Now What?

It's been so nice to be here with Kenny. The trip here wasn't so bad, pretty miraculous really (I'll save stories for another post). I was so happy to see Kenny standing there as far as he was allowed to come in the airport, ready to pick me and Brynlee up. That night we drove over to the oil refinery where he works and he showed me what little he could since it was all closed. Pretty crazy though. He has to wear a hard hat, goggles, steel-toed boots, and jeans (I think he looks so hot in all his gear) to work every day because he is working "on site", even though he's not doing any manual labor. He's a cost analyst and scheduler.

Saturday we went to Wal-mart and got a few things to eat, just to have around for snack time, microwavable meals (to avoid so much eating out) and stuff for sandwiches. For dinner we went out to eat at Applebee's, and warmed up our leftovers for last night's Easter dinner. :) It was a most unusual Easter, and I longed to be with Tyler. But he does sound so happy on the phone. We will just re-do our family Easter celebration in a couple weeks when we are all reunited.

We've been doing a lot of driving around the different towns, getting to know the area and check out where we'd like to live. Kenny drives, while I stay ready and alert with a notebook and pen in hand, writing down every phone number, address, etc. of apartment complexes, townhomes, duplexes, or just homes for rent. We've been getting quite a list, and already had a few favorites. This morning I took Kenny to work at 6:30 and spent the morning calling around and setting up appointments to walk through and see homes, apartments, etc. After the first showing, Kenny calls me and tells me he just found another house for rent on Craig's List, and that the man would be there until noon to show it to me. So I got the address, plugged it into my GPS and drove and drove. It was such a beautiful drive, it's clear out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, called Holiday Shores. It's just down the street from a lake, too. I pulled up to the cutest little house with blue siding, and a 2 car garage--something we've never had the luxury of yet. Not only that, but it had a YARD! A back yard, and room on the side too--perfect for Tyler to run around and play. I knocked on the door and met Ralph, the owner. He is a really nice man who works (and now lives) in Chicago. I step inside onto beautiful hardwood floors (which is really appealing since we don't do well with carpet)and look around. A fireplace, a big open living area, a super-nice kitchen, a section for our dining room table next to a beautiful and open window...and then it happened. I could see us living there! As he showed me around the house, it just fit. Our stuff would work great in that house. There's also a sun room that could be turned into a 3rd bedroom. The price was unbeatable, and everything was perfect. It's not a very big town, but the families that are there are pretty young. He was pointing out all the houses with young kids, and the rest of the homes are retired folk :). He's also leaving the washer and dryer there, which is great! Once again, we can put off buying those. Point is, I fell in love with it. I called Kenny as I was driving away and told him I loved it. We talked about it for a while, wondering if we were rushing into it, should we look around and risk losing it? See, there's another family coming tonight to see it for the 2nd time, and they're very interested so we knew we had to act fast. But we both felt good about it, and really felt good about the price (less than what we're paying now, but getting so much more) so we decided to jump on it. We're going back tonight to give him our deposit, and so Kenny can see it :). I am so excited and I can't stop dreaming about that home. I am so excited to move in! It will be quite the change not being right next to any stores or anything, but they're not more than 10 or 15 minutes away still. I love the lake by our house too.

I'm not supposed to fly out till Friday. I was going to spend the rest of the week looking for a place to live. So now what? Not much to do in a hotel room. I'll figure that out later. But for now, I'm going to get some laundry done. Turns out I came just in time to take care of Kenny's dirty clothes so he doesn't have to walk around in the nude :). I am so happy!