We're Moving!

I know it's been 2-1/2 months since I've posted anything but that's because I didn't have anything exciting to write about, unless you're the type that gets excited about everyday news that consists of washing dishes, baking bread, scrubbing the floor, and trips to the grocery store.  If you get excited about those things, I don't know how to help you.

I did have my mom here for a couple weeks though.  I sort of had to twist her arm a little bit to get her to agree to come visit me cuz she doesn't travel too well anymore.  But I'm really glad she did because I knew it was gonna be my last chance to ever have her over at my house.  She spent a lot of time helping me sew Stephanie's quilt.  I happen to be hand sewing that one, which is what Ma likes to do, so I'm glad we found something for her to do that she enjoys.

Also we took her to Shipshewana, and she got excited about seeing those Amish buggies parked along the side of the building.  She wanted me to take some pictures of her with one of the horses.

Most of you who read this blog,  -- what is the stagnant number? about 4? --  most everyone knows now that we are moving back to Alaska.  I kinda "knew" we would go back eventually, but I didn't think it would happen this fast.  I thought we would be here in Indiana for at least 3 years.  But a job position opened up in Anchorage; we talked about it; prayed about it; and Chuck applied for it.

And he got it.

Wow.  

Really?!

We're actually going back to Alaska?!

Of course I am thrilled about it, but there is a small part of me that is/was having mixed feelings about it.  We've been here for a year and a half now, and that's long enough to establish new friendships, and settle new habits, and learn where you can buy your favorite novelty grocery items, like fresh Amish produce for example, which is something you can't get in Alaska (I will miss that!)

But Alaska is where our girls are. We are sacrificing some of our favorite amenities here, but we feel that we want to be closer to them.

Oh, the things we do for our kids.....!

Lucky for them, I happen to LOVE Alaska!

So we took a trip up there to look for our next house and we found one on the 2nd day of looking.  We made an offer and they accepted, so if all goes well with the inspection, this will be our next abode:

It looks like a really big spread out ranch home, but in reality, only half of that is the house.  Chuck is getting spoiled with lots of garage!  This house has two 2-car garages, and they're both heated, and very clean, and set up for tinkering because the previous owner's hobby (apparently) was working on classic cars.  Anyway, it is a VERY NICE garage.  Plus, there's another heated shed in the back.

I just love the outside of this house.  It's almost like a little "compound" because there's walkways from one place to the next.  Here is a walkway to the gazebo.

I am excited for summer to come because this is going to be a really neat place during the summertime.

Another thing that I'm excited about is the sunroom.  You can kinda see it on the far left of the house. It's a little room with glass walls and it has solar panels on the roof.  This is where I'm going to start my garden seeds!  It is so perfect for that.  It's also heated and has fans in it, so it's actually a greenhouse.  It is SO cool!  I will love using that!  

Plus the yard is really big - plenty of room for garden beds.

There's also a firepit in the back yard.

And the house sits in a cul-de-sac, so there's a lot of quiet privacy here.

AND, you really don't know what you're getting under all that snow, but Chuck found some summer pictures of this place, and the yard is really well taken care of, and there's two rhubarb plants already matured!  Woo-HOO!

The inside of the house has some pros and cons.

It has a nice big kitchen with an island, so I have plenty of counter space.

BUT - I might be lacking in upper cabinet space.  We'll have to see.

I love the openness of this area when you walk in there.

That couch you see in the background, is not the living room.  That is actually supposed to be a computer nook.  These people just chose to put a couch there, and it looks very cute and cozy, but we are going to put a computer desk there.

If you take a left at that couch, you'll go down this hallway that leads to the laundry room.

I will have a pretty nice laundry room.

That door leads to the glass sunroom (if I remember right).

If you go up those stairs, you will find yourself in a HUGE master bedroom.

It's somewhere around 30' long, maybe it's 27'  - ridiculous big.  I don't have any pictures of it, but trust me, it's big.  The people who built this house must've been very eccentric because they had a stand-alone bathtub in the bedroom.  The people who own it now, have a huge fancy treadmill where the bathtub used to be.  There is a patch in the floor where the bathtub used to be - where the treadmill is now.  The whole floor up there is wood.  Eventually we will get carpet up there and that will take care of that "patch" in the floor where the bathtub was.

Also there are sliding glass doors in the master bedroom that lead outside to a HUGE deck, raised high off the ground of course, because the master bedroom is on the upper floor.

Unfortunately, this is the only "back door" we got.

So, if you go back to the kitchen, there will be stairs going down to the lower level, and that is where the living room is.  It's hard to tell in this picture, but it is also ridiculous huge.

27 feet long! (this is what makes me think the master bedroom is probably 27' also)

And notice there's no windows, except for one window on the wall behind me that you can't see.

