We're in Sun City!

Wow! I'm not sure how we did it but we managed to pull it off and we're settling in to our temporary rental house in Sun City while we wait for our new forever home to be built! Last week was a blur. The movers came Tuesday and due to impending weather wanted to completely load us instead of just starting to load us and finishing on Wednesday! Yikes! We immediately went in to over drive! By 5:00 they were done and so were we. We went to dinner with Elsa and Joe at BoneFish! Kind of appropriate as we had gone to Bonefish the night we had decided to make an offer on our Pinehurst house! We went full circle. It was really fun to see them again and hope we stay in touch. We decided to spend the night with Valorie and Frank and really didn't sleep much at all. We got up in the morning and went back to our house to clean it. Wow! What a job. Frank and I worked non-stop for 6 hours. Exhausting. It looked great though and I think the new owners will be happy that we left it so nice for them. I hope they enjoy our house. We will miss it but I think the move is the best thing for us. About 2:30 we left for SC and got hung up in traffic. We made it to the landlords office about 5:30 to pick up the key. Now we're off to the new house. We found the house but there was no power. That was not good. It was getting dark and cold. We finally talked with the electric company and discovered that the main breaker had been turned-off. Power was on! We turned on the heat and went to find a hotel. Hotels were full or not dog friendly and we ended up staying at a dump. Really it was disgusting. I can't believe I didn't pursue at least switching rooms. The room we were in had had a microwave that had apparently had a popcorn fire. The smell was horrible. I couldn't wait to get out of there! It cost us over $100.00 to stay in a dump. Horrible. I hope I never tolerate that kind of treatment again. Long story, and I was tired. Another sleepless night! Poor Chico has been really stressed along with us. We were all getting grouchy!
We got up early and left to come back to the house to wait for the movers. They finally called and let us know they wouldn't be here until 11:00! The smoke detector was emitting an beep because of a low battery and that is horrible! Chico was really freaking out and didn't even want to go in the house. We didn't have a ladder or anything. I decided to put my MacGiver mind to work to figure out how to remove the detector. I noticed the large garbage can with lid and the recycle box. So I used the recycle box to step up on to the top and voila, it worked. I was able to remove the detector and the noise was gone. A little annoying that the landlord didn't get the house ready for us. Not a good sign.
Now, the movers finally show up. That was crazy, decisions, decisions. The garage is full and the house was full of boxes but we were finally in. The movers left about 5:00 and now we'd have to try to make sense of the mess. I realized that my yoga mat, bike helmet and swimming stuff did not make it in the house. They are buried and probably won't be able to be located. I hate to buy a new mat and bike helmet but we may have to if we want to be able to play.
Saturday and Sunday were finally a little less stressful. We had much of our stuff unpacked and put away, at least enough to be able to function. We even took a little time to go for a short run on Saturday and Sunday. We hit Costco on Sunday afternoon and our frig and freezer are full. I'm going to start the Eat to Live diet tomorrow which is lots of fruits and veggies. I want to lose some weight (that's nothing new) but I feel that I really have to drop a few pounds if I want to do better running and working out. It's a new place and a new opportunity to start a new. I'm going to Florida in March with Tate and Julie so have that as a goal date to reach by desired weight. It'll be fun! Huh! Green smoothies will be my new best friend!
Well it's time to get some rest so off I go to bed. I'm planning on posting about my success for the next 6 weeks with Dr Fuhrman.

After Alaska!

Before we begin our next adventure I thought I'd do a quick recap of what's been going on since our cruise!

We returned in the middle of August. We went to visit Tate and Julie and the kids for a few days and to celebrate Zella's 2nd birthday. She's really growing up fast.

Our next big event was to run Hinson Lake, 24 Hour Around the Lake. We made it to about 62 miles and decided that was enough. I wonder how I ever did 100! In October we ran the New River 50K. It was fun and I didn't get the leans this year and made the cutoff!

We've been thinking about moving from Pinehurst for awhile and started looking around to see where we might want to move to. We went to Wilmington NC, then to Charleston SC and finally settled on the Charlotte SC area. We put the house on the market thinking it would take months to sell but it sold within two weeks and we started to wonder if we were doing the right thing. It was getting to the point of no return. We decided to buy a home in Fort Mill SC which is about 12 miles outside of Charlotte where Erin and Josh live. We found another Del Webb Sun City community and decided it might be a good option for us. There seems to be lots of active people that live there as well as a fitness center, a pool, and lots of trails for running and biking. We are closing on our house on January 27th and will have to rent for a couple of months as we've decided to build a new place rather that a resale. This way we got to pick out all of our options as well as the lot. Our new home will be on Pinehurst Lane which we thought was appropriate for us.

Here's a picture of the model home that we're building.


So we're just about packed and the movers will come on Tuesday to load our belongings. It's scary to move and start all over again, but I think we'll really enjoy being closer to a city with lots more to do as well as to the newest member of our family, little Cameron. Here's his pic!



Here's a picture of Ella at Christmas!

Catching up!

It's been several months since I've posted to my blog so I think it's time to catch up. I'm going to go back in time and try to recreate what's been going on. As you will soon see, there has been a lot! I'm even going to have to change the name of my blog as a result of the latest events! But I digress, back to the past!

Back to our cruise! We spent the next day at sea with lots of relaxing. Spent time in the spa and taking in some shows. Our next stop was to be Ketchikan. We had signed up for an excursion to the Rain Forest to do Zip Lining and Adventure Rope Challenges. We met our bus at 6:00 AM and it was the first day of rain we had seen. The locals were thrilled with the rain because they had not had rain for about 15 days and they collect rain water for drinking and bathing etc. They love the rain! We were driven to the Rain Forest where we met up with our guides, they were just a couple of young boys so it was a little unnerving to trust them with our lives. They strapped us up for the Zip Lining and away we went. I'm afraid of heights but for some reason was not too nervous. I had survived the helicopter ride, so how bad could this be.
Here are some pics of our adventures that day!









The next part of our cruise was to Victoria Canada. We were only there for a couple of hours so decided to not do any excursions but to explore the town on our own. It was nice to just walk around and then we went back to the ship for dinner. The cruise was winding down and we were on our way back to Seattle. It's amazing how efficiently these ships operate. You could tell they've done it before!

Once back in Seattle we stayed a couple more days to finish up the trip. We did all the touristy things and really enjoyed the city. We had beautiful weather and unusually warm and sunny so all the stories about the rain and dreary days in Seattle didn't dampen our trip!