Did I tell you we moved?

I just looked at the blog: Oops. I haven't posted since September. Let me take a few moments to get some overviews:

September: I lived in a hotel with my husband. We looked at a lot of houses and my wonderful mother packed up our apartment.

October: We moved into our house; after our closing, I will never move again. Promise. We ended up buying a foreclosure in a very nice neighborhood; we literally ended up skipping the starter home and went straight to big house. Since it was a foreclosure, it was owned by Fannie May, and Fannie May was a pain. I took the day off so Trae and I could sign the paper work and then I would go to the house to start scrubbing; turns out the Fannie's lawyer forgot (aka was too lazy too) process some paperwork. Our realtor wasn't sure when we would get the keys. Mold was growing on the kitchen cabinets at this point and the moving van (Trae calls it the moving semi-truck) was due to arrive in 24 hours. My mother was already on her way with the three cats. Mold, cats and van, but no keys. We ended up signing the paperwork around 5pm hoping it would help speed the process along. The cats and mother rolled into town about an hour later and checked into a pet friendly hotel.

I went to work the next morning with the realization that one of two things was going to happen: either I was moving into a house or my stuff was going into a storage unit. I would know the answer by 11am. I taught and the during class, the phone rang at 10:32. The realtor's voice  boomed through the phone:

I HAVE KEYS! I am speeding RIGHT NOW to the house!

The van was already there, as well as my mother and very cranky cats. At 11:00, my mother entered our house and started overseeing the moving process. Three days later the kitchen cabinets were mold free and the house was clean. We could finally unpack. And unpacked we are! Everyone has told us that we have made record time in unpacking. (My theory is that since we didn't pack our apartment, we had no clue what was in any of the boxes and to find what we needed we just had to unpack them all!)

During all of this crazy trying to moving, closing from Hell, I found out that my mentor from college had surgery for cancer. The cancer, however, had spread and she did not have much longer to live. (Literally, I found this out two days after moving.)

November: I was lucky/ blessed  to be able to say good bye to Dr. Bennett. I visited her in the hospital, and we had a frank talk and shed a few tears. She died a few day later. With Dr. Bennett's illness and Thanksgiving, Trae and I were not home much to enjoy our new house.

December: This month was biter sweet. Dr. Bennett's memorial took place in Clemson, and it was lovely to see so many friends, but bitter-sweet. Dr. Elisa Sparks was so kind and gave me a picture from Dr. Bennett's office. The picture is one of a young, beautiful, confident  woman and she kept this picture of herself in her home office. It is now in my office.

January:  Um, no idea where that month went. A lot of people visited, including Trae's parents. They really like the house and fell in love with the Keurig coffee maker. (Trae's dad just bought himself one today.) I know I fit in a lot of DIY projects. My office was the last room to get completed in the house. In the apartment my office was literally as corner; now I have a room! I craigslisted and diy-ed myself into a lovely space.

 February: Hello! You are up to date! And now a few house pictures. Next blog will be DIY project filled.

Our Christmas card picture

Love those cabinets; I scrubbed them for three days.

Clem wants everyone to know she is the queen of the house. Her favorite thing to do now is meow while sitting on the stairs. When someone comes to look and see what is wrong, Clem gleefully looks at the person like "Yes! You are my minion!"