No windows in the living room is a big con for me.  I don't like that, but it's too late to dwell on that now.

The people who originally built this house used this room as some kind of - I don't know what they did exactly - but they had a projector in there and a wet bar, they purposely designed this room to be dark so they could show movies or something, I don't know.  The whole entire house has panels with jacks all over them so they could play their music through the whole entire house.  They had a TV set sitting on top of the fridge which explains why there aren't any cabinets above the fridge.  Anyway, the house does have some oddities.

My biggest problem is the bedrooms, and this is almost getting me feeling a little depressed.  It's too bad we didn't put more thought into this before we made the offer, but then again, we love the rest of the house enough, I don't know if that would've deterred us from buying it.

Besides the master bedroom which takes the whole entire upper floor, there are three other bedrooms.  Unfortunately, one of them is only 8'3" x 8'3" (too small to be a bedroom), so in my mind, there are really only two extra bedrooms.  I need one of them to be a guest room, and one of them has to be for Justin.  I don't know which one to put Justin in because the medium size one is smaller than the one he has now, and he needs his space for all his computer stuff and whatnot.  The biggest bedroom is too big and also has a 1/2 bath in it, which would be perfect for guests, but it would be such a waste to reserve all that precious space just for guests, who might use that room only a few times a year.  It would be nice for Justin to have that room, but if I give him that room, the medium size room would have to be guest room, and that leaves that teeny room for my craft room (and where am I supposed to set up my Bible study area?).  The small room is a good size for a den/study, but then where am I gonna have my sewing area and my scrap booking area?  I have no bonus room in this house to work with.  I can use part of the master bedroom for one of my hobbies, but it's not big enough for both sewing and scrap booking (not with those sliding glass doors in there which we don't want blocked). I also thought of using the big bedroom as the guest room and then I could use part of that room for one of my hobbies, but I don't know - I keep thinking in circles and getting nowhere. It just really stinks that those bedrooms aren't normal sizes. I'm thinking I'll have to utilize part of the master bedroom and maybe part of the living room too, which is too big anyway, but how to do that without it looking bad and tacky? I was even suggesting using some space in one of Chuck's many garages since they are so cozy heated and he has TONS of room out there, but he is against that.  I think he wants his garage space to stay "manly".  Anyway, I get depressed when I think about this too much because I don't see how I'm gonna make it work without giving up one of my hobbies.

But I will figure something out.  Because I have to.

But if any of you wants to come visit, we will gladly give you a room and a bed - you just might have to share a room with my hobby stuff.

So anyhoo, we got all the necessary papers signed and now we're just waiting for the inspection.  In the meantime, we are getting our house ready to put on the market.  The photographer is coming to take pictures on Wednesday, so between now and then, we have to get this house looking fit to publish in a magazine (as best we can).  Our realtor wants to put it on the market on Thursday, and he wants to do an Open House on Sunday (already!)  But if he wants to do an Open House, I'm glad he's doing it right away because the house will already be clean from doing the photos.  The hardest part of all this is keeping the house immaculate at all times.  I hope it sells fast.  The sooner it sells, the sooner we can relax.

On a better note, here are some pics I took when we were in Alaska these past few days.

I took some from the airplane when we were descending.

Oh, how I miss those mountains!

Oh, how I miss driving on these pretty roads!

We even stopped to buy a sandwich from one of my favorite stores!

We didn't have time to look around and browse, but it was nice to see that store again!

Who needs Whole Foods when you got the Natural Pantry?

I was hoping to see some moose while we were there, and we finally saw some on our last day, on our way back to the airport!  I didn't get any pictures cuz we were driving and I couldn't dig my camera out of my pocket fast enough (stupid seatbelts!)  We saw about a dozen of them grazing in "the Flats".

And then I saw this one in the airport:

We were supposed to leave at 1:00 am Sunday morning, so our plans were to spend Saturday evening  in Anchorage with PW after she got off work, but on Friday she informed us that she had the flu.  On Saturday she said she was going to the doctor.  We had nothing else to do and didn't see the logic in hanging around there all day for nothing, so we decided to change our flight to leave at noon.  I'm glad we did cuz that got us home around 3:00 am, which is 11:00 pm Alaska Time.  So we got home two hours before we WOULD HAVE been leaving Anchorage, and that was already a really long day, so I'm glad we didn't wait around for our original flight.

In case you're wondering, NO she did not have the coronavirus.

So there you have it.

Yes, we are moving back to Alaska!

And that means, hopefully I will have more blogs to post.

Weeners was hiding the whole time Ma was here.

It's nice to see her come back out again.

Even if she's sitting on top of my quilting project.