We have survived the first month of unpacking, repairmen, installers, meeting neighbors, deliveries, hanging pictures, and have already had two separate sets of friends stay one week apart.
We are as settled as we could expect to be in our first thirty days and we have enjoyed spending time with our friends, and we have been having a lot of fun decorating the new house. We are into more of a subtle coastal look, did not want to go with the Margaritaville style. Although I think that look is cute and fun, its not what I want for every day. We have made many trips to Home Depot and Lowes, Gene has been adding shelving in the closets to increase storage and I feel like we have been keeping busy every day with numerous projects. This coming week we are planning on pulling out the Christmas decorations and putting up a few things to make it feel somewhat festive. We gave a lot of our decorations away to family and friends when we were trying to reduce space in the moving truck, I hope they get good enjoyment out of them this year, but that means we don’t have as many things to put out this year and we figure beings we aren’t going to be here most of December anyways we would just do the basics for now and do more next year.
As we are settling into our new life here and finding our way around, we love it more and more every single day. And not to get too political but we love our freedom here. After living in a state with one of the worst governors in my opinion and moving to a state with the best governor, also my personal opinion, you can really see and feel the vast difference and I feel bad for my family and friends who don’t know how bad it really is there until you get away from it. But besides that we actually really love it here for other reasons as well. There is definitely something special about the people in the southern states, and we absolutely love that it is mid November and we are still wearing shorts. I’m sure come July I won’t be feeling as much love but right now it has stayed in the seventies and no humidity so that has been great for us.
Gene played golf yesterday, it was his first golf outing in at least a couple of months and even though he said he didn’t do well I know he is happy our friend has included him in his golf group of buddies and he is now looking forward to his golf dates on Fridays, also nice for me to have a little me time. I am also planning on trying to take golf back up, it has been years since I’ve played but I have always enjoyed the game and I need to find things that will keep me active. We are looking at tennis and pickle ball as well as other possible winter activities. When Spring and Summer are here we are planning on swimming laps daily. That is another thing we like a lot is the weather accommodates for an active lifestyle.
We have been working non stop for the last two months first preparing for the move and then since we arrived so its nice to finally start to have some enjoyable moments. We look forward to more of those.
With the new activities starting we are hoping we can now drop some of this covid weight we have gained, boy the last year and a half has made us both chunk up and living in the apartment was great but also besides going for walks and hikes it was easy and convenient to sit around doing a whole lot of nothing, going out to eat a lot with friends and we spent a lot of time socializing, just got us into a lot of bad habits. Now it’s time to pay the piper and we both agreed after we were settled we would buckle down, get back to our daily walks, bike rides, take up tennis, pickle ball, swimming and use our community fitness center and start eating healthier. I think we have reached that time.
So as we prepare for the holidays which will be different this year, and we get ready to leave once again to go see the kids, we are filled with gratitude for all we have and certainly won’t take it for granted. I got all of the Christmas gifts wrapped and packed yesterday and have a few things being shipped to my parents which we will take care of after we get there, our friend will be staying in our house while we are away so we don’t have to worry about our place sitting empty, and we still have a few gifts yet to buy which we will do after we get there as well. I think I have it planned out pretty well, we shall see how this long distance Christmas goes.
This coming week is Thanksgiving, our first ever alone and the first time I won’t be cooking. We are going out to eat. It’s so different than the big meals I have always prepared for our family but hey, change is good right? There has been so much change lately, it”s all new and can be a bit overwhelming at times, but we are trying to appreciate it and take it all in. That’s what Thanksgiving is right? Living a life of gratitude and being thankful for all we have. ❤️
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