Memories of Us: Home Sweet Home

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Home Sweet Home

Well, we made it to Florida and we're all moved in and settled in our new home! What a ride the last few weeks have been! I'm pretty sure I've never been so stressed out and exhausted in my entire life but I feel like I've grown a lot from the whole experience. I had planned on writing one last entry on my blog before we actually moved out of our house... but then we lost our phone and internet service a week before we were supposed to and that created total chaos in our house! We had so many people to contact via email and phone...our realtor, mortgage counselor, insurance agent, etc. I don't even want to imagine how high our cell phone bill must be since that's pretty much all we used for a week! Once we left our house and moved in with Eric's parents, things started to settle down a bit. Chase had his 2 month check up at the doctor and everything went great! He's in the 90th percentile for height and weight... big boy! Then I had the PE (Professional Engineering licensing exam) the next day. Ugh. It was even worse than I thought it would be and I felt so unprepared! I wish I had gotten to take a review course for it, but the timing was really bad with Chase's birth and the move. I'm sure I didn't pass... unless I happened to guess right on every one... but at least I tried and I'm just so glad it's over with! That night we went to the Orioles game... what a blast! I'll miss the O's. The day after that we met our good friends Clay, Allison, Rachel and Olivia for lunch, and later that night Eric's parents threw a going away party for us! Chase did so well while he was passed from person to person all night. And Eric and I enjoyed seeing everyone one last time. Our final day in Maryland was spent cleaning out our house... what a chore!

Then we hit the road! Our 2 cars held 4 people (Eric's parents came with us), 2 dogs and 1 baby! And lots of house plants. We were on the road from Maryland to Florida for 3 days, which was nice because we only had a really long drive on the last day. We saw an aunt, cousins, second cousins, some good friends and my dad! Many thanks to all of our gracious hosts along the way! Not much else to say about being on the road, other than I'm glad we're not anymore! It's kinda tough to travel with dogs and a baby, but fortunately they were all really well behaved and Eric's parents were a huge help!

We finally arrived in Tampa and had to spend 2 nights in a hotel here before all of our stuff arrived. Actually, it was pretty funny because on the first night we discovered that the truck containing all of our belongings was parked right across the street from our hotel and the driver was staying there as well! At least we could keep an eye on it! It was the best feeling when we were finally done with our closing and could officially move into our new house. The movers had everything unloaded and unpacked within a few hours and ever since then we've been trying to get everything into the right place. Of course, we've taken plenty of time out to sit on the lanai and just rest. It's by far my favorite room of the house and I can see myself spending lots of time out there. And I absolutely love our neighborhood so far! Eric and I took the dogs on a run yesterday and checked out the trails. It's just too picture perfect here. Eric's dad said it feels like you're living in a movie or something, and I think he's right! I just can't get over it. The first day we were here our neighbors came over and brought us a basket full of key lime pie, bread, olive oil and a toy for Chase! We're going over there for a cookout in a little while too. It's definitely feeling like home sweet home!

Here are some pics from the last few weeks: