Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sweet Home Alabama

Since I've made it Facebook official, most of you know of mine & Ross' impending adventure to Alabama!!! We are excited, nervous, optimistic, scared, and so on. It's quite the roller coaster of emotions. Call us sheltered, but we've never lived more than a 10-mile radius from where we grew up!! Even our first apartment was only a short distance away. Of course, I've always dreamed of living out-of-state, but Ross was always persisent that he never wanted to move.  Now, we are both excited to finally take the step to move (although not looking forward to traveling on holidays) and see what else is out there. Who knows, maybe we'll love it and never come back! Ok, I'm kidding, we'll always be pittsburgh-ers in our hearts and plan to come back one day :)

So since everything has been set in motion, we have quite the number of things to get done.

Ross' official start date with US Steel is March 1st. He finishes up with NHS Human Services on Feb. 16th and will have about 2 weeks in between to get packed and moved. We're flying down to B'ham (gotta love the lingo!) Feb. 2-6 to apartment hunt. Ideally, we'd love to find a townhome w/ at least a 1-car garage to rent for the first year. We don't want to buy a house until we really know the area. And if we could find a townhome with garage space (and NO yardwork :), all of our stuff should fit!! I would HATE to have to put it all back into storage when I just got it all unpacked, organized and useable in our new house :( 

Our realtor, Stephanie (who helped us buy our house and is now helping to sell it) got us in touch with a realtor in the B'ham area that specializes in rentals, so hopefully she will be able to help line up some places to look at the 3 days we have to find a place! I haven't had much luck by looking myself, so I hope this girl has something up her sleeves, haha.

Of course, everyone knows that it breaks my heart to sell our house after all the work we put into it, but I wouldn't have changed a thing and we should be able to sell it easily. I just tell myself that it's only a house and I can't be this emotionally attached. We'll also try to have everyone over to see it before we sell it, and show off our work one last time! Because we won't be doing that extent of home reno's for quite some time and we are quite proud of how far our house has come since we've bought it.

Anyways, once we find a place in B'ham, we'll have to figure out how Ross is moving his stuff down there. We have not priced anything yet as far as moving goes, but if you have any suggestions, please let us know :) We're taking everything ONE step at a time, b/c it's just too overwhelming to think about the full picture.

Once Ross moves out, we'll get the house listed on the market and see if we get any bites. Ideally, I don't want to move out until mid-June. That way I can continue working here, take care of selling the house, packing our things, etc. That gives Ross a few months to get settled into the position and to be 100% confident that he likes it. (If not, he can always move back and we'll still have our house! He always likes to play it safe and be extra cautious! Can you tell?) We also have a friend's wedding in June that we're both a part of, so it makes sense to have to only pay for him to fly home for that. It'll be hard to not see eachother for 4 months, but who knows. The plan can always change if it has to. Nothing is ever set in stone.

So that's it for now. I'm really looking forward to our 5 days in Alabama next week :) US Steel actually pays for one house hunting trip for employee & spouse, so they are paying for our flight, hotel, rental car, meals, etc. It's like a free vacation!!!! And get this, they booked us at a Residence Inn by Marriott. Yes!! I've never got to stay in such a nice hotel before (aside from our honeymoon), so I'm thrilled and can't wait for our free 'vacation' :)

Let the townhome hunting begin!...

3 comments:

  1. I'm so excited for you! Moving away was so great for Jake and I... it's not all easy, but def a great adventure!

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  2. I'm happy and sad...depends on the time and day! But I can't wait to visit b/c I've never been that far down south before:)

    Mike got us moving boxes from Staples with his employee discount, let me know if you want to order some...it worked really great for us.

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  3. Thanks Michelle! We're actually getting free boxes from Kathy. She's helped us out the last 3(?!) times, so we should be good!

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