If you read “3 year search” you know how we came to this point. What happens next?

A question everyone asks is “How can you leave your family and friends?” Most people say “I could never leave my kids, grandkids and parents”. “What about your job?”

Our circumstances are a little different from other families. I am an only child and my parents passed on many years ago. I have only one aunt living and not much connection with any of my cousins. We email each other occasionally and that’s about it. I don’t really have any family to “stay close to”.

Bob and I choose not to have children so that means no kids and grandkids to stay close to. We see Bob’s two sisters a few times a year so while we all get along, I would not say they are close. Bob’s mom Helen and her husband Ed are the two people we would miss and if their health is not good that would delay our move.

We have a small circle of close friends and would miss them but they can come visit us and thank goodness for email!
Bob and I both work from home so that makes the job relocation easy. All we need is high speed internet access.

It is really overwhelming to mentally let go of where you live, think about packing up the house, selling the house, moving, living in temporary quarters while we look for a new home and buying a new house so we have to do it in steps. We don’t know when the move will really happen (we hope before winter 2008) but that’s ok.

• Step one – Live our life as if we are moving. That means don’t buy more stuff because we have to move it and start throwing out things. We have made huge progress.
• Step two – Start researching real estate agents, prepare the house for selling, research the move, cost of the move and make all kinds of lists of what will need to be done. Fay is good at that.
• Step three – See if Hendersonville is really going to be our new home. If it is not then we keep looking and already have other places in mind but were assuming we like it.
• Step four – Return home and put the house on the market early next year. Although we plan on using the real estate agent we talked with, we told him we are good networkers and I can make a web site and brochure to sell our house and distribute it to family, friends and neighbors. He said he would help us close it if that happens. We are pretty lucky so I would not be surprised if that happened. However, if health issues of his folks come up or if the real estate market is bad we wait. Our plan B then is to find a warm place to stay to escape winter for three months in early 2008.
• Step five – The house sells for the price we want before winter 2008. Since we have no set time table we can be flexible. Originally we thought we wanted to buy a new house at the same time we are selling but realize the chance of that working out are slim so are planning a double move. If we don’t need to do that we have a pleasant surprise.
• Step six – The packing, moving, stuff in storage, finding a place to live temporarily while we search for a new home and move again step. I don’t want to think about that. Only thing I can think about now is “FIND A GOOD MOVING COMPANY!”. I’ll get there but it is too far off to worry about now.
• Step seven – And they lived happily ever after!

Well, that’s the plan Wish us luck.