I am back and ready to regularly blog!!! What an eventful month we have had. For those that don’t know the story, I apologize to those that already do, I will share it in short form well as short as I can.
My husband and I were all set to start the process to buy a home in Michigan, got all the paperwork going, started looking, did everything we were supposed to do. Meanwhile, my husband received a phone call from a company in North Carolina that was interested in hiring him. He thought it was all good, but told them, that it wasn’t a good time. He wouldn’t be able to move his large family 700 miles away at this time….too expensive. Well this company came back and said, we would like to pay for your family to move, we will give you a check and you spend it as you need it to get down here. We were stunned.
Meanwhile, we were waiting on paperwork from our mortgage company to go through, so we started looking for homes in North Carolina. The area we were needing to live in, was very expensive. Like ridiculously expensive. Our large family was not going to be able to make it. The very few homes we did find, the owners were like, “Oh, large family, I don’t know the septic might not work.” or “Oh, you have a dog, that will cost you $300 in pet deposit fees.” It was not looking good at all. We were literally down to the last few days of when we had to decide to take the job or not and we found a home.
This home, did not look very big in the photo, that is why I didn’t consider it. Well it was to our advantage, the home is gorgeous, quite spacious for us and amazingly perfect. Oh, and the price is what we are used to. It literally was down to the last 2 weeks that the application went through and his job contract was signed, it fell into place perfectly. Oh and by the way, no dog deposit and no lease contract. Just stay as long as we like. I didn’t like the idea of having to be locked into a yearly lease not knowing what the home would be like. Again God alleviated that fear and gave us this option.
We prayed for direction as to what avenue we should be taking, buying the home in Michigan or making the move to North Carolina. We did everything that we could physically do ourselves and then left the rest up to Him. A few days after we got the okay for the home in North Carolina, our mortgage company called and was like, “I don’t know what happened, but I finally got all your paperwork in order.” I knew it was God giving us clear direction towards North Carolina by stalling out work in Michigan.
We immediately set to work. Put all of our large items up for sale on Craigslist. We had pretty much everything sold in 2 days!!! The remainder of things I had up, went later that week. I was even about to throw out some lamps on the last days of packing, and a woman called and wanted them. I also had our brand new air conditioners up for sale, not a single call and I had them cheap. I assume every home down south had central air because of the heat, well after talking to our landlord she says, Oh’ we use window air conditioners:) We would be needing those. God is so good.
We went to some dumpsters to look for boxes and the first one we found, we got tons of huge boxes. God was making the things that would be stressful for me as the Mom easy. I was thanking Him each and every step of this journey.
I started packing up our items, and setting aside others to give away. I can’t say that I had a strategic plan for packing. I would have liked to keep all the same items together in boxes and containers, but when you are moving 700 miles and have to fit EVERYTHING in a 25 foot moving truck that you own, you squish as much stuff as you can in every corner. We had pasta packed with propane tanks, food mixed in with clothing, each and every little space was packed tight. 
I designated our dining room as the boxes room and just kept packing as I went through my week. I had to get in doctor appointments this last week and was able to get everyone in at last minute notice—another testimony of God.
Lots of phone calling to get things switched over to a new address, canceling things here and starting things there. That took up much of my time. Oh and I still was trying to jam 2 weeks of school into 1 week so we could be done and take a break. Another testimony….I don’t usually ever plan out my school year as much as I did this year. I had no idea we were going to even think of moving this year, but this summer I planned and plotted out my entire school curriculum for the year,and get this……in November I even planned on doing school for just 2 weeks in that month. Even when I was going over my schedule before I was moving, I thought to myself, “why did I take such a big vacation time in November?? Oh well it would give us some extra days I guessed. Well to my surprise, how wonderful it was to remember that I took off all that time in November when we would be making the move. I didn’t know, but God did!! In Michigan we have zero homeschooling laws, in North Carolina, they are much stricter and having that planned out schedule alleviated a huge amount of stress for me. God is good!!
Look tomorrow for part 2 of large family moving and see how my faith was strengthened hugely by relying on God throughout this life changing event.
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