Busy Start to 2022
January
We have had a crazy January!
I am writing this post from the house we’ve rented in Florida. I will have to do another post about all of that, but I want to try and keep things chronological for my own sake. This post will be about the start of January.
Things went along fairly normally for us until the week before January 10th. I spent most of my time packing up our house and Jeff was at our store a lot to try and get things in order as much as possible before we left for Florida.
New House
January 10th came and we drove to Appleton to sign the papers to close on our new house in Appleton!
Not my best picture…I’m not actually bald like it appears.
We found a gorgeous house just outside of Appleton in a rural neighborhood. We are just minutes away from the city and our neighbors are close, but not on top of us.
After we signed the papers, we went to our new house and unloaded Jeff’s car. That was our first load of stuff to the house.
Moving
It took multiple more loads the next few days to get everything to the house. My parents and Jeff’s dad helped us move boxes on Tuesday and Wednesday we had the movers come and take care of the big furniture. Wednesday night, we were sleeping in our new house.
We were in a bit of limbo for the rest of the week as we slept in the new place, but spent most of our time at our old house cleaning it up so it could be on the market while we were in Florida. We actually pushed our trip down to Florida back 2 weeks so that we could do this.
Cleaning and Packing
There was plenty of cleaning to be done and once we did all we could at that house, I started focusing on packing and re-packing for Florida.
I don’t know how to pack appropriately for 3 months! It didn’t help that most of my clothes were boxed up from the move still. I had planned ahead and kept clothes I thought I might take to Florida, so I didn’t have to go digging through any boxes. I will get to deal with those and so much more when we go back home to Wisconsin in April!
On Sunday night, we packed up Jeff’s car as much as we could so we wouldn’t have to deal with that too much in the morning. We tested out where the cats would be in their carriers. That’s right, we brought our 3 cats along with us to Florida. Plus our dog, Charlie! Are we crazy? Probably.
Hitting the Road
Monday morning came along and we hit the road at 9 am, an hour after our planned starting time. Our cats were in their carriers behind the driver’s seat and Charlie sat in the passenger’s lap (usually me).
Our cats were pretty calm for the most part for the drive. Sometimes Murray would meow incessantly. Then there would be a smell and our windows would be rolled down.
We had to make a couple of stops at gas stations and rest stops to clean up Murray and his carrier.
Murray was not happy as we reached Illinois
It was an 11+ hour drive to our first destination (the halfway point) in Murfreesboro, TN. I’ll share more about this part of our trip in my next post!
