Pre-Move Trip to Connecticut

I'm sure many of you have heard that we are moving to Connecticut at the end of the month. The movers have been scheduled, and Mat starts his new job on Monday. He is excited. The only thing left to do is find a place to live!

ESPN is relocating our family, and they are generous enough to give us a pre-move trip for the whole family to go find a new home. We left Wednesday. JetBlue is now I think the only airline that flies directly from Orlando to Hartford. I am NOT a fan of flying, and the flight we took there was by far one of the worst flights ever until our return flight happened. BUMPY is a nice way to describe most of the flight, and I gotta be honest...I cried and swore never to fly again. The turbulence was just awful in spite of the beautiful weather.

We arrived, rented a giant black suburban with a DVD player in it for entertainment while we drove around looking at different areas within 30 minutes of ESPN. Red Box is perfect for renting movies! We drove around most of Wednesday and Thursday looking on our own at the different rentals we saw online and found a couple of places that we would LOVE to live.

We got to visit our new Classical Conversations group on Thursday morning, and they even allowed Andrew and Elizabeth to participate in the classes. Elizabeth loved it! We met a lot of very kind people who welcomed us like family into the group.

Friday, we met with a fantastic realtor who took us around all day looking inside rental houses. We got very discouraged b/c we didn't find anything that fit our needs. Most of them were about to crumble to the ground, one of them was built in 1961 and still had the original appliances. We called that house the Brady Bunch house. There was even an indoor pool in that house! One of the houses would have worked, but there was NO parking except for a very tiny spot right in front of the house. As a "scardy" driver already, Mat didn't even let us go into that house b/c he knew I wouldn't go anywhere if I had to pull in and out of that small space. So we didn't find a place to live while we were there. It was discouraging, but the realtor seemed to think something would pop up in the next few weeks. Right now, we are looking to live in a Residence Inn for a while until we find a home.

In spite of the discouragement of not finding a place to live, we did have a really good trip. Saturday we did normal stuff like work out at the YMCA. That night we were invited to eat dinner with some longtime friends we know originally from our church in Atlanta. We had a great time in fellowship with friends who love the Lord. The kids also loved playing with their children. It was so encouraging to spend a night reconnecting with this precious family. They invited us to visit their church so the following day we met up with them at their church which meets at a big Town Hall. The congregation couldn't have been more welcoming. We met lots of new friends, and we even were invited to lunch with a couple of different families. We all walked over to Moes (you can walk everywhere in that town - so fun). After lunch was over, one of the families even invited us to their home. They just happen to be part of our new homeschool group, and they have children the same ages as Andrew and Elizabeth.

Meeting new friends has made the move oh so much easier. I feel quite confident that we will find a place to live, but what I find most amazing is that God didn't use the pre-move trip to secure an earthly home. He chose to comfort our hearts through fellowship with new friends who love the Lord and welcomed us to Connecticut with open arms. I feel very loved by my heavenly father, and more sure than ever that we are walking in the path HE set before us. There is no greater place to be than right in the center of His will...even if it is the cold part of this country.

Many people have given us a hard time about moving from Florida to CT. They have said things like WHY and You are crazy! What people don't understand is how this move will change our family. Mat has been working CRAZY hours for a majority of his work career. Even after he leaves the job site, he still has work to finish at home. He works lots of weekends and too many over time hours to count. We are looking at a life change and much more free time for Mat. I'm sure there will still be overtime hours, but it will be on occasion...not a way of life. For that, I'm thankful to get my husband back! I know he is also excited ab out the possibility of having free time. He's even dreaming about what kind of hobby he will have.

We have one more very sweet memory from the trip. We met a sweet elderly couple married 60 years. They grabbed our arms, gave us kisses, and asked for us to please locate them once we move up there. In fact, most of the people we met on this trip were very warm and loving unlike the description we got of New Englanders prior to the trip. It makes me hopeful of the way God will use our family in the coming years. I hope we can be a family who can easily share God's love.