're moving in on MONDAY!

We go tomorrow to sign the lease, get the keys, and get all the utilities turned on.

I'll upload some pictures when I get them. I plan on taking some tomorrow while it's still empty.

You know what the best part is? This is our last night in a hotel!!

WE'RE NOT HOMELESS ANYMORE!!