Where Have I Been?
So, wow! Have I been busy! If you have noticed (so many of you have e-mailed me about this, I feel the ❤ thank you), I have been taking a break from blogging over the past few months?
Why?
Well…my husband and I decided to move our family across country from snowy Wisconsin to sunny Florida, and to be frank with you, I just did not have the time to blog!
But I am back, and have settled in a bit and thought I would share our journey with you all.
What Would You Have Done?
I grew to love Wisconsin! We moved there 5 years ago from Savannah, Georgia and it was quite a change.
But change is good sometimes. My girls got to experience snow, snow boarding, snow tubing, skiing (snow of course, not water skiing) and many other winter activities.
We embraced the winter full heartedly and enjoyed it and its cold temperatures.
But if I am being honest, we missed the sun and my husband always said he missed the salt (short for saying the ocean, he is mad about sport fishing in the ocean).
We found our hearts pulling us closer to what we were use too and back to our roots.
When An Opportunity Arrives
Then one day, my husband told me about an opportunity for him to take a new job that would require us to move to Florida.
At first I was like, no…we are so settled here. But then after some chatting and some more chatting, we thought now is the perfect time to move because our babies were still young enough to transition easily.
So after a number of interviews, and some pretty scary decisions, we took a leap of faith and changed jobs and got ready for our move across country!
Selling and Buying a Home In The Same Month
So I have to tell you, we had a LOT to do to make this happen. It is crazy how much “stuff” you accumulate over a 5 year span.
So we cleaned, donated, cleaned and donated some more and decluttered our house so we could put it on the market! It’s crazy how much you have to take OUT of the home to sell it!
But our realtor assured us that our house would sell faster by making it less personal. Here are a few photos after we depersonalized it.
Our House Sold In 24 Hours with Multiple Offers!
Well let me tell you…decluttering and depersonalizing the house worked! Y’all (yep, getting back to my Southern roots already), y’all…we sold our house in 24 hours! I know it was absolutely crazy AND we had multiple offers! Talk about feeling blessed!
So as soon as we had an accepted offer on the table, my husband and I flew out to Florida and found our home over the weekend! Who sells and buys a home in the same week right? It was totally crazy!
I will say this in hindsight…I don’t think I would have bought and sold in the same month, let alone the same week. It was SO STRESSFUL, but when it was done, it was done right?
Packing Up For The Move
We decided to make the investment to hire a moving company to move our belongings. I can not imagine moving our entire family and our belongings. It was a big financial commitment, but it was money well spent.
The movers came and packed up all our belongings. Our job was to pack up the kids and ourselves so that we had enough stuff for 3 weeks.
We tried to make it fun, and here we are being a bit silly (certainly we did not travel with her up there, she was helping us fix the latches) 🙂
A 20 Hour Ride Across Country
So we said our good-byes (oh my gosh you guys, it was so hard saying goodbye to so many terrific friends) and we hopped in the car and began our journey.
The first day we traveled 14 hours in the car. The girls were excited for the adventure and they did terrific!
My poor dear Gemma however did NOT like the car ride! 🙁 Don’t you just love the monkey my girls put in there for her!
Gemma is not a fan of traveling, so my vet recommended a sedative to help her with the move. I tried for two hours to go without meds, but her anxiety was so high that we chose to sedate her.
Best thing for her! She got a nice long nap and was good to go once we got to the hotel room.
Are We There Yet Mom?
Okay, so if I was to hear “Are we there yet mom?” one more time, I swear I would have SCREAMED!!!
But when we crossed the border and saw this sign, all was good…we were almost there!
I will not lie, it felt amazing to FINALLY get out of the car. We stayed in a rental house for 2 weeks while our belongings were in transit and we closed on our new house.
Closing On New Home and Moving In
On our way into our closing, we got a phone call from the moving company and they informed us our stuff would be super early and was coming a day after we closed.
How is that for timing? We were so excited to say the least…this was working out better than we had planned…that never happens does it? 🙂
So here we are…our new home and our moving truck (that is the view from my front door, yay…I will show you a better picture without the truck, I promise)!
I Can Not Wait To Take You Inside!
I can not wait to show you guys the inside of our new home and some pictures of this beautiful state we now call home. I will save that for a post later this week!
Update: Take a tour of our new home here!
Any Floridians out there??
Psst….Okay, I just have to show some of my excitement, Eek…check out all those tropical plants in the picture above will you?!!! They are so beautiful…oh and the lizards…there are so many of them! Yay, you can bet I am still getting use to those bad boys!
I’m not Halle but we moved 15 months ago from PA and totally disagree with what you’ve heard. We are in Central FL on the gulf coast, north of Tampa. We were told before we moved that FL is like two different states and since moving my husband and I say it’s really like 4 different states. So the areas are VERY different. You have north FL, south FL, coastal areas, and inland, none are similar! It really depends where you move to and what you’re looking for. I like the heat so maybe I’m not a good judge but I have yet to figure out how much people really do OUTSIDE anymore that the hot summers are that big of an issue. Most of our time is spent going from one air conditioned place to the next. Actually similar to life in the north in the winter but without the ice and salt and shoveling! In the winter you mostly go from one heated place to the next! Because of the heat most sports are in the fall, winter, and spring so that’s not even usually a consideration for the heat. We used to live on the other side of the county near the swamp and the bugs were pretty bad. Where we live now I’d say we have less bugs than we did in PA. I have no complaints about the people, I think they’re better here than in the north as well. That may not be the same for you in Colorado, I don’t know what people are like there. People here pull completely off the road for a funeral procession even out in the country, EVERY car, not just a few. I had never seen that before moving here. There are definitely more retired people than younger people but it’s not terrible. We are in a rural area, that may be different closer to the cities. Neither of us regret for one second that we moved. Even among friends we have that are transplants we all say, “Why didn’t we move sooner???!!!!” Hope that helps you!
Wow sold your home and bought one in ONE WEEK!!! I stumbled across your blog because we are looking to love from WI to FL. I grew up here but have always loved the beach. Lived in FL for a year annnnd I cannot stop feeling the pull of the sand and the sea!
Florida is a very good city. I like Florida a lot. You’ve arrived in Florida to welcome you to Florida. You have written a good blog. Thanks a lot for this beauty Enjoying article with me. I appreciate it very much!
We are looking at moving to Florida from Oklahoma. I have no clue where to move. My husband has to job opportunities one in Miami and a competitor in Weston. Can anyone give me good family oriented places to live with good school districts. We have two little ones and that would be my first priority. I looked at some places near Weston that looked good like plantations but I really don’t know these areas at all. We are Christian and are looking for another church home also when we move.
Thank you for sharing! Each moving story is unique and surely the factors that play heavy for one family may not for another.