Moving Day!

Today is moving day! The packers are boxing up all of our belongings as we speak. I feel like we do a pretty good job of keeping excess stuff out of our home, but even so, there are a ton of boxes. Boxes everywhere! I am scared for the other end when we have to unpack all of these boxes. We are downsizing quite a bit so we will likely leave some stuff in storage. Our new apartment in PA has a private storage room which, I'm sure, we will fill up!

A bit more on our timeline...

Today and tomorrow is our pack and load at our home in Gilbert. Tonight, we will start staying with my parents for 2 1/2 weeks. I will be traveling to Minneapolis August 8-10 for some onboarding for my new position. On August 13, we hit the road to PA! Our move in date in PA in August 19.

I am happy that we will have a gap between packing up our home and leaving AZ. It gives us time to get the house ready for our renters (whose lease starts 8/1). It'll also allow us to relax for a couple of weeks. We have put a lot of energy into getting things organized at our house. In fact, I was pretty proud when one of the packers told me that we have one of the most organized homes that he's ever packed. It'll also be nice to have a couple more weeks with family without the distractions of getting ready for a big move. We will have just one small carload of stuff in our possession as of tomorrow.

Overall, we are feeling pretty good about things. George has been interviewing for some positions over the past couple of weeks and should hear more in the next week or so. He is optimistic about the prospects. I've definitely had some moments where I've thought to myself, "what have we done?!?!" but then George calms me down :) One might say that he's a bit more level headed than me. Haha.

Here are some pictures of our apartment in Collegeville. The building was actually an old flag making factory so it is called the "Flag Factory Lofts". It is a building with 10 loft style apartments. The building was just recently re-done. It was a 3 year project and some of the apartments were ready earlier this year and the rest are ready this month. It will certainly be a lot different than what we're coming from!

PA Move!

I will start off this post with some big news....we are moving to Philadelphia, PA. Most of our friends and family know by now so hopefully this isn't a surprise to anyone reading. We are relocating for my job at General Mills. George and I have always had a desire to move out east for a bit, but we thought that it was several years out for us. Long story short, the timing and opportunity were right so to Pennsylvania we go! George will be looking for a new job either in Philadelphia or something that he can do remotely. So far, he has a couple of good prospects. We will be renting our home out. We posted it on Zillow and were fortunate to have found good renters within a week of posting it. The renters move in on August 1 so we will doing our pack/load on July 27 and July 28. Our lease in Pennsylvania doesn’t start until August 19 so we will stay with my folks for a couple of weeks before we hit the road. And yes, we opted to drive out there. I know, we’re crazy to do that with 2 small children!! George had a strong desire to do a road trip and make some stops along the way. I was skeptical at first, but after looking over the plan (6-7 hours max per day and one short 3-4 hour day), I am getting more excited. We are stopping in Santa Fe, Oklahoma City, Memphis, Nashville, and somewhere TBD in Virginia.

Last week, we went out to PA for our house hunting trip. We looked at a ton of places and after factoring in space, cost, location, etc. we decided on a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment in Collegeville, PA (north of Philly). The apartment is actually really big…1500 square feet plus a large private storage room. The one downside is that the kids will have to share a room. Surprisingly, Madeline was VERY excited about sharing a room with her “Lukey Boy” as she now calls him! Haha. I will post some more details and pictures of the apartment in a separate post. 

The move and all of the logistics have been keeping us very busy. That’s my excuse for the long blogging hiatus! Here are some pictures of the kids from the past couple of weeks...

Madeline stayed home while we did our house hunting trip. Emily, Hannah, and Rachel all helped us out with Madeline while we were gone, which we really appreciated! Since Luke is still so little and is still nursing, he came with us. He was a good little traveler, but by the end of the trip, he was very sick of his carseat. 

We were all very happy to reunite when we got home!!

 We stayed at an Airbnb while we were house hunting. The home was a 1751 Pennsylvania farmhouse. The home was amazing and the gardens/property were gorgeous! Here are Luke and I in their backyard!