Long Time No Post

Hi, all. It sure has been a long time since I posted anything and things have changed.

We are now officially Alabamians! We bought a house in Fairhope AL this winter. We took possession on December 7th. It is in a retirement community. A 3 bedroom, 2 bath double wide, so there is plenty of room for visitors! And...it was fully furnished!

Right now we are back in Unadilla sorting and packing what we will be bringing down to our new home in late summer. Our house in Unadilla is under contract. We should be closing within the next couple of months (no solid date yet). But since our new home is fully furnished we will not be taking much furniture -- just the three pieces my youngest brother, Jon, built for us.

Last summer we got rid of a lot of our possessions -- gave some to family, and donated a bunch to the Youth For Christ organization. They have a perpetual yard sale next to Unatego School, to help raise funds for all their activities for area youth. They came and picked up a pick up truck load and a van load of things. We also auctioned off quite a bit, and still have a few things that will be auctioned off next month.

So, we are still paring down and will be having a large yard/house sale at some point before the closing.

We love our new home down south. And we were toying with the idea of having a camper up north and the house down south, but we have changed our minds. After this summer, we will not be coming up to stay for months on end, but we will be coming up for a vacation (not sure of the length yet, but at least 2 weeks probably). It has just gotten too difficult to travel that far every year and too tough (and costly) to have two homes. We are committing to becoming southern citizens, after all, we have been practicing for years. And our subscription to Southern Living all these years has conditioned us for it, too. hahaha.

The property down there is so much easier to take care of than our Unadilla house. It is a corner lot that is FLAT so it only takes Lynn 10 minutes to mow as opposed to the 2 days it takes to mow the hillsides of Unadilla. And now, I won't have to worry about him mowing the steep bank any more either (whew!)

Lynn has already made a lot of changes to the yard at the new house. When we bought it, it was very grown up around it, untrimmed bushes, out-of-control vines, and a broken down trellis/bench. The woman who owned it couldn't take care of it by herself any more (she was disabled and in her 80s and her husband had passed away.) So, we had some trees removed that were overhanging the house and blocking light from our screened in porch (they call it a Florida Room down there).  That sure opened things up.

He planted a kumquat tree and a satsuma tree, so next year we should have some citrus! Yum!

We have done a little inside work as well and when we return, we will be removing the rest of the carpet (it's so much better for my allergies to not have carpet!) and putting in new flooring throughout the house. We already replaced the carpet (yes, dark green plush carpet) in the bathroom (who DOES that?!?!) with ceramic tile. So, a few small projects to complete when we get home. (yes, now Alabama is "home" and NY is "NY" or "up North.")

We are really enjoying our new home. We're sorry if people are unhappy that we won't be spending summers in NY any more, but Lynn feels so much better physically down south in the warmth than he does up north in the cold. We are looking forward to returning there after our house closing this summer.

We will definitely keep in touch with our family and friends, no matter where we are!