Jennifer, Karen, Alexandra(Alex), Finn and
Teagan("T") flew in from Virginia
on Christmas Day. Besides enjoying the
perfect weather and several trips to the beach, they sorted through tons of
pictures, boxes of mementoes going back to their grammar school days,
"treasures" and such. By the time they were finished, they needed to
rent a 10' box truck from Budget to haul it all home. Although they already had
plane tickets, Alex and Finn drove the truck back to Annandale,
VA.
While the kids were here, they took one last drive by their
old schools; St. Anastasia Grammar School and John
Carroll High School.
Finn and T got to see where their mom and aunts went to school.
They left on Sunday, December 31. This will be their last
trip "home".
I about got the house ready to list with a broker by New
Years day. A 50 year old house needs
lots of maintenance. I've been working
on it since we got home from last years trip in October. Our neighbor ,Carolyn,
works at one of the County offices in some capacity. She told a co-worker who
told someone they knew who was looking for a house that ours was for sale. The
news seem to spread by word-of-mouth and after showing the house to four prospects,
the fourth lookers made a decent offer.
We signed the contract on January 8th with the closing scheduled for
February 15. Of course, as goes the
saying, "The opera's not over 'til the fat lady sings". The buyers are a very nice Hispanic couple
with an eight year old daughter. They have friends that live nearby. In December I had lunch with an appraiser
friend to get a sense about values, marketing times, and such. We were thinking
it would take a few months to sell the place. The quick sale was a pleasant
surprise.
On January the 3rd, Palm City Auction Company hauled away most
of the furniture, the "treasures" the kids didn't want, most of my
gun collection, etc. The auction took
place on Wednesday the 9th. The auction
house gets a 35% sales commission. In return, they pick everything up, catalog
it, conduct the auction then give a detailed report of what sold for how much. We're happy.
Since we sold most of the big items of furniture, we're not
using a standard moving company. I found a company that will drop off "pods"
in the driveway. We load the pods, they pick them up and haul them to CO, store
them until we're ready ,then set them in the driveway of our new house. This is
all set up including the labor to load the pods. A guy I worked with years ago,
runs a local contract labor place. Jim's sending out two guys for $16/hour each
to do the loading. The total cost for
all this will be about $3,000 versus the
$5,000 to $7,000 quotes I was getting from full service moving companies.
We're shipping the car as well. That turned out to be a pretty
reasonable $977 door-to-door. Since we
won't get to Longmont until
sometime in March, Suzanne will sign for the car when it gets there and keep it at
her house until we arrive. (There is nothing like family when you need help)
That's the plan. After closing, we'll drift slowly along the
Texas coast into New
Mexico then to Longmont
by mid-March. I want to be able to get a good look at our new house while it's
being built. Right now, our Colorado Casita has an early April completion date.
Suzanne takes a few pictures each week and e-mails them to us so we can keep
track of the progress.
Last night we went out to dinner at our favorite restaurant
to celebrate all this good news. We had things we almost never have because
they are so unhealthy. Started with deep fried portabella mushrooms that are
served with a wonderful dipping sauce. Carol had chicken fried steak and I had
liver and onions served with lots of bacon and covered with gravy and served
with garlic mashed potatoes. We were stuffed.
Today we continued packing things, throwing stuff out and
making yet another run to the church thrift store. I'm on a nodding acquaintance with the thrift
store ladies.
It was in September that we first started talking about moving to CO. Here it is about six months later and we're just getting real close to being there.
