Moving

We are getting ourselves ready to move to Tennessee, and it has been absolute craziness!! Luke and our parents have done a TON of work on our house including painting, filling holes, staging/decorating, cleaning, and more. Luke has been at the house for our carpet to be completely replaced, and for some window panes to be replaced. My parents invited us to come live with them (I'm pretty sure my mom is regretting this now!) and we took them up on it because I had NO IDEA how I was going to get the house ready/keep it clean in order to sell it. I literally have been no help on the house except for the few frantic packing/cleaning sessions I've had while Clara naps. The rest of my time is spent handing out snacks, wiping butts, making food, driving to and from school, handing out more snacks, putting the baby down for naps, nursing, making more snacks, etc. I am the busiest I've ever been, and most of that time is spent on three of my favorite people. (Which I love doing- for the most part- I just feel bad that I've been no help getting our house ready.)

Luke painting away in the kitchen

We've been living with my parents for almost two weeks now, and it has been super helpful. Luke basically has gone to work and then straight to our house to work on stuff. We have quite a bit packed and stored in my parent's basement, and as of Monday, the house has officially been photographed for our realtors to do what they need to do. Now I just need to pack up a few more things and clean the fridge/shelves in the kitchen, and that will be more of the nit-picky things. Once the house sells, we'll really only have to focus on moving out our big furniture and taking out the things we used to "stage" our house.

Luke accepted the job in September, and he officially starts on December 4th. He'll be down in TN for that week, and then work from home in MD until January 8th. After that, he agreed to be down there full time, so we're praying that our house has sold and that we have a house down there. In the next few weeks, we're hoping to go down to look at houses, and put in an offer with a contingency if we see anything we love. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, and it feels VERY overwhelming at times, but we have had SO much help.

Holden with the "Coming Soon" sign in the background!

If we don't have a house figured out yet by January, I'll stay here at my parent's so that Noelle can continue school here. But it would be sad to be away from Luke without any definite time frame of being all together again. Luke went around with a realtor when he was down there for the interview, and got an idea of some of the different areas. There is a little Christian school that we want to tour and so we've mostly been looking at houses online close to that school. We'll see where we actually end up! Luke's brother and his family are down there, and we have a few friends in the Nashville area, so hopefully we won't be too far from any of them!

I've mostly been focused on the house, and so have mostly been feeling stressed and overwhelmed. But the more I think about actually leaving, the more sad I feel. I've lived in MD most of my life, my parents and one sister are here, and many of my closest friends. I'm already gearing up for a somewhat lonely first year in TN since I know it will take me awhile to build friendships (super introverted over here!) Luke has been warned that his role as my BFF will be even more important since I won't have the adult interaction I'm able to have with MOPS and school and play dates that I enjoy here. But God has been leading us in this decision over the last few years, and we know He will provide what we need!