Yet again, I start by apologising for the email silence from my end. Usually I complain of having no news. This time, however, there are several big news items!
As everyone knows, we spent 5 weeks back home in Australia, which was WONDERFUL. I was a little saddened to find that some things had changed (it was much more expensive than I remembered), but most importantly, the Farmers Union Iced Coffee still tasted the same! We went to the Sunshine Coast, took a trip from Darwin down to Alice Springs, caught up with everyone back in Adelaide, took a quick side-trip over to the Grampians, then spent a few days in Sydney before flying out. It was so good to see everyone again and very, very hard to leave again. I'm hoping it won't be another 4 years before we come home again.
Both Dustin and I were APPALLED to see our holiday photos when we got home. We have put on SO MUCH WEIGHT!! You know how you don't really notice since it happens so slowly? We're now trying to run around the neighbourhood on a regular basis. Our timing sucks, since summer is definitely already here. 90% humidity and 35 degrees at 10pm are not fun running conditions. Ugh.
When we came back to Augusta, we immediately began the house sale process. We'd planned to try to sell the house ourselves for a few weeks, and if that wasn't very successful, then we'd suck it up and agree to pay a real estate agent 3% commission to advertise it for us. Luckily, we were able to find quite a few interested parties on our own and now have a signed contract. We are scheduled to move out of Sande Hill Place on the 12th of June, which is rapidly approaching!
At the same time, we also had to start the house-hunting process in Charlotte. We're extremely lucky, in that Charlotte is only 2.5 hours away from Augusta, so rather than having to fly, we've been driving. We've been going over for a LONG day trip, and also taking Bonnie on her first motel stay overnight. House-hunting in Charlotte was a big shock after being in Augusta. We had to rapidly downscale our expectations, which left us in a dilemma: do we pick the nicer suburb with the small, not-so-nice house, or pick the big, new house way out in the suburbs? I had hoped that we might live in the city itself, but a tiny 1-bedroom apartment was close to $200K, so that idea was quickly abandoned. We were lucky, in the end. We found a house in a nice neighbourhood, close to everything, completely renovated inside, for a really good price. It's a bit older and smaller than we had initially hoped, but there is a good chance that the house's value will appreciate quite quickly, since it's close to the new light rail system and a few other up-and-coming areas. Closing date for the Charlotte house is Friday the 13th (!!), which will give us a week to unpack and move in before Dustin starts work on Friday the 20th.
We'll probably be changing the phone numbers to North Carolina numbers, so as soon as that's done, I'll send out change of address info for y'all.
Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful fun we had in Oz. I miss everyone so much. Hope you can come visit us in Charlotte soon!
V. xx